ROOT


A. Sparrow


Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by A. Sparrow, All Rights Reserved


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Cover Image by FractalAngel-Stock

To Andy


In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus (Reflections on the Guillotine)

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
R. Buckminster Fuller


Chapter 1: The Liminality

Across the pond, a willow dances for me, branches twisting and swaying despite the absence of a breeze. The water’s stillness and sterility annoy me. Surface uncreased, depths devoid of fish or worms or even plankton, it may as well have been a pool of mercury. 
I toss a pebble. Ripples expand and rebound off the shore, distorting the mirrored sky, cloudless yet grey. I toss another stone before the ripples can fade.
On a throne carved into the muddy bank, I wait for Karla, hopeful and calm, stable at my core. How much I’ve changed, in less than a year of coming to this place, as if all the neurons in my brain have been ripped apart and reconfigured. I’m only nineteen, but I feel ancient.
Stray sprigs of tamed root inch across the flats, tensing and releasing their spirals. One severed tendril pauses at my feet, sensing the presence of its master. Slowly, it curls and uncurls in time with my breath, reflecting my inner mood. I send it on its way with a glare.
Curious now, how my former foes await my beck and call like empathetic dogs. I used to think they were the nastiest things, before I learned how to domesticate them. So malleable and helpful, who knew these roots existed only to serve?
When I say ‘roots,’ I don’t mean those scraggly, dirty things that anchor trees and channel their life-giving nutrients. Sure many here resemble something you might dig up from under a maple tree, but that’s just one iteration of their boggling diversity. You’ll find roots here as fine as spider silk or as thick as tree trunks, those that glow or vibrate, hollow ones, some slick and translucent that pulse and gurgle from their inner flows. I wouldn’t be surprised if some carried electricity or blood.
They creep and climb and wind themselves into thick and ropy tangles. They can wriggle like manic nightcrawlers or lie inert as deadwood, all mossy and frayed like the moorings of some old boat forgotten in a bayou. 
They’re sentient sometimes, scheming and conniving against us souls, working in concert with the Reapers. But I don’t think it’s voluntary. Reapers are Weavers, too. They just do their dirty work and get on with it. They don’t need to show off or brag.
To ‘weave’ a root is to possess it. Their diversity and mutability can be harnessed to any purpose imaginable. They’re the raw material of dreams. We can join them, split them, make them hard as steel or soft as mush. With a glance, I spread one out into a sheet as thin as paper. I fold it into a crane and add it to the pile beside me.
Karla taught me all the origami I know. After the tsunami in Japan, she had folded hundreds after hearing about some kind of fund-raising scheme for the victims, only to find that no one in her country knew what to do with a sack of paper cranes. 
They’ll stay set for quite a while, once woven. But quite a while doesn’t mean forever. They tend to revert back to their native state in a month or so, or even sooner if you don’t feel strongly enough about what you’ve woven. So far, none of my cranes have dared unfold themselves.
You don’t go to Root, by the way. It comes to you. If you're unlucky enough to have your soul plunge off the deep end, the roots will come a fetching. You’ll know they’ve arrived from those fleeting blurs in your peripheral vision, those stray itches and random crawly sensations that brush or scrape against your limbs.
They’re attracted to depression of the deepest, darkest sort. They can sniff out the truly suicidal and I don't mean the dabblers. They’ll lurk and drag you down just when you think you couldn't possibly get any lower.
But it's not so bad here, once you get past the Reapers. Some of us can weave a decent life out of the place. Life? Well, maybe that’s not the right word for it.
Subsistence? Persistence? Existence?
Though I do feel more alive in Root than I ever did in the world of my birth. My soul lives on here, happy, or at least hopeful, as I wait for my love to return.




Chapter 2: The Calling

Chances are, you’ll never meet anyone like me, and not just because I’m weird, and not because I’m dead. I’m James Moody. I have abilities you can’t even imagine, skills that serve me well in a place you’ll never go—if you’re lucky.
I’m going to tell you how I came to die, but not because I’m fishing for any sympathy. I don’t need any of that, not when I’ve got Root. Just because someone dies doesn’t make it a sad story. Death can be a good thing if it’s done right.
Root first came calling when both Mom and Dad were still alive. Those were simpler days, when my greatest angst revolved around figuring out how to spring loose to hang with the public school kids in downtown Ft. Pierce. I wasn’t happy cooped up at home. My parents weren’t horrible, but they were … parents. It didn’t help being an only child as it kept their focus entirely on me. 
Being home-schooled like I was, Mom, the librarian, was convinced that Ft. Pierce High School was infested with junkies, heathens and cretins. She was absolutely right, of course, but what she didn’t realize was that she had someone qualifying for at least two of those labels living under her own roof.
Getting out of the house I could manage; but getting one of the Ft. Pierce cliques to acknowledge my existence was a bit more challenging. I don’t know about your town, but around here, society gets ossified once you hit about fourteen. 
It was even worse for me, because I was home-schooled. The old play groups worked fine when I was grade school age, but as the years went on I found I had less in common with the prodigies, religious nuts and wacko Libertarians that made the bulk of the home school crowd. Mom, you see, pulled me out of charter school because she was afraid they wouldn’t teach me enough evolution.
The direct approach that had worked with grade schoolers—acting goofy and sticking my nose into cliques of strangers on playgrounds—now only succeeded in drawing stares or ridicule. I kept at it because it was the only tactic I knew.
Sometimes it got my ass kicked. Sometimes it scored me drugs, including the time I ran into a gaggle of potheads who wouldn’t have cared if Muammar Qaddafi came to sit with them. By far the most significant outcome was the time I hooked up with Jenny Gallagher’s crowd—because Jenny was female, and she acknowledged my existence and that, my friends, was a rare combination in my world.
It was a Saturday in June and a bunch of them were loafing around behind the kiddie swings under an old weeping willow. I took a deep breath, walked up to them and went into my spiel.
“Anybody see my pet wombat?”
Stares.
“I’m serious. My wombat got loose.”
“What the heck?” said this guy with a vacant scowl who was built like an offensive lineman. He outweighed me by about a hundred pounds.
“What the hell’s a wombat?” said a skinny guy who wore a knit cap, despite heat and humidity in the nineties.
“It’s a kangaroo-like thingie. A marsupial,” said this girl with cinnamon hair that flowed in the breeze, every strand dancing to its own rhythm. That was Jenny, of course. You could probably tell that from my purple prose. “Are you serious? You have a pet wombat?”
“Yeah. His name’s Marco.”
The others started scanning the willow branches. All except Jenny, who looked at me with her nose scrunched up.
“Wombats don’t climb trees,” she whispered. “Don’t they burrow?”
I just winked at her.
***
So that time, at least, my stupid little entrée worked. From that time on, Jenny’s friends let me hang out with them. I never said another word about my pet wombat, though Burke, the football player, would ask me about it in all seriousness a week later. 
Not only had it broken the ice with a group of fellow humans my age that weren’t home-schooled prodigies or Jesus freaks, it had that rarest of creature, that most mythical of beasts—a girl who noticed me and was amused by my antics.
When some of the others tried to blow me off or ditch me, Jenny wouldn’t let them. She included me in their plans and conversations, treating me as if I had equal standing with the kids she went to class with every day. That basically forced the reluctant ones to acknowledge me. I still got ribbed a lot for being a mama’s boy, but Jenny would always jump in and defend me when things got too brutal. Is it no wonder I got stuck on her so fast?
My weeks came to revolve around hanging out with them every Friday night and Saturday. One night Jenny didn’t show. It perturbed the whole equilibrium. Without Jenny there, those kids turned nasty on me. I clunked around their periphery like a square wheel, parrying jibes, absorbing insults. I left early and lumbered home down in the dumps. 
That night I was in such a fragile state, every little bit of friction with my parents ignited arguments. Over stupid stuff. Socks on the floor. The tone of my voice. And that sent me spiraling into a full-fledged funk.
I dreamt that night of being trapped in a jungle. Lianas tangled around my waist. Spider webs plastered my face. Little did I know then, that these were the first visitations of Root.
Things got clearer the following week when Jenny didn’t show for the second week in a row. No one could or would tell me why she wasn’t there.
“Maybe she moved,” said Burke, sporting a cruel grin.
I didn’t have her number. I didn’t even know her last name. I went home early, barricaded myself in my room and just stayed there for the rest of the weekend.
I barely knew her. She wasn’t even my girlfriend. Yet I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.
I pondered ways to break out of my funk. If Jenny never came back, there was no way I could go on living with my parents. My mom, especially, was driving me insane with her freaking chemistry lessons. I don’t know how she thought she could get by teaching me something that was so far over her own head.
I considered moving to Ohio where my Uncle Ed had made me a standing offer for a landscaping job. Emancipation was another idea. I could basically disown or divorce my parents and go off on my own. Some of the other options were more extreme and permanent. Things were getting crowded in my head, and I wanted out.
At night, I’d creep downstairs after mom and dad went to bed, raid the liquor cabinet and scarf some of my mom’s pain killers. Not that I was a junkie or anything. I was just looking to nudge my mood somewhere more tolerable than the status quo. By that time, I had tried just about everything but heroin, but never long enough to get hooked, except for maybe alcohol a little bit. There was always plenty of wine and whiskey in the house. 
So I was there all drowsy and wallowing on the sofa. Some crappy movie was on, full of spies or criminals careening in cars, taking pot shots at each other. And then this stuff came creeping into my consciousness, slithering into the space between waking and sleep. For a time, I felt stuck between two worlds, mingling the audio of those mindless movies with these under-the-forest sensations: a musty smell like the mold growing inside a rotten log. Bristly, snaky things scraping their bellies across my legs. 
All of these ‘hallucinations’ started happening about a month before the embolism claimed my dad, an event that made them a hundred times worse. Hard to believe that it’s already been over a year now. There I was, a seventeen year old wanna-be rebel seeking emancipation from his parents. Turned out, my dad beat me to it.
One windy Saturday morning, as lightning flashed against a bank of dark clouds, he collapsed on the sidewalk while fetching the mail, crumpling like a puppet with his strings cut. I watched it all happen while I was moping on the front stoop. I ran up and started CPR, the breathing part and all, pressing my mouth against his onion breath and gritty five o’clock shadow. A neighbor called 911. He was already gone for good before I even reached him.
On the day of dad’s wake and in the weeks that followed, I took to lying in the cab of his F150, popping whatever pills I could scrounge from the medicine cabinet. Sometimes I would find mom already sitting there.
That interior of his truck retained the distilled essence of everything that had been the man named Roy Moody: traces of tobacco smoke from the time before he quit; the spearmint chewing gum he had used to compensate; with undertones of rancid French fries, stale farts and rubbed off aftershave. Being there, you could close your eyes and imagine him sitting next to you.
That’s how that dang truck ended up becoming a sort of shrine, never driven, devoted only to meditation about the enigma that had been Roy—devoted father and angry beast packed into 5 feet seven inches and one hundred forty pounds of wire and bone and sinew.
I didn’t know how I was going to manage without him. Though he was sometimes the enforcer, particularly when he lost his temper, he was more often a buffer between me and mom. Without him, we only scraped on each other’s nerves.
On the day of his funeral I went there and laid across the seat, letting my body go numb until I felt nothing, not an itch or quiver or daydream to let me know I was alive. I let the heaviness flow over me like a mercury bath.
This numb feeling soon became my new normal. It got so I didn’t have to steal mom’s Oxycontin to conjure it. I greeted it like a friend. I didn’t feel right without it.
But there came a time that another sensation began to intrude, a feeling like rough twine coiling around my neck and wrists, reaching out of the seat, wrapping around, hauling me down. My eyes would flash open and there would be nothing there. Close my eyes and the feeling would return.
For a while I blamed these crawly sensations on the crystal meth I had played around with a couple months back. That had been just a lark. It felt dangerous, like taunting a mean dog, but it never set its teeth in me the way it had ripped into some of my acquaintances—fifteen pounds underweight with teeth like seventy year old vagrants.
Another night in the pickup I was really far gone and one of them things tightened up against my ankle and wouldn’t let go. A persistent bugger, this one—even my wide open gaze couldn’t make it go away. I could actually see this gnarly root stripped of bark, snaking along the scuffed black leather of my combat boot. 
“Jesus Christ!” 
I pulled at it with his hand and still it clung. I pulled out my Buck hunting knife and hacked away. 
The loop loosened, bleeding white sap. I yanked my foot free and stumbled out of the cab of the truck, only to see other roots poking up out of the concrete floor of the garage, wiggling like worms, bending their tips at me like little periscopes. I screamed and ran into the house, slamming the door behind me, pounding up the stairs to my room. I dove into bed and pulled up the covers, swearing I’d go see a doc about this before dad’s insurance ran out.
I didn’t know it then, but being upstairs and cozy in my bed didn’t make one bit of difference in terms of security. Like I said, one doesn’t go to Root, it comes to you, wherever you keep your soul.
***
Why do they call it ‘Root?’ Well, that’s pretty obvious, though not everybody gives it that name. Some here call it ‘Limen’ or the ‘The Liminality.’ Don’t ask me what means. Karla explained it to me once, but I forget what she said. You can look it up if you want. I’m sure it’s in some dictionary.
Like I said, it’s obvious why it’s called ‘Root’ to anyone who sees it in its raw and untamed form. It’s a subterranean jungle, a tangle of brown strands of every dimension, woven into sheets like old spider webs, threading in and out every which direction, connecting things, outlining spaces, or just getting in the way.
Root is basically a staging area for souls on the way out. It’s not Purgatory. That’s for dead people. I’m talking about live folks about an inch from ending their lives. And not from cancer or heart attacks or anything like that. The folks I’m talking about are what you might call … volunteers.
Root wasn’t meant to be a place for loitering. You’re supposed to go there to get the inspiration to off yourself. When even your dreams have gone dry and all you have to look forward to besides your daily life is the dim, brown cave that is what most souls see of Root, well then there’s not much point in pressing on. 
The end that comes to the less gifted in Root, is not so cool from I’ve seen. The bearers of bad news are these nasty things called Reapers. They don’t wear cloaks or carry scythes. They’re nothing even close to human; and not like anything of this earth. Only another monster could have designed them.
But don’t ask me about the afterlife. I’m not there. Yet.
Like I said, I’m James. James Moody. Nobody special on this end of the plane of existence. Just some white trash kid from Florida via Ohio. In Root, though, I’m a rare bird. I’m a dead survivor, and a weaver of dreams.




Chapter 3: The Funeral

Those early visitations were nothing compared with what was to come. Root remained closed to me apart from these little teases and glimpses. It would take some major jolts to break down the doors, but that was only a matter of time. Dad’s passing was only the start. I was in for a bumpy ride.
The day of the funeral, Aunt Helen made breakfast for all of us—blueberry buckwheat pancakes with sausages and bacon. I sliced up some pancakes with my fork, slid them around the syrup, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat more than a bite or two. I did have a slice of bacon, though. No matter what mood I was in, I could never resist a good, crisp slice of bacon.
Dad was an Episcopalian so his funeral was going to be the whole shebang. We had already suffered through the wake. Now we only had to muddle through a mass and a procession to cemetery for yet another ceremony. I couldn’t to go home and mourn in peace and on my own terms.
At the church, I sat in the front pew next to mom and Aunt Helen, her sister-in-law who had come down from Ohio with my mom’s brother Ed. Uncle Ed kept chase after his rowdy eight-year-old twins, Jay and Josh, who seemed to be given free reign over any havoc they wished to wreak. At one point, they had blown out a whole bank of votive candles before Ed could coax them to stop.
“Kids, please. It’s not your birthday.”
Mom gripped my hand like a pet hamster she was afraid might get loose and run away the instant she slackened her grip. I just sat there and stared straight ahead, trying not to look at the coffin, wishing my bratty cousins would stop goofing around and act like they were at a funeral.
Whenever the main door creaked open, Mom would crane her neck around to see who had arrived. I’m sure she was keeping some kind of running tally in her head of the folks who came to pay their respects to dad. Social slights were important to her.
“That girl’s here,” she whispered, turning back around.
“What girl?”
“The one were hanging out with. From the park.”
I turned around and there she was, settling into a pew way in the back next to her own mom.
I swallowed my gum. My blood, which had been settling into my lowest reaches like bilge water, began to course like superheated steam through my veins. The flame that had been guttering inside of me had roared back to life.
Mom managed a grin. “You like her, don’t you?”
I stared straight ahead, still not looking at the coffin, my lids pegged open a half inch wider.
I hadn’t seen Jenny in weeks. I’m not sure how she got wind of what happened to my dad. It’s not like we shared any social circles anymore. In fact, I had become a circle of one.
Her being there did a good job of taking my mind off the grotesque side show that was my dad’s coffin. It seemed so surreal—him just laying there in front of this crowd. At least the lid was closed this time, unlike at the wake when he had been displayed like some slab of meat, because that’s what he was—meat. That thing in there was not my dad. My real dad—the consciousness that made all that meat move and think and talk—was long gone away to another place.
If dad was here, there was no way he would have tolerated all these people staring at him laying in a box. Dad was a social creature. If he could, he would have gotten up and made the rounds, with body or without, going from pew to pew cracking jokes and making small talk. There was just no way my real dad was in this room.
I kept glancing back towards Jenny, trying not to be too obvious. She seemed to be trying real hard to ignore me, apart from one puzzled stare. I started to worry. Why was she here, if she wanted nothing to do with me? I didn’t get it.
The priest finally came out and got the proceedings underway. When all of the mumbo jumbo was finally done, a group of pallbearers—dad’s buddies from work—came up the aisle to carry his coffin. Mom and I followed after, and everybody else filed out of the church behind us. 
Mom went straight to Uncle Ed’s car but I waited for Jenny on the steps, the downside being I had to listen to a hundred people say: “So sorry for your loss.”
“Look at him … so brave,” came a disembodied whisper.
“What’s he wearing?”—another subdued and anonymous voice. “Shush, he’s in mourning,” scolds a younger voice.
And what was I wearing? Jeans with holes. Teva sandals. A white dress shirt, un-tucked. Dad wouldn’t have cared. He would have been impressed that I wore a clean shirt.
Finally, there came Jenny walking out of the anteroom. Her hair looked shorter, perkier. She wore makeup for a change, and even a dress.
Our eyes met. She veered over and gave me a hug, standing one stair higher so our faces were even. My heart practically burrowed out of my chest. I forgot completely about all this funeral business, ignoring the folks passing by and patting me and whispering condolences. It might as well have been just me and Jenny alone on those stairs.
“Sucks. What happened to your dad.”
“Yeah,” was about all I could muster. I was having trouble gathering my breath.
Jenny’s mother, stood a few steps back. She looked nothing at all like her daughter. She had the face of a bulldog and a body to match. She hovered by the door, trying to smile, looking very uncomfortable.
“Burke told me. I was gonna come on my own but my mom insisted on coming with. Can you imagine? I need a chaperone to go to a funeral. She doesn’t even know anybody here.”
My eyes lingered on Jenny’s face, studying every freckle. “Haven’t seen you downtown lately. Where’ve you been?”
“Grounded,” she said. “For no good reason. Just … sass.” She tossed a glare at her mother.
“Are you still?”
“Nah. But I can’t hang out in the park anymore. My dad freaked when he found out it was just me and a bunch of guys. I don’t know what the heck he’s worried about. They’re good kids. What’s he think? I’m gonna get gang-banged? I mean, really.”
“Shit,” I said. “That means … we don’t get to hang out. I mean, like ever.”
She scrunched her eyes. “Why the heck not?”
“Well, because … the park’s the only place I ever get to see you.”
Something in her expression shifted, like she had lost her favorite earrings and remembered where she had left them. But it was more than that. It was a bigger change, an epiphany that momentarily rendered her speechless. A smile invaded her face. A light emerged from the depths of her eyes that was breathtaking to see.
“There … are … other … places … you fool,” she said. “You never heard of a mall? Movies?” Her eyes went wide. “Actually … my sister’s having a sort of a beach party next weekend. Upperclassmen mostly, but I’m gonna go. Wanna come?” She glanced towards the hearse. “I mean … if you feel up to it.”
A quake trembled through me. “Um. S-sure! Definitely!”
It felt so wrong to feel so good with a funeral procession ready to roll and my mom blubbering on her brother’s shoulder, but I think dad would have approved. He worried about me being such a loner. He would have been proud to see me hooking up with a girl at his funeral. It was certainly something he would have bragged about. Who knows, he might have been bragging about me right then, wherever it was he had gone.
“Great! I think we’re going Saturday at nine. My sister’s taking the minivan. You can meet us in front of the library. I’ll save a spot for you.”
“Cool.”
She patted my arm. “I’m afraid we can’t go to the cemetery. Mom’s got a hair appointment. But … so sorry about your dad. Must be so hard.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded.
“Looking forward to Saturday,” she said.
“Th-thanks. For inviting me.”
I watched her walk away, bedazzled by what had just transpired. I just stood there, letting the last few minutes resonate through my being. But then I realized I couldn’t call her. I didn’t have her number. I didn’t even know her last name. But that was no biggie. I would see her next Saturday at the beach.
I heard a long whistle. Uncle Ed stood on the sidewalk, waving for me to come. Cars were lined up, ready to go. I realized that I was standing alone on the church steps. I stumbled down to the car in a stupor.
***
Mourning is supposed to progress in a series of phases, one leading to the other. That’s what the grief counselor told me, anyhow. Problem was, neither mom nor me could seem to break out of shock and denial.
Mom was a wreck. She stayed in her pajamas all day, and lurched around the house like a zombie.
She kept on making breakfast for dad, setting out a plate of bacon and eggs, dumping it in the trash when it got cold. I was caught in the same time loop. On Saturdays I washed his truck like always, still expecting to find a ten dollar bill show up on my dresser. Nobody dared sit in his chair in the family room.
The house was just wrong now. Mom tried using me to compensate for his absence, gossiping to me like some substitute husband. What did I care what the neighbors were doing with their septic tank or who was snubbing who?
Thank God, Uncle Ed’s family stayed with us that first week and relieved some of the pressure. Aunt Helen became her gossip receptacle and spared me the bother.
Uncle Ed was anxious to get back to his business in Cleveland, but mom kept breaking down, going all catatonic, locking herself in the master bedroom. He was reluctant to leave with her in such a state, so he and the family stayed on till the weekend. Aunt Helen did her best to keep mom occupied, taking her shopping, to the movies and for long drives along the waterfront. 
Ed stayed in the house all day, watching baseball, screaming at the twins and fretting over mom and dad’s papers. For the owner of a landscaping company, he didn’t take much interest in our lawn.
One morning, when I was bringing him a cup of coffee, I found him in dad’s office, muttering to himself. 
“Something wrong, Uncle Ed?”
He gave me this sick look and tried to smile. “Nah. It’s okay. I guess. Let’s just say … your dad wasn’t the best at staying on top of things. I can’t make head nor tail out of the mortgage stuff. And I was kind of hoping he’d’ve had some life insurance.”
“He was talking about it. I mean, mom kept nagging him about getting some.”
“Yeah, well. I guess he never got off his butt to get it done.” Ed got up from the chair, and brushed back a dangling lock of hair. His gray-green eyes looked so much like moms. Yet, little else about him was anything like her. Unlike her, he had never gone to college. He seemed to have no interest in the world beyond Cleveland.
“James? You ever need a job, you can come up to Ohio and work for me.”
“You mean it?”
He shrugged. “Why not? If you learned anything from your mom, I know you can write, work with numbers. I could use some help in the head office. Especially if you could bone up on some accounting. Why don’t you see if there’s some night classes at the community college or something?”
I should have been grateful for the offer, but a desk job? That had no appeal to me whatsoever. Landscaping to me meant carving up yards with bulldozers and backhoes; creating hills and dales, rock gardens and water features; transforming boring yards into living sculpture.
“What about working outside? I mean, if I came to work for you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t wanna be doing that.”
“Why not? I think I’d like it. I think it’d be cool.”
Uncle Ed sighed. “Trust me. It’s not something you want to be doing.” He went into the kitchen and got a Bud out of the fridge. “That’s why God put Dominicans and Guatemalans on this earth.”
***
I gladly let my twin nine-year-old cousins sleep in my room. That week, I pretty much stayed up until everyone else had gone to bed and then crashed on the sofa. I didn’t sleep a whole lot, between thinking about dad and thinking about that beach party on Saturday. 
Despite the pall that the funeral had spread over everything, I had the sense that this beach thing was going to be a momentous and monumental occasion—a crux in the course of my life. I certainly couldn’t hype it up any bigger in my head. The way I saw it, Jenny was looking for a way for us to connect, to create an opportunity that would let our feeble bantering and dilly-dallying evolve into an actual relationship. 
Now Jenny wasn’t the prettiest girl I had ever met. She had really nice eyes, even without makeup. But her forehead had an odd pinch to it, and nose was way too small for her face. She was by no means model material, but I liked the way she looked—a lot.
She wasn’t very bright or witty, either. She never cracked jokes, just snickered at other people’s. And she knew hardly anything about the world. She thought Obama was a Muslim socialist and that Afghanistan was a country in Africa. From what she let me see of her iPod, her taste in music was narrow and pedestrian—Lady Gaga and Nicki Manaj and not much else in between. 
She had this odd way of dressing—wearing sweaters and long pants even when it was warm out and all the other girls had on short shorts. It made me wonder if she were hiding some scar or deformity. I wondered what she would wear to the beach. Would I actually get to see her in a bikini?
Two days before the beach date, I couldn’t stand the waiting anymore. My relatives still swarmed the house and mom had yet to return to work so there was not a chance of privacy, especially with my two pestiferous cousins poking their nose into everything I did. 
I needed a fix of Jenny badly. I needed to hear her voice to make sure that what happened at the funeral was not a hallucination or a delusion, that the invitation was real. So I had to figure out a way to call her in private.
But to get her number, I needed to know her freaking last name. Jenny was the only name she had given me. That wasn’t going to get me very far.
There was this geeky kid next door who went to her high school. I barely knew him. He rarely seemed to go outside. But when I saw him taking out the trash, I ran out to the curb in my boxers. He threw up his arms defensively when he saw me coming at him fast, like he thought I was going to beat him up and take his wallet. 
“Adam, calm down. I’ve just want to ask you something. You go to Ft. Pierce, right? Do you happen to know any girls named Jenny?”
He lowered his arms. “Well yeah, only about twenty. Every other girl’s named Emily or Jennifer or Ashley. I don’t know what the deal is with these parents. Can’t think of anything original to name their kids.”
“Well, this Jenny I’m looking for has got shortish, dirty blonde hair. Freckles? Never wears shorts?”
Adam just stared. “Sorry guy. These Jennys and Jessicas all look alike to me. It like the school got invaded by clones.” He faked a smile. “I got a high school phone directory, if you want to borrow it.”
“Um, sure! Can I?”
I followed him back to his front door and waited on the stoop until he brought over this photocopied and stapled listing of students by class.
I started to thumb through it.
“Oh, just take it,” he said. “I’ve got others. And it’s not like I use them that much.”
“Gee, thanks! I’ll bring it back as soon as I’m done.”
“No rush.” He headed back into a dim lair smelling faintly of microwave popcorn.
I took the directory home and locked myself in the bathroom. Unfortunately, it had no pictures, only names and addresses. And Adam wasn’t kidding. While there weren’t actually twenty Jennifers at Ft. Pierce High School, there were at least twelve. And while I knew she couldn’t be a senior, I had no idea whether she was a junior, a sophomore or even a precocious or held back freshman.
I considered calling them all one by one until I found the right Jenny, but then my finger landed on a kid named Burke Watkins. I checked the rest of the directory. There was only one Burke in the entire school. It had to be the Burke—Jenny’s friend. So I called him.
A little girl answered.
“Hi,” I said. “Is your brother home?”
“Which one?”
“Um … Burke?”
I heard her call. “Burkie!” 
There was a clunking, and then: “Hullo?”
“Hey, uh … Burke. This is James. From the park?”
Silence.
“The home schooler? The mama’s boy?”
“Ohhhh, right! Hey James. What’s up? Hey man, it really sucks about your dad. How are you doin’?”
“I’m … getting over it. Hey, listen. Jenny … she came to the funeral, and I need to call her, but … I don’t have her number … and I don’t even know her whole name. Would you—?”
“Gallagher,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Her last name. It’s Gallagher.”
“Oh. Thanks a bunch!”
“Haven’t seen you at the park lately. Where’ve you been?”
“I don’t know. Busy, I guess.”
“Hey man, I know we can be kind of … uh … brutal sometimes. But we’re just screwing around. You realize that, right?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll come by sometimes.”
I hung up, feeling a bit startled and flattered by his concern. I could never have guessed they might feel bad about how they acted around me.
I found Jenny Gallagher listed under the sophomores in Adam’s directory. From her address, I could tell that she lived in a trailer park north of town, way too far to walk. She probably lived in one of those double wide mobile homes that were so common along the canals near the airport. 
There was no way I could call her discretely from home. Even if I took the wireless into the bathroom, we had too many extensions and I had too many nosy cousins infesting the place. So I slipped out the back door and started walking to the bus station. 
I wasn’t even positive they had working pay phones. If they did, it was probably one of the last places in Ft. Pierce that did. But I had a pocket full of quarters and they jingled with every step. As I skipped along, my feet barely touched the ground. 
Close to three miles I walked, right to the edge of downtown. I reached the Greyhound terminal just after dark. As I approached, I saw a bank of pay phones around the corner from the rest rooms. I went inside, my palms tingling.
The first phone I tried was out of order. My quarters fell into the slot and slid straight through into the coin return. The receiver smelled like a wino’s dying breath. It probably hadn’t been disinfected in years. The second phone smelled no better, but at least it kept my quarters. 
My coins conjured a glorious tone and I punched Jenny’s number. Some older guy answered—Jenny’s dad, I presumed.
“Hi, is uh … Jenny home?”
“Who is this?” He broke into an ugly fit of coughing, full of phlegm. He had to be a smoker, and maybe a drinker.
“Um. I’m James. A friend.”
“A friend, huh? Well, Jenny ain’t here.” He slurred his words. Definitely, a drinker.
“Do you know when she might be back?”
“Not a clue.”
“Okay. I guess uh … can you tell her I called?”
“What was your name again? Jimmy?”
“James.”
And that was that. He hung up. 
I stood there a minute, watching some people line up to board a bus bound for Jacksonville. I felt punctured; the invisible force that had buoyed and propelled me on my walk over had frittered away. I considered hanging around another hour and calling back, but had lost the will.
Maybe if I went home, her dad would pass the message and she would call me. Cousins or not, I was beyond any potential embarrassment, I just wanted to hear her voice. I realized I hadn’t given her dad my home number, but she knew my name. It had been on placards at the church, and on the copies of my dad’s obituary that had been left on every pew. 
I started walking home, every step landing like my soles were made of lead. If nothing else, I still had the weekend to look forward to. That would be enough to keep the roots at bay.




Chapter 4: Beaches

By the end of the week, mom had recovered some of her equilibrium, to Uncle Ed’s great relief. At least she had stopped locking herself in the bathroom, and when the neighbors came by with a casserole, she actually went to the door and chatted with them. 
She resumed her chores, picking up the living areas, scrubbing the bathrooms, though they really didn’t need much attention. Aunt Helen had been a dervish about keeping our place tidy. 
Based on the CVS pharmacy bags that had shown up in the kitchen trash, I had a feeling that some of her rally might have been chemically induced. Not that I objected. Sometimes that’s what it took to keep on keeping on.
On Friday morning, I went into the garage to round up some beach things. Its windows caught the full brunt of the morning sun so it was like an oven in there. 
Seeing dad’s pickup jarred me. I realized I wouldn’t be around to wash it tomorrow. 
It had been years since we had gone to the shore as a family. When I was little, we used to go every weekend. Some of the best beaches in the county were only twenty minutes away from our house. 
There was a stack of plastic Tupperware bins beside the work bench, one of which contained about every toy I had ever brought to a beach. I can’t believe mom hung onto all my kiddie stuff. But it was all there, along with some ancient picnic gear. 
I pulled out an old Frisbee in its original packaging that I had gotten as a birthday gift a few years back. It had never been thrown because I never had anyone to throw it to.
Going to the beach had sure been a lot simpler in those bucket and shovel days. No tricky social dynamics to worry about, just me and my parents and a sandbox that went on forever; the ocean my mischievous playmate, always sneaking up and knocking down my castles.
I unearthed another bin stuffed with neatly folded towels, but had trouble finding one that wouldn’t embarrass me. Most had these flowery prints or cutesy cartoon characters. I finally dug one out from the bottom with an ugly geometric pattern that was the least likely to draw ridicule. 
Mom came out to see what I was up to. She hung back and watched me while I refolded all the towels I had crammed back into the bin. She snatched up a tube of sun block and handed it to me.
“Oh, and you should bring that little cooler. There’s some Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew in the pantry. Get it chilled down in the fridge and you can toss in some ice in the morning.”
She touched her finger to her chin. “I wonder if I should make some sandwiches. How many people are going to be at this party?”
“I don’t know mom, I didn’t—” 
“I’ll need to go to the store and get some bread and cold cuts.”
“No mom. It’s okay. I don’t really need to bring anything. You can buy stuff there.”
“I know, but—”
“Mom. It’s okay. I got this.”
She smiled and went back to the house.
I sat down in one of those low beach chairs and listened to my heart thrum, the blood humming through my veins. I didn’t ever remember feeling so alive.
***
I had nothing to do the rest of the day but fret. I played some Mario Kart on Jay and Josh’s PlayStation. I washed dishes, just to keep occupied. I even started a batch of laundry. Mom just looked at me and shook her head.
When Uncle Ed took us to Dairy Queen for lunch, I spotted a pay phone at the Seven/Eleven next door. I thought about sneaking over to call Jenny again, but she was probably in class. Maybe I could suck up the courage to call her from home, after school got out.
Someone my age should never have been having these kinds of communications problems. It was pathetic. This was 2012 for Christ’s sake. Normal kids messaged each other with cell phones and Facebook and Twitter without thinking twice. 
Thanks to my Luddite, penny-pinching parents, I was stuck in sixties mode. We had no internet at home, just a land line and basic cable. We lived practically off the grid. If I only knew she was watching, I would have sent Jenny smoke signals, just to let her know I was still alive.
Back home, I played basketball with Ed and the twins. I was a pretty good post player but had a horrible outside shot. Uncle Ed made up for my offensive deficiencies, so we smoked the twins. Didn’t hurt that they were a good foot and a half shorter than us.
That game was good for my head. That little bit of physical activity helped take my mind off things. I had a shower, played more Mario Kart and then Mom cooked up a bunch of ribs and chicken on the grill. By that point, I was again counting down the hours before beach day. I had half a mind to camp out at the library overnight. 
We settled into the family room after dinner and watched a DVD with the twins. I didn’t even notice what movie was playing. I retreated into my head, ignoring anything anyone said. A bowl of popcorn appeared in my hands and I didn’t even see who gave it to me. 
I was fixated on what I would say and do tomorrow, to the point of scripting possible conversations in my head. No doubt, I was over-thinking things. 
Uncle Ed and his gang were flying back to Cleveland the next day, but that had no bearing on my plans. After the movie, when everyone settled in early for bed, I said my goodbyes. I expected to be long gone before any of them got up. 
I snuggled up on the couch with the TV on low and watched the lights in the bedrooms go off one by one. I tried going to bed early myself, but I was too hyped up. I just stared at the shadows on the ceiling, my eyes wired open. 
I tried emptying my mind, avoiding any thoughts of Jenny and the beach. But no matter what I did, those thoughts came drifting back.
Midnight rolled up and I was still wide awake. I knew I’d be a wreck if I didn’t get at least a couple hours in before morning so I went to the medicine cabinet and took one of mom’s Ambien. 
I sat up a little bit longer, watched the late, late shows. When they were done, I was still sitting there, listening to distant whine of trucks on the interstate. I went to dad’s liquor cabinet and choked down a swig of whiskey, just a little. I didn’t want to overdo it. 
That did the trick.
***
The next morning, I awoke with the sun on my face. The twins were on their floor with their backs to me, Mario Kart theme music tinkling away on the TV. Against all that, my alarm clock chimed away on the end table. 
The digital display read eight twenty-nine. 
I hollered like I had been stabbed. The twins crashed their cars and cringed away from me. Mom came running into the room in her rumpled pajamas, hair sticking every which way. “What happened?”
“I was supposed to meet up with them to go to the beach … at eight!”
Her sleepy eyes cleared in an instant.
“Think they’re still waiting?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why didn’t they call? Or swing by to get you?”
“I don’t know, mom. I don’t know.”
“Get in the car. I’ll take you. Ed and his gang aren’t leaving for the airport till ten-thirty.”
I flew off the couch and ran up to my room to change into swim trunks and a clean shooter shirt. Mom already had her car running in the driveway. I tossed the cooler and towel and stuff in the back and clambered I beside her.
“What beach?” he said.
I just blinked at her. I tried to remember if Jenny had even told me, staring out at the blank white wall of the hallway. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“I bet it’s Surfside Park,” she said, her chin set firm, eyes narrowed. She squealed out of the drive.
***
Surfside, the most popular and likely spot for Ft. Pierce high schoolers to hang had already had accumulated had a good-sized crowd of beach goers by the time we got there.
“Should I wait?” said mom. “While you have a look around?”
“Nah. That’s okay. I’m sure they’re here.”
“I don’t mind waiting.”
“It’s okay mom. I’m cool.”
“Should I come back … say four-ish … to get you?”
“No need,” I said. “I’ll catch a ride back with Jenny.”
She smiled, a bit weakly. “Well, good luck sweetie.” She turned the car around.
I crossed the lot and cut through the dunes. Surfside has a good half mile of public beach stuck flanked by private lots. The bright sand was packed with towels and chairs and umbrellas. 
I wished I had some binoculars. I spotted what looked like groups of teenagers across the way, but couldn’t tell who they were from a distance. 
I wanted to find them in a manner that didn’t make me look so desperate. So I trudged through the fluffy sand to the southern edge of the park and went down to the water. I strolled along the tide line, glancing up discreetly at every cluster of young people I passed.
I pictured myself strolling up to Jenny and her friends nonchalantly when I finally located them. Straight-faced. Mr. Cool. Jenny would rush over to greet me, all surprised.
The tide was in. The surf was choppy. Must be a storm offshore. I splashed along, towel tucked under my arm, swinging the cooler, discreetly studying every cluster of young people I passed. Twenty minutes later, I had reached the northern limits of the park. 
They weren’t here. I had screwed up again.
Not a deal killer though. There were more beaches in the area, both north and south. North made more sense, because it was closer to the bridge leading into downtown Ft. Pierce. So I went back to the road and hiked past a stretch of fancy houses until I came to another strip of public beach.
The sun was fierce, but there was a nice breeze coming off the water. I veered across another lot and squinted across the dunes at the sparser crowd of people occupying this nameless strand. No dice, but no need to panic. It was still early. I took a Mountain Dew out of the cooler and chugged it down. 
I continued north along a sidewalk to the next stretch of public beach. I wish I had worn something sturdier than flip flops. I slipped them off and went barefoot when they got too annoying. 
Eventually I reached the inlet that cut through the barrier island to Ft. Pierce’s harbor. The beach here angled around a point tipped by a stone jetty. The sand here looked like snow, but proved just as devoid of any familiar faces. I found a patch of shade among a row of palms and slumped down.
My head throbbed. My stomach began to clench. It was time to reassess this while beach thing. For all I knew, Jenny and her crew had gone south to Jupiter Island or north to Avalon State Park. Do you know how many miles of beach there are on the Florida’s Atlantic shore?
Avalon. Come to think of it. Burke had mentioned Avalon once or twice. But did Burke even go with them? 
Avalon lay across the inlet. I stared at the channel, and at the beach on the other side of it. I wondered how hard it would be to swim across. It looked pretty narrow. To walk I would have to go two miles west over a bridge into the city, one mile up to the next bridge and two miles back to this place I could almost hit a golf ball across.
What I really wanted to do was to go home and curl up in my bed. I sat there under those palms, the image of Jenny at the funeral burning in my retinas. I glanced at my watch. It was not even noon yet. I still had time to find her. 
I stood and gazed across the inlet and at a knot of young people horsing around on the beach across the way. I could hear traces of their voices carry across the water. There was a grill smoking beside a picnic table. Was that Jenny’s group?
I burst from the palms, abandoning the cooler and towel, sprinting across the sand, kicking off my flip flops. I splashed in next to a ‘no swimming’ sign, the water cool and bracing, not nearly the bathtub warmth it would achieve later in the season.
The sandy bottom gave way quickly to stone and deepened. I angled in against the slight current, alternating between an overhand crawl and a breaststroke, stopping to tread water when I got tired. When I kicked into the deepest part of the channel, the full brunt of the current hit me like a flash flood.
The tide was coming out. I didn’t try to fight it. With rip currents I knew you were supposed to just swim across the flow. There would come a point when the current released you and you could swim back to shore. The problem was, the shore was getting farther away. The tide hauled me out past the jetties. 
An acid burn built in my muscles. My exertions were unsustainable. I had screwed up yet again. I panicked for a bit, but then this little valve opened up and all the fear drained out of me. 
Fuck it. If the ocean wanted me so badly, let it take me. I quit swimming and drifted on my back, sinking lower in the water as my paddling and treading. Strands of seaweed or something wrapped around my thigh and tugged at my wrist.
The sound of a screaming engine snapped me out of my stupor. A speed boat came roaring at me. My fear returned. I was not looking forward to getting run over and chewed up by a pair of propellers. 
I considered diving, but if I went under, I would probably never resurface. The boat veered away at the last second and curled around. Two guys in ball caps and sunglasses yelled something at me. They puttered closer and one of them tossed me a life ring attached to a line. I grabbed it. They he pulled me in.
“Jesus. You almost gave me a heart attack,” said the guy at the wheel. “I thought you were some manatee.”
“This is a boat channel, you idiot,” said the other guy. “We almost sliced you into chum.”
I choked out my words, struggling to catch my breath. “Got caught … in the current.”
“Where’d you come from?”
“North side of the channel. Inlet State Park.”
They got the boat pointed back towards the harbor and powered in to the boat ramp. I went over the side and waded in the rest of the way.
“Thanks!” I said, waving, but they had already gunned their engines and continued on their way. 
I stood there, kind of dazed, searching the beach for that group of kids I thought I had seen. I found them pretty quick, but they were not who I thought they were. But I wasn’t even sure if this was the same bunch I had seen from across the inlet.
I meandered down the beach, weaving through the blankets, my soggy clothes plastered to my skin. Turning the corner around the point, I found more beach, but no Jenny. Again, I had come up empty.
While I was standing there, I caught some Hispanic girl in a black one-piece staring at me. She was really cute, with well-toned limbs and coppery skin, but I was so obsessed with finding Jenny, her looks barely registered.
“You look lost,” she said.
“That’s because I am.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I … uh … I was invited to this beach party. Can’t seem to find it.”
“Bummer,” she said. She cocked her head. “Wanna hang with us?”
“Um … thanks, but … I really need to find these guys.”
“Okay,” she said, her lips forming a perfect smile. “But … if you can’t find it. Come on back.”
***
I never did find it, but not for any lack of diligence. I walked the whole five miles to Avalon State Park barefoot, reaching it about the time that most people were packing up for the day. I roamed the parking lot, heart pounding hard, knowing this was my last gasp to find Jenny’s party and catch a ride back home. 
I found plenty of old folks alone, young couples and families with small children, but no one I knew from Ft. Pierce High. As the shadows of the dune grass etched the white sands like Arabic calligraphy, I sat myself down on the curbing at the edge of the main lot, by a prickly bush studded with dried and leathery fruits.
My head throbbed. I needed a drink of water badly. There was a spigot and a shower on a little cedar deck for people to rinse off. I waited for the queue to disappear, then went over and drank directly from the spigot. 
The sun was going down. There were only a few cars left. I turned around and limped back down the road, defeated.
As the sky darkened, my pace slowed. Every step hurt. Cars whisked past me, with music thumping and people laughing. 
Maybe I wasn’t intended to be around people. This whole social thing never seemed to click for me, whatever the reason. Maybe my being here on earth was a sad mistake. Maybe I should have volunteered for a one-way trip to Mars.
A couple of miles down the road, a police cruiser slowed down abruptly and pulled alongside me. The officer rolled down his window. 
“You James Moody, by any chance?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Your mother reported you as a missing person. Everything okay?”




Chapter 5: Sonic

Mom picked me up at the police substation on Avenue D, looking disheveled but relieved. She didn’t say much, which was good, because I didn’t feel like talking. 
I hobbled after her, out to the car. The pain in my feet felt like an abstraction, as if my brain had become disconnected from my body. I cared little about what happened next, no more than a tumbleweed worried what fence lay in its path.
Mom didn’t say much at first, but at the first traffic light, she studied me in the glare of the headlights and streetlamps. “Look at you. You’re burned to a crisp. Did you even bother to put on any of that sun block?”
“Dunno,” I said, staring straight ahead. “Don’t remember.”
“Well, obviously not,” she said. “You look like a lobster.” The light turned green. She powered ahead. “Have you eaten?”
Food. That would explain the hollowness and cramping in my midsection. Not that I had any desire to do anything about it.
“What the heck is wrong with you? Are on drugs or something? I asked—‘have you eaten?’”
“Um. No.”
“So what did you have all day?”
“Um. A Mountain Dew.”
“That’s it?” Her face got all pinched and determined. “I’m pulling into this Sonic.”
“I’m not even hungry.”
“You need to eat.”
“I’ll have something when we get home.”
“What the heck is wrong with you? Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I’m … just …. pissed … at myself. I’m so stupid. I can’t believe I stood her up.”
“Oh stop. You didn’t stand anyone up. You’re in mourning, James. Of course your sleep patterns are going to be a little disturbed. She could have waited for you, or called you, or dropped by. Something. It’s not all on you.”
“Wouldn’t’ve been a problem if I had my own cell phone.”
Mom took a deep breath. “Listen James. If the family budget allowed, we’d all have cell phones. And I’d have a wardrobe that didn’t depend on 90% off sales. We might even have that dog you always wanted.”
“But cell phones are cheap.”
“She should have called you or come by the house. Her family knows where we live. They sent us a sympathy card.”
“No. You can’t pin the blame on her. This is my fault. I should have gotten up.”
“I wonder what it says about a girl’s character when she invites you to a party, offers you a ride, and then just blows you off like that. A kid whose father just died.”
“Mom. Don’t blame her. Please. I’m the one who blew it. It’s all on me.”
She turned into the Sonic a couple blocks from home and pulled up next to a backlit menu board. “Okay. So what do you want?”
“I told you. Nothing.”
“Fine. I’ll order for you, then. Fries, two double cheeseburgers and a chocolate shake. How’s that?”
I just stared out at the Miracle Mile and the blinking yellow lights in front of the empty lot that used to hold a Kmart.
***
I slept pretty well the first half of that night, considering. I had to drag myself out of bed at one point to get a drink of water. I was so dehydrated. 
While I was up, I slathered myself with some Aloe Vera gel and Lanacaine. Blisters were popping up on my upper arms and shoulders. My nose and forehead were pretty bad too, but I couldn’t stand the feel of having all that gunk on my face. 
I saw all those pills in the medicine cabinet again and was tempted to grab some, but I left them alone this time.
When I lay down again and started drowsing off, those crawly sensations returned. And this time they meant business. They went after me like a nest of anacondas, striking out and squeezing me in their coils. I gasped and wheezed, jerking my arms to break free, but they were so strong, and so determined.
Loops kept wrapping round and round until I was encased in a thick and fibrous capsule. I gave up fighting, the way a gazelle relaxes in the jaws of a lion. Once I did, this buzzing warmth oozed all through me. I grew calm as a baby yet to be born, hugged tight, deep inside a womb.
I must have stayed that way for hours, dangling in the darkness. Muffled thumps and groans sounded in the distance. I peeked through a little triangle of space between the roots at a patch of light glowing green on the wall of a perfectly round tunnel, formed of roots but smooth as a culvert. 
It all vanished when a sharp click and a bright light snapped me awake. Mom leaned over my bed, raising the shades. The morning sun violated my pupils. I shielded my face with my hands.
“Mom? What are you doing?”
“Well, it’s half past ten.”
“So?”
“So you can’t just sleep all day.”
“Why not? Where have I got to go?”
“How about some brunch?”
“Let me wake up first.” My stomach whined in protest of my professed disinterest in eating. It begged to differ. “What … what are you making?”
“I’m not making anything. I thought we could go out to the mall. How about the Cheesecake Factory? And a little shopping afterwards? Maybe it’ll cheer us both up.”
“Um. Okay. I swung my feet off the bed and sat in a slump. I couldn’t help looking at the sheets for traces of the thing that had held me. I saw nothing there but wrinkles and Lanacaine smears.
Mom picked my dirty socks off the floor and tossed them in the hamper. She was all washed up now and looking way better than she did the day before. She looked at me and winced through her teeth.
“That’s quite a burn you got there.”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you use any of the sun block I gave you?”
“I … uh … lost it. And … the towel … and the cooler.”
“James! What were you doing out there all day?”
I opened my eyes and blinked, my eyes adjusting to the brightness. “Looking for Jenny.”
She gave a deep sigh and started to reach for my sunburned shoulder, intending to rub it or pat it or something, but she held back, realizing it would probably only make me scream. 
“If you’re so obsessed with her, why don’t you give her a call?”
“Nah,” I said. “It’s too late now. What’s done is done.”
“Why is it too late? You can tell her what happened. Find out why she didn’t—”
“Nah. What’s done is done.”
“What’s going on? You’re acting all catatonic.”
I didn’t want to tell her. But she had this imploring look that had a way of prying things out of me.
“I think I got a problem, mom.”
“O-kay,” she said. “What kind of problem?”
“It’s … mental … I think. I see … and feel … these hallucinations. And it’s not the drugs. I didn’t do any … not yesterday … and I’ve never done LSD or ‘shrooms. None of that hallucinogenic shit.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” she said, sitting down on the foot of my bed. “I guess. So tell me, what is it exactly that you see?”
“Roots,” I said. “All these writhing, twisting roots reaching, wrapping, squeezing.”
Mom’s face blanched. She gasped like she had the wind knocked out of her and buried her face in her hands.
“What’s wrong?”
She took a deep breath. “I was hoping … that it would pass you by … that you could avoid it. But no. It’s gotten to you, too. This is bad news. Real bad.”
“Got what? What’s got me?”
“This thing that happens. These … visitations. Our family … my side … we’re kind of prone to it. Uncle Ed so far seems immune, but your grandmother had it. I’ve got it. Had it for years.”
“But what is it? What does it mean?”
“It’s … a skill, I guess. Maybe curse is a better word. It’s sort of like an ability to see … the other side … the darker side of our souls. I don’t quite understand it, but … it kills me to have you go through it, James. You’re too young to have to deal with such things. And once it comes … it’s hard to break free. Therapy doesn’t help. At least, it did nothing for me.”
“Last year, when you wouldn’t get out of bed, dad said you had the blues. But it was actually because of this? You were having these visions?”
She looked up and frowned. “They’re not just visions,” she said and stared at me with this deep and serious look. “Sounds like you’ve only had inklings so far. You have no idea, James, how … intense it can get.”
“It got pretty intense last night,” I said, studying her eyes. “Are you … all better now? Does it … go away?”
A weary expression came over her. “No,” she said. “I’ll never be all better. Once it gets to you, it has you for life. You don’t want it to get that bad, believe me. So please, please don’t let these trivial things bring you down. For Heaven’s sake, it was just a beach party.”
“No,” I said, staring at the dust bunnies under my desk. “It was more than that.”




Chapter 6: Glow-worms

We reached the mall a little before noon. We had brunch first, ordering a la carte. I had Belgian waffles; Mom—Eggs Benedict. We didn’t say much to each other at the table. Mom chatted with a lady the next table over that she knew from the library. I just sat there and shoveled food into my mouth.
“Feeling better?” said mom, after her friend left.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I was okay before.”
She leaned closer and looked me in the eye. “You know, you really should call that girl.”
“Yeah. Maybe I will. When we get home.”
“James. If you want a cell phone, we’ll get you one. Why don’t you have a look around? We can put you on a prepaid, or some basic plan.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Why not? It’s important.”
So she paid the bill with a credit card and we split up to do our own shopping. I headed straight to the Verizon store, knowing I should take advantage of mom’s offer. But looking at all those phones just brought back the specter of yesterday at the beach. I don’t even know why, but I had to get out of that place.
On my way to Eddie Bauer—I was supposed to be looking for a new pair of jeans—I got distracted by the Apple store, and then Brookstone. After I had my fill of playing with their gadgets, I went off to fulfill my duty, only I couldn’t resist wandering into Barnes and Noble. 
I poked around the manga racks for a while, turned a corner and found Burke staring blankly at the General Fiction.
“James! Hey man, what’s up?”
“Oh nothing. Just … hanging out.”
“I gotta get a book for school,” he said. “Fucking sociology teacher wants us to read something written by an African author. Any African author. But just try finding one. Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know of any, would you?”
“Nega Mezlekia,” I said. “He wrote ‘Notes from the Hyena’s Belly.’ You’ll like it. Lots of action. It’s non-fiction, though.”
“Whoa, dude! You’re amazing! Mez—how do you spell that?”
“Just look it up under hyena.”
“Hey, how come you weren’t at the beach the other day?”
“Say what?”
“The beach. Weren’t you supposed to—”
“Look at this burn,” I said, displaying both of my ruddy profiles. “Does this face look like someone who hasn’t been to the beach?”
“Yeah, but, I thought you were going with us. Jenny said she invited you.”
“Oh man, you went with Jenny?” I sighed. “I overslept. I tried to find you guys, but…. Where’d you guys end up going?”
“Vero,” said Burke.
“Oh Gawd! I had no idea. I thought you guys were staying local.” I sighed again. “Was Jenny upset?”
“Well … she was a little mopey at first. She kind of holed up with Marianne, They went off by themselves, whispering back and forth. It was … kind of awkward. But then she met some guy, and that perked her up.”
“Say what?”
“There were some other Ft. Piercers there. We kind of linked up with them. You know Jared?”
“The pothead?”
“Yeah. Well, Jenny … uh … Jenny kind of … hooked up with him.”
“Shit!” I stumbled into a table and almost knocked over a stack of paperbacks.
Any facade I had been able to erect over my outward feelings came crashing down. Moisture welled up in my eyes and threatened to spill. My jaw trembled. I had to look away.
“Are you okay?” said Burke.
“Burke, I gotta go.” I wheeled and head for the door.
“Hey. Come on out to the park sometime. Okay?”
***
The story of Jenny’s day at the beach only got worse. I had to piece a lot of it together second hand and well after the fact, mostly from her friend Marianne, but it seemed my absence that day had triggered a nasty string of events. 
When I didn’t show, Jenny indeed felt humiliated. When Jared, oblivious to the situation, tried hitting on her, she was flattered and receptive, in part I guess because she wanted to feel better about herself and to get back at me for standing her up.
The problem was, it was no one time thing. She continued to go out with him for weeks afterward. And this guy Jared was a total loser. I sort of knew him from hanging out at the park. He was this acne-scarred, pothead who had dropped out of vocational school. She couldn’t possibly be serious about him.
The best I could figure, she was just pretending to go out with Jared to make me feel jealous and try harder. Problem was this ploy, if that’s what is was, had not only punished my little mistake, she had crushed my spirit and made it uncorrectable. Her little ruse made me lose my last shred of hope and self-regard.
Maybe if it had happened a month earlier I would have been more resilient. But dad’s passing had stranded me out on the edge. I had no guard rails to keep me from going over the side.
I conceded defeat and retreated into myself, spending less and less time with her circle of friends. The few times I saw her in public, she would toss a wistful look at me, but I couldn’t even bear looking at her. 
I had this overwhelming sense of being finished with it all, that I had had enough, that this is where I made my exit. But again, this was nothing compared to what was to come.
I realize all of this sounds pretty trivial and pathetic, but I’m not here to impress you. I’m just telling you how I came to recede into the deepest funk that my young soul had yet experienced, and how that opened the doors to a world that would soon become very important to me.
***
When we got back from the mall, I sank into the couch while mom went outside to spruce up around the yard. She tried to coax me into coming out and helping, and I told her I would, but the truth is, I never budged. 
There was some crappy show on, with guns and stuff blowing up, but to me it was all random shapes and light and noise. Mom had left her new prescriptions on the counter. The lay there all wrapped like little birthday gifts. I wondered what new toys the doctor had given us.
And then the roots came, and this time they came fast and they came hard, and they didn’t even wait for the sun to fall. And I let them come and take me until the world of my house no longer registered in my senses.
I found myself naked and wrapped tight again in that dark passage, a dim glow filtering through the weave of my pod. I swayed, all snug and tight like a caterpillar in a cocoon, almost wondering what kind of butterfly I would become, but I certainly wasn’t growing any wings in there.
My mind filled with a pleasant buzz. A light intoxication. Nothing dramatic. Enough to feel pleasant without being impaired. It kept me from feeling bored and made quite happy to just chill out and dangle, while I waited for the inevitable.
There were those groaning things again, and this time some of them were louder and closer. They didn’t sound like people in pain. They didn’t even sound like people. They were more like grunts of exertion or some kind of belching. They were way too deep and loud to have originated from a human. They had to come from something large, something elephantine or whale-like.
Somehow, I knew they would eventually come for me. And I welcomed it. They didn’t scare me. Somehow, I knew that I would greet their arrival the way an old man greets the appearance of a city bus on a cold and rainy day. And I was pretty sure I had the proper fare.
Light kept filtering through the gaps in the weave. It flickered and came at me from different angles. Curious, I pressed an eye close to a hole. 
I saw blotches of light traveling through the thick roots lining the tunnel. Some moved in groups, lined up with perfect spacing one behind the other. Others tumbled like corpuscles or masses of bubbles rising through a tube. Some were just smears that rendered entire roots and branches temporarily aglow.
I had no idea what they were, but they were damned pretty to watch. Each blotch was a different color, and some were just gorgeous to behold. 
I relaxed my focus, and watched the reflected lights dance on the roots that bound me. These roots were uniformly dim, until I stared at one junction, and a patch commenced to glow from within. 
It dimmed almost immediately, but with a little concentration I was able to bring it back, as if I had blown on some ebbing cinders. Concentrating some more, I was able to make it move up and down the shaft and divide into multiple patches like the ones I had seen below.
This extra light showed me more of what was going on inside the pod. Some of these roots were tapped right into my skin, like the runners of a parasitic vine into the bark of a tree. I peeled one off and found it to be a pad of finely hooked hairs like Velcro or those hitchhikers you get on your jeans walking through the weeds.
It told me I was part of Root, and Root was part of me. I belonged here in a way that I didn’t belong anywhere else. 
I made another strand glow, and then another and yet another until the whole tangle lit up and I was awash in light of every color. I felt like a human Christmas ornament.
I heard voices below me. I twisted around and squinted through a slot. A man and a woman clambered up the sloped the passage. The woman wore a long, velvety dress in a paisley print; the man—a white shirt, dark vest and bowler hat.
They paused and looked up at me, their faces bathed in the glow I had created. I was speechless and self-conscious of my nakedness. They were the last creatures I expected to see in a place like this.
“What’s all this?” said the man.
“Seems to be centered around this pod,” said the woman. She squinted up at me. “There seems to be a boy in there. Yoo hoo! Did you make all these glow?”
“Um … yeah.”
“Impressive,” said the man.
“Suppose we should help him?”
Something tingled beneath my skin. It felt like little bugs were running back and forth. My vision grew hazy.
“Ahem. I wouldn’t bother. He’s already fading.”
“Oh, bless his soul! The kid’s just a dabbler.”
“A talented one at that.”
***
The screen door slammed shut and mom stood there in the door, bits of dried leaf adorning her hair, grass stains on her knees.
Her shoulders slumped when she saw me in the same spot on the couch. “Oh, whatever are we going to do with you James? You should have come outside with me. A little fresh air and sweat would have been good for your soul.”
I just smiled and wished I was back in Root, making things glow. And I wanted to meet those people again, whoever they were. They seemed like such a nice couple.




Chapter 7: Jobs

Sadly, my visitations petered out and then ceased. I’m not sure why. I felt no less miserable. Seemed that Root was sensitive to and repelled by even the smallest traces of hope, though any upticks in my optimism were imperceptible to me. Hints of Root still came to me in dreams, to remind me it was there, waiting. 
Mom was forced to take a job. That put an end to my home schooling, thank God. I was already eighteen. I could read and write well enough to teach myself anything, or so I believed.
So I went out to Indian River State College and tested for my GED. I was shocked by how simple the questions were. I could have passed it when I was twelve.
Mom found a position in our local satellite branch of the Ft. Pierce public library. But her pay was poor and our finances were shaky enough that I needed to find a way to make some money, too. 
I tried the fast food route first, but nobody was hiring. With the economy the way it was, the Burger King was staffed pretty much with all middle-aged folks. One guy flipping burgers even had a PhD. 
Plan B was to try my hand at freelance yard work. So I took a Sharpie and made up a bunch of posters with ‘Moody Landscaping’ in big letters and my phone number pre-torn in strips along the bottom. I plastered them across any surface that would accept scotch tape or staples within a ten mile radius of the house. I offered lawn mowing, tree removal, bulb planting—anything involving dirt and plants. I wondered if Uncle Ed got his start this way.
And it worked. I started getting calls, dribs and drabs at first, but I was a hard and careful worker—and cheap—so word of mouth spread. Mom even let me take the ‘shrine’—dad’s pickup—to jobs, though she wouldn’t let me drive it anywhere else. I kept the bed loaded up with every garden tool that we owned, a gas can and a case of SAE 30 oil.
I ran into problems right away with one of the so-called ‘professional’ services because my rates severely undercut them. Their laborers couldn’t care less, but one of the managers got his hackles raised when he saw me operating on his turf. One guy came up to me and told me it was illegal to be operating without insurance. 
I told him, I didn’t give a damn, to go ahead and sic the insurance police on me. But nothing ever happened. I’m sure he bad-mouthed me to my customers. Sometimes I wouldn’t get repeat business, but often I did. 
I have to say that despite my lack of experience or training. I got pretty good at this gardening/landscaping thing. I had good instincts for what a hibiscus bush needed to stay green and bloom. Mom found it ironic because our own yard was the seediest looking one on the block.
I ran into Ft. Pierce high-schoolers now and then, particularly in the late afternoons when they were coming back from school. I tended to duck the ones who knew me, even Burke. I was serious about wanting to retreat from the human race. 
The stickiest encounter happened in a yard belonging to the family of Marianne Barker—Jenny’s best friend. And it was too bad. They were one of my best customers. They gave me all kind of work and tipped above my asking price.
Marianne cornered me when I was digging a deep hole for a juniper. She was one of those girls who were like supermodels trapped in a fat girl’s flesh. She could be drop dead gorgeous if she could only lose twenty pounds. Even as she was, she was pretty intriguing, to those who remained capable of being intrigued, anyhow.
So … we chatted. And it was awkward. She would talk and I would grunt. She had me in a hole—a captive audience. And that’s how I learned about Jenny’s short-lived ‘romance’ with Jared, and the whole vengeance and retribution angle behind it. 
But by that time, it didn’t matter to me anymore. My social pathology had advanced too far. I had become a sociopath, a misanthrope, a misogynist and a miserable excuse for a human being. I wanted nothing to do with people. I was no threat to society, only to myself. I didn’t want to hurt anybody; I just wanted to be left alone.
I pined for Root. But the ironic thing was, my pining was probably the thing that kept Root away. The little shred of hope that Root provided me was its own deterrent.
Being around plants was the only thing that kept me semi-sane. The nice thing about plants was that their desires were consistent and predictable. All they wanted was a little fertilizer and water and light, and some protection from bugs. Their needs never wavered. They never changed their minds. And they showed you immediately what was wrong in the tone and color of their leaves, and in the rate of their growth. And they were good listeners to boot.
It took more than a single brush-off to shake Marianne. She cornered me again when I came to do her yard and the dang lawnmower wouldn’t start. She caught me in the shade of the driveway, parts scattered across the concrete as I tried to clean a gunked up air filter.
She hovered in the shade of her garage, needling me with this half-smirk, half-smile that was hard to ignore.
“She still mentions you, you know.”
“Well, tell her to get a life. We hardly knew each other.”
I felt behind me for a bolt I had dropped. She squatted down and handed it to me.
“Oh come on, James. Everyone knows you still like her.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “I don’t like anybody. Not even myself.”
“I don’t believe that one bit.”
“Why do you care? I mean, really. I’m just the kid who mows your lawn.”
“I’m a fixer,” she says. “I see broken things … people … I want to fix them. I used to rescue worms stranded on sidewalks after a rain. Still do.”
“I ain’t broke. Don’t need any fixing.”
A smirk overpowered her smile. “You looking at colleges?”
I huffed. “Why should I?”
“You’re smart, James. Smarter than most of the kids at school.”
“Mom can’t afford to pay for college. We can’t even manage our water bill.”
“So? You don’t need to worry about money. I’m sure you would qualify for financial aid.”
“Yeah, right. Like they’re just gonna give me money to go to school.”
“Well, yeah. That’s how it works.”
I peeled a layer of dried grass bits from the spongy filter.
“I don’t believe in organized education. The University of Florida isn’t gonna teach anything I can’t learn on my own.”
“Maybe not. But Duke might, or Princeton or Yale. You’re too smart to be digging ditches.”
“What do you care what I do, Marianne? I mean, really?”
And she just blinked and looked at me as if the answer should be obvious. I had become so obtuse and internalized that I had no idea some other girl could possibly like me.
“Now fuck off and leave me alone.” I stuck the air filter back in place and screwed the cover back on. 
She went back inside her house, and I went back inside my head.




Chapter 8: Selective Doom

Mom went a little wild with the credit cards in the weeks after the funeral. Who could blame her? She was only trying to boost our morale with a little shopping and eating out. On top of that, she had a couple unexpected doctor’s visits and prescriptions that the insurance didn’t cover. 
When the statements came, it was a little bit shocking how much it all added up to. We opted to pay our mortgage in full and just cover the interest on our MasterCard. Things settled down after that.
I had few needs compared to other kids my age, and even less now that I had turtled up and withdrawn from society. That helped keep the pressure down on our household finances. 
Reading was my main indulgence, but I got most of my books from the library. Some of the staff found it odd for someone my age to be checking out so many books every week, until they learned that Darlene was my mother. 
As far as literature was concerned, I gravitated to the dark, weird and antiheroic. I couldn’t stand stories relating the petty problems of rich people in suburbia, or macho cops or spies with talents superior to mere mortals. I preferred authors like Vonnegut and Pynchon and Boyle; Gaiman and Gibson and Mieville.
I still didn’t have internet access or own a cell phone, but I didn’t exactly miss having either. There was no one I really wanted to call or Facebook and I gathered that the feeling was mutual. Kids said hi if they saw me at the mall, but they always kept on walking. Not that I cared. 
I saw Burke once, though, and he acted like if was invisible, or as if I had never existed in his life. Now that was different.
Marianne started calling me at home after I stopped coming over to mow her lawn. I stayed polite, but did nothing to encourage her. Not like I would call her back.
After a week of me not picking up the phone, she came into a CVS where I had gone to get some Tylenol for mom. I ducked behind a Pampers display, but she had already seen me.
“Oh give me a break,” she said. “Hiding behind the diapers.”
“I wasn’t hiding. I was … what are you doing here?”
“Don’t treat me like a stalker! I just came in to buy some pads.”
“I never said … I didn’t mean to imply—” 
“Are you really that frail?” she said. “One girl snubs you and you drop out of the human race?”
“I never dropped in,” I said. “How could I drop out?”
“That’s insane.”
“And…? Your point is?”
“Jenny’s moving out of state.”
“I don’t give a— What?”
“Her dad’s getting transferred to North Carolina.”
I took a long slow breath. Marianne studied my reaction like Jane Goodall observing a chimp. I tried not to give her the pleasure of a visible reaction, but she was probably more perceptive than I gave her credit for.
“Cool.”
“Cool?”
My fake smile crumbled. I was surprised the news had any effect on me, but it did. The hollow place inside me yawned a little wider.
***
My landscaping gigs came too infrequently to help mom make a big enough dent in the bills. What savings we had were going fast. It didn’t help that I spent half my earnings at Sears on new lawn equipment.
Mom asked to expand her hours at the library but it just wasn’t happening. She kept hinting that we needed to sell dad’s truck, but she could never quite bring herself to pull the trigger. It was still her shrine to Saint Roy.
So I went to the employment office and filled out some job applications. I was shocked to luck into a position with the St. Lucie County Mosquito Control District. It was for minimum wage and no benefits, but it was steady pay and enough to help us get above water again. 
She got so excited when I told her. We bought steaks and ice cream from the Winn Dixie to celebrate. 
My new job turned out to be just as good as landscaping for getting close to nature, but with a hell of a lot less digging. And that was good.
Being outdoors got my head into a state that was calm, stable and sustainable. It was almost like meditating for me—cruise-control for the soul. 
It cleared the weird stuff from my brain. I forgot what Root was like, or how I ever got so fascinated with it. Hallucinations. Delusions. Those were the only explanations.
I’d take long walks into the piney swamps outside of town applying toxic granules to the sloughs where some of the nastier mosquitoes bred. This bti stuff they had worked like magic. I would come back the next day and all of the larval mosquitoes would be dead but the polliwogs and whirligigs would be swimming around all happy and active. Day after day I would walk those trails, some of them more like tunnels under the vines, spreading my selective doom. 
Sometimes I would try to make the tree roots glow on the strength of my will alone. It never worked for me, though. Sometimes roots were just roots.




Chapter 9: Pool Fish

I knifed through a patch of oleander tangled in kudzu, a bucket of guppies sloshing at my side. A vine snatched my ankle and I nearly dumped all my fish onto the spiky, drought-burned grass. Little green lizards scattered.
One could never be sure these houses were vacant, no matter how long ago the property had been foreclosed. Sometimes die-hards and squatters hid in the basements by day and came up into the living spaces by night. Other homes got taken over by meth-heads looking for a place to binge. I approached with a commando’s caution.
I hung the bucket on a post and hopped a fence, retrieved it and strode across a trashed-out patio where the green sludge of an abandoned swimming pool awaited.
With these pools, it only took a week or two for the chlorine to burn off, and then nature took over. Algae blew in with the dust and leaves. Bugs drowned and rotted and next thing you knew you had soup.
Mosquitoes love soup. They dropped their eggs and took over these pools, getting in first before the predators. Give them a couple days and the water would seethe with wriggling baby mosquito larvae. 
You can’t imagine the annoyance they inflicted across entire neighborhoods once they took wing, not to mention the brain-mangling encephalitis viruses they picked up from wild birds. 
We couldn’t spray these pools because the pesticides broke down in the sun and made you have to spray again, over and over. The fish, on the contrary, settled in and gobbled mosquitoes for generations to come. 
I walked up to the pool. Deflated and faded plastic pool toys were strewn across the red mulch beneath a row of dead palms. Claws scrabbled concrete. There was a gloppy splash.
I thought a dog might have fallen in and gotten trapped. I peeked over the edge. Sitting in the slimy water of the shallow end was a little alligator, maybe three feet long, its head elevated and wary.
“Say hello to Buster!”
I jumped and nearly tumbled into the pool. A young guy in a lawn chair sat watching me. He had a long-necked Bud in his cup holder and a couple of empties on the ground. His arms were covered with tats and he had gold bling hanging down the front of his black T-shirt. A blonde girl with silver studs all over her face lay conked out and snoring in a lounger behind him. He looked familiar, this guy.
“Hey!” he said. “You’re that mama’s boy. What was your name again?”
“Um, James.”
“Oh yeah! Hey, remember me? From the park?”
This was Jared—Jenny’s beau. The realization jolted me and put me on guard.
“Oh! Sure! I’m sorry … do you live here?”
He snorted and chuckled. “Do I look like I live here? Actually, I’m just visiting. Hey, what’s with the uni? You animal control?”
“Nah. Mosquito abatement.”
“Abatement, huh? That’s a fancy word for bug spraying.”
“I’m not spraying. I’m just … dumping fish in pools.”
“Fish in pools! Hoho! Buster’s gonna love getting him some fish. He doesn’t seem to go for French fries.”
“The gator? You’ve been feeding him?”
“Kinda. Not burgers, though. He ain’t getting my burgers. So, you ain’t here to take him away?”
“Well, technically I’m supposed to remove the little ones when I see them. I tried once. It didn’t go well.”
“Oh yeah? Why, what happened?”
“Took me half an hour to get the noose around its head. Once I got it cinched, the damn thing near exploded. It was like wrestling a fucking demon.”
“So you’re not even gonna try?”
“Nope.”
“Aw, too bad. That would have been fun to watch.” He came over and looked in my bucket. “Holy cow. You ain’t kidding. You’ve got a bunch of fishies in there. Look at them swim!” He giggled all high-pitched and giddy, like a little girl. There had to be more than beer in him, the way he was acting.
I took the bucket and dumped the whole load into the deep end—more than I was supposed to for this size pool, but I figured the extra would make up for whatever Buster ate.
“Hoho! Will you look at that! We got ourselves a fucking ecosystem.”
I looked down at the scummy water. A slew of MacDonald’s cups and wrappers and soggy, bloated French fries smeared with ketchup floated on the surface. The little gator was already going after the guppies.
“I’d better be on my way,” I said. “Good seeing you.”
He grabbed my arm and his face went all serious. “Uh, one thing, James buddy. Forget that ‘good seeing you’ shit. Okay? You didn’t see me here. Got it? And I’ve got some advice for you. Don’t come around here no more, bro. I don’t care what your job says. There’s stuff going down here that you don’t want to get involved in. I’m just saying.”
“Cool,” I said. “Not a problem.” I slipped away, slinking back through the jungle and back to the truck where I was supposed to meet up with Charlie, the senior field tech.
The encounter left a taint in my psyche. It ruffled my brain, like a squall disturbing a previously glassy sea. I wondered what Jenny had seen in such a loser.




Chapter 10: Default Notice

Wayne, my supervisor, was already waiting for me back at the truck. He was an enormous dude in every dimension, but surprisingly nimble when it came to hopping fences and squeezing through underbrush. 
He made me think of an orangutan ballet dancer. He certainly had enough red hair on his back and arms. 
Wayne was a pain in the butt to work with, always complaining about how I did things and ranting about politics I couldn’t care any less about. Thankfully, the only time we spent together was riding to and from job sites.
“What the fuck took you? You only had five pools to do.”
“Yeah, well … just moving slow today.”
No way was I telling him about Jared or the gator. Wayne was licensed to carry and had a penchant for plugging reptiles with his Glock. I shuddered to think what Jared might be packing. 
I set my bucket into the rubber-lined tank in the bed of the truck. The extra guppies were cowering on the shady side. Wayne peeked over my shoulder. “Christ, that water’s low. Let’s get ‘em back before they fry.”
***
I biked home on the ten-speed Trek mom and dad got me for my twelfth birthday. To save on gas, I only took dad’s pickup out on rainy days. The rest of the time, I kept it parked in the garage, loaded with up lawn equipment for the odd jobs I still pulled some evenings. The mosquito control facility was only about ten miles away, back roads pretty much all the way. 
Mom’s sun-scoured Camry was parked in the driveway as I rounded the corner onto our street. Odd. She usually worked till six. 
I found her sitting on the porch, on the rattan chair. She had a torn envelope in her lap and a letter in her hand.
This was one of those days I could see glimpses of the old woman she was to become, starting to take over her face. Shadows collected in the pits of her eyes and cheeks. An inch of gray showed in the roots of her part.
I parked the bike on the front walk and went up to the bottom of the stoop. “Hey, mom,” I said. “What you doing home so early?”
Her lips widened into a thin smile. “Oh … I had an appointment with Dr. Reddy and ... it was already three ... so I decided to take the afternoon off.”
Mom had just seen Dr. Reddy last Friday. A little flutter of worry shivered through me. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh sure. Least I think so. They did some tests and uh … well, we’ll see.”
“What you got there?” I said, nodding at the letter.
“Oh, it’s just a notice from the bank. We were late on the last payment or two … so this is just kind of a reminder.”
“Let me see.” I plucked it her fingers and looked at it. It was a form with a patch of boiler plate text at the bottom. “Reminder? Holy shit, mom. This is a default notice.”
“Yeah, but … it’s really just a warning.”
“Mom, it says right here: ‘Notice of Default.’ Have you not been paying the mortgage?”
“No. I have. Not always right on time. We’ve got all these other bills to worry about, you know. I‘ve been staggering them; paying some this week, some the next. Sometimes they get in a little late.”
“Mom. You can’t pull that shit. Maybe with the electric or the cable. Not with the mortgage. These banks are just itching for reasons to kick people out. You drive down these streets. Don’t you see all these foreclosed houses?”
“No worries,” she said. “We’ll catch up. Maybe not this week, but the next. I just had to pay off an emergency room bill.”
“Say what? When did you go to the emergency room?” A queasiness spread its roots deep into my innards. 
“Oh, a couple weeks ago at work, I had this weak spell. I … couldn’t get up from my desk. They insisted on calling an ambulance.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you, and anyhow, it turned out to be nothing. They didn’t find anything wrong, just that … I’m a little anemic. They sent me home.”
“If it was nothing, why’d you go back to see Dr. Reddy? Twice.”
“Oh, it’s just follow-up. You know them, they like to be thorough. I wish I hadn’t bothered now. These office visits are so expensive. And he only sees me five minutes at a time. He wants me to come back for more tests on Friday. I have half a mind to cancel.”
“Mom, if he thinks you need tests. You’d better go. It’s important.”
“Yeah. I will. Maybe after we catch up with the mortgage.”
“How much are we behind?”
“Well … it’s probably about … four thousand now, counting this month.”
“Three months? We’re three months overdue?”
Mom’s eyes fluttered the way they always do when she’s embarrassed. “I thought we could catch up last month but … you know how time flies when you’re busy.”
“Jesus, mom! You should have told me. I could have helped more with the bills. I’ve been putting away a little extra money here and there. But if I had known—”
“No. That’s your money. You’ll need that for college.”
“What college? I’m not going to college.”
“Not now, but … you should keep that option open. No?”
“What good is college if we don’t have a freaking house?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re not going to foreclose.” 
“How about we go ahead and sell dad’s truck?”
Mom sighed and cradled her chin in her palm. “Well, okay. I’m not sure we have to, but … whatever you think is best.”
“I’ll make some posters. We can park it out front. Put a sign in the window.”
“Yeah. You do that.” She got up slowly from the wicker chair. A quick wince deepened her crow’s feet.
Another jolt went through me. “You okay, mom?”
“Yeah. I’m just tired. I think I’d better go and lie down.”
I watched her retreat into the house, my heart drowning in a rising sea of doom. Something twined around my ankles. I threw a suspicious glance at the gnarled roots of the old magnolia tree behind me, but they just sat there inert, like any well-behaved tree, as roots from some farther world latched onto my spine and crept up my vertebrae like an inchworm.




Chapter 11: Complications

Sleeping in a rented storage unit in mid-July in Central Florida isn’t half as bad as you think. The drone of the expressway at night could be quite mesmerizing. Some folks paid hundreds for those white noise generators. I got to have it for free. I had my favorite pillow and my own mattress between me and the concrete floor. With my Bob Marley poster stuck to the ceiling, it almost seemed like home.
My biggest problem was the heat. The concrete walls buffered the temperature somewhat, but it still got stuffy when I closed the overhead door. 
So I duct-taped together a pair of screens and propped them under the door to let in a breeze but keep out mosquitoes. That helped a bit. I never really felt cool, but after midnight, it almost got comfortable.
At least I only had to be there six hours out of every twenty-four. The rest of the time I went to work or hung out in air-conditioned spaces like the mall or the hospital, where mom was recuperating from pancreas surgery. 
The diagnosis shocked me at first, but by this point, cancer no longer scared me. We met plenty of folks at the hospital who had lived with it and seemed to get along just fine. 
Mom had been lucky. They caught the cancer early and the tumor was operable. And the type of chemotherapy she would need wasn’t the kind that made your hair fall out.
At least she didn’t need to skimp on doctor’s visits anymore to save money. After losing the house and having to quit her job at the library, we now qualified for Medicaid.
She was better off staying in that hospital for now. I hadn’t had much luck finding us an affordable apartment. She planned to stay with a friend when she got released. In the meantime, I would keep on sleeping at the storage shed until I could save up some money for rent.
Gideon, the balding Cuban who managed this Handi-Stor, wasn’t supposed to allow squatters. But he was a family man with a big heart, so he made a deal with me and a couple others who had been lurking around the place. So long as we stayed off the facility until 11 p.m., didn’t pee in the alleys and were gone by 7 a.m., he would tell security not to hassle us. That way, the big boss and the regular clientele never had to know we were there.
The other squatters were, like me, decent folks dealing with a little bad luck. But those storage units also attracted an alarming amount of vice. This Handi-Stor was apparently a staging area for some major cocaine trafficking up and down the east coast of Florida. I doubt Gideon would have let us stay had he known. His night watchman apparently got paid to keep mum.
I would lower the shed door and keep quiet whenever I heard these drug deals going down. It got pretty stifling awful quick, but it beat letting those degenerates know I was here. 
One night a squatter named Jojo came back late and walked into the middle of a transaction. He got beaten up so badly he had to have surgery on his face. The poor guy never slept there again. 
A couple hours sweltering in that concrete cave, listening to the freaks outside, brought on some serious blues. I would start thinking about mom in the hospital, missing the old house, Jenny and Marianne. All those things would buzz around my brain like a swarm of bees. 
Night seemed to amplify all of my worries and fears. Only when the strip of dawn light came seeping around the edge of the door would my heart and head calm down. Some nights I hardly slept at all.
***
We were out on a job west of town, getting ready to do a neighborhood, a place that looked post-apocalyptic with broken windows everywhere and hip-high weeds growing out of sidewalks.
Wayne’s phone blasted the Monday Night Football theme. He answered and handed it over. “It’s for you.” 
“James?” It was Dr. Morrie, mom’s oncologist. “You’d better come down to the hospital. Your mother’s experiencing some complications.” 
“Right now? But I’m at work.” 
“I’d recommend you get her as soon as possible. It’s pretty serious.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m talking kidney failure. Internal bleeding. Hypotension.”
“Whoa! Uh. Okay. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
“You’d better get here soon. She doesn’t have much time.”
“Time? What do you mean? Time for … what?”
“She’s dying, James.”
I stood there staring at the pavement in the glaring sun, a bucket of guppies in one hand, Wayne’s phone in the other.
“Everything okay?” said Wayne.
I just stared at him, speechless. The news went against all the sunny optimism I’d been getting from all of those nurses and residents. My mom’s tumor had been operable—low grade, stage two, no metastasis, 87% odds of five-year survival
Mom joked about her malingering to hang on to the free meals and cable TV. She said I should get myself admitted so I too could have a nice air-conditioned room and all the chicken soup and jello I could eat. 
“This about your mother?” said Wayne.
I managed a nod.
“Give me that bucket. You take the truck and go to the hospital.”
“How you gonna get back?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll manage. Just go.” He handed me the keys. I took them, and looked at Wayne with a newfound respect. Who knew that this coarse and bigoted redneck would be such a mensch in a crisis?
***
I parked the project truck in the shade and ran across the lot to the back entrance of the hospital, heart pummeling my ribs. I still couldn’t believe what was happening. I had been with mom the night before and she seemed fine. 
I bypassed the elevator and ran up the stairs to her ward. I freaked to find an empty bed and drawn curtains in her triple room. The other patients, a couple of geezers, had no idea who or where she was.
A nurse came over and took tapped shoulder.
“She’s in the ICU.”
“The what?”
“Intensive Care Unit. Upstairs.”
I ran up another flight and found Dr. Morrie in the hall.
“She’s just out of cardiac arrest. Follow me.”
“Huh? Her heart … stopped?” This was so surreal.
He led me into this room with all sorts of extra machinery, but she wasn’t hooked up to anything but an IV and some monitors.
“Her living will asked for no extraordinary measures.” He patted my shoulder. “Go on, spend some time with her. She’s comfortable. And she’s conscious every once in a while.”
I went in and pulled a seat close to her bed and took her hand. She was still breathing. Her skin had this grayish-yellow tinge that seemed all wrong, but her face was relaxed. Between that and all the weight she had lost, it made her seem younger, reminding me of those old pictures of her in our family albums. 
I took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m here, momma.”
Her eyes flickered open to slits, narrow but clear. “Baby boy? You home from work?”
“We’re still at the hospital mom. How you feeling?”
“I’m not … I don’t … feel anything.”
“Well … that’s good. I suppose. Better than to be hurting.”
“Don’t go there. Stay away. There’s nothing there for you. Nothing good. Only bad things.” Her voice was all slurred, like it did when she came home from one of her weekend benders.
“I ain’t going anywhere, mom. I’m staying right by your side.”
Her chest heaved. “I mean … later. It’s gonna come and want to take you. Stay away from it. Don’t go there.”
“Nobody’s taking me anywhere, mom. They said I could stay.”
“Not the nurses, stupid. The Reapers! Don’t let ‘em take you.”
“You’re not making any sense, mom. Why don’t you just lie back and relax? Get some sleep. You thirsty? Do you want a sip of that apple juice?”
“I want you to take your daddy’s truck and drive to Uncle Ed’s.”
“But I thought you wanted us to sell it.”
“Go see Uncle Ed. He’s your Godfather. Now that I’m gonna be gone. He’ll take you in. He’ll take care of you. He promised. Like I said, he’s your Godfather.”
“I don’t need anybody take care of me. Besides, you’re gonna be okay.”
She sighed with exasperation. “Didn’t Dr. Morrie tell you anything?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“I haven’t been straight with you, James. Things are worse than what I put on. A year ago they told me I had six months.”
“But mom—”
She clenched her eyes and winced. “It was worth it. To have you not fret about me. To see you go about life like everything was normal.”
“Normal. Things haven’t been normal … for years.”
“Listen. I’m sorry we lost the house. But now you’ll get my life insurance. I have some … I think. If not … there’s my social security. That should help you get established … in Ohio.”
My eyes began to swell and well with tears. My throat tightened inside. I tried to fight it, but there was no way to stop it. “I’m not going to Ohio, momma. I’m staying right here in Florida … with you.”
She sighed again. “You doofus. You just don’t get it, do you? I’m not gonna be here, hon. I’m moving on.” Her head settled back into the pillow.
“Don’t say that. You look fine.” I tossed a worried glance at the heart monitor. “Your heartbeat’s strong.”
I took her hand into mine. It felt so cold.
“Stay away from the Reapers,” she whispered. “Promise me, you’ll do your best to stay away.”
“Momma?” I checked the monitor again, and it still chugged along, registering a sharp little jag that spiked ninety times per minute. 
She was fine, just sleeping. I took her hand and pressed it to my face.
***
I couldn’t believe I had fallen asleep in that situation, but I had been so tired. Someone had to nudge me. I woke with a wicked crick in my neck from being all slumped in the chair. 
I looked up into the brown and sympathetic eyes of a Hispanic nurse. 
“I am very sorry ... but your mother. She has passed.”
“What?” I scrambled to my feet, nerves jangling “No way!” 
I grabbed mom’s hand. It was limp and even colder than before. The screen of the heart monitor was dark. I stood and watched in shock as another nurse disconnected the leads to mom’s chest, removed her IV and unclipped the oxygen monitor from her finger.
Mom didn’t look gone. She looked like she was still sleeping. When they pulled that sheet up over her face, I lost it. “No! You can’t do that.” I pulled it back down.
Some doctor came in. We argued. But he was a real sweet guy with a knack for getting things across to folks. He got me calmed down. He closed the door and got the nurses to let me have all the time I wanted with her, with the sheet off her face. But as soon as it sank in that she was really gone. I didn’t want to be in there anymore. I pecked her cheek, said goodbye and left.
I tried to split, but the nurses diverted me into this other room. They had some blonde lady come up and talk to me—one of those grief counselors. I wasn’t in the mood for talking. She offered to have a doc come over and prescribe me some drugs. I wasn’t interested in that, either. I hated hospitals. I just wanted out.
“Do you have any family you need to notify?”
“Uncle Ed,” I said. “But he’s in Ohio.”
“Not a problem. I can call him for you.”
So I passed the news to Ed. He was suitably shocked. He started to mutter something about having to come down again so soon for another funeral, but realized how crass it sounded. I told him he didn’t have to come down if he didn’t want. I wasn’t even sure there was going to be a real funeral. There wasn’t, if I was going to have to pay for it. 
I remembered that I still had the project truck parked in the lot. I called Wayne. It was pushing six, but he was still at the facility. He was all soft voice and sympathy. He said he could swing by and pick it up and that I should stay home tomorrow.
Home?
Some nurse’s aide brought me supper, but I wouldn’t touch it. Grief lady gave me some brochures on funeral arrangements and had me sign some forms. Turned out mom had funeral insurance.
They finally let me leave the hospital. I went straight to an undertaker whose office was only a couple streets away. It was after hours, but someone was still there and they let me in. 
It was a horrible place, with all this fancy wood paneling and flowers. I don’t even remember what it was I arranged. It all happened in a fog. Something basic, I’m sure. Not that it mattered. It’s not like we needed to impress anybody. She wouldn’t have cared what kind of funeral she got, and neither did I. It all seemed beside the point. 
I wandered over to a MacDonald’s and nursed a large Coke, hanging out there a couple hours before heading back to the Handi-Stor. 
Walking down Ocean Boulevard, I watched the sun sink into a cloud bank. A tropical storm out in the Gulf was approaching Sarasota. Feeder bands whipped across the sky. 
In the gaps between racing clouds, the stars popped out one by one. It showed me the universe in a whole new and terrifying perspective. My life was this tiny blip in a vast continuum. I was a gnat, seconds away from going splat on some windshield. And I actually considered jumping out into that traffic.
I slipped in through the back gate, avoiding Gideon’s office, because it was still early. There were still bays open with people loading stuff in and taking stuff out. I unlocked my shed, opened it slightly and slipped under the door, letting it slam back down, no screens, no light.
I stripped to my undies and T-shirt and lay on the mattress. The metal door still carried the heat of the sun that had been beating on it. I sweated like a pig. But I didn’t care about comfort. I just wanted to melt away into a puddle of nothing.
As I lay there, my body heat building in the mattress, something weird happened. The hairs on my arms and legs unglued themselves from my sweaty skin and poked straight out, as if drawn by a field of static electricity from a rubbed balloon. 
Fibers crawled and curled around me, and then I knew exactly what was happening, and I welcomed it. I kept my mind blank and let them do their thing. I let them take me.
This was going to be a big one, I could tell. The strands had more heft and substance than usual—scratchier, hairier, more insistent. They pinned me to the mattress, wrapping and twining around my limbs, poking into my ear holes and nostrils.
And this time this enormous weight pulled down on me, as if the Earth had acquired the gravity of Jupiter. It mashed me into the mattress.
Something ripped free, my soul a branch breaking loose from a tree. I sank through the mattress, sifting through the weave and stuffing, through the pores of the concrete floor like rain water through sand.




Chapter 12: The Tunnel

Encased in roots, I plummeted from a great height. How far, I couldn’t say, but on the way down I had time to contemplate my entire life, how pointless it had been so far and how pointless it would remain for the foreseeable future.
My capsule slammed to a sudden halt like a bridge jumper using steel for bungees. It swung and twisted wildly, until its movements dampened to a gentle sway kept alive by a breeze.
I was like the egg mom made me drop from our roof as part of a physics experiment. But unlike the poor egg I had ineffectively swaddled in cotton balls and bubble wrap, the roots flexed and stretched and actually cushioned my fall.
I was a human pendulum, and as I swung, the strands of the hammock-like pod shifted and adapted to my contours. I peered through a lattice of roots into a tunnel much larger and darker than the one I had experienced before. Some of the roots lining it gave off a soft orange glow like the last dying embers of a campfire. The fibers comprising the tunnel walls writhed and pulsed in a communal rhythm.
Occasional blobs of light shuttled along the length of a lonely root here and there, but I saw nothing like the Times Square at New Years light show I remembered from the last tunnel.
Not that I minded. I was cozy in my capsule, happy to be back and enjoying that mind-blurring buzz that kept the real world insulated from the front burner of my thoughts, kind of like a couple shots of vodka mixed with a squirt of endorphins. I just laid back and watched the tunnel walls spasm in peristaltic waves, as the individual strands lining its interior shifted slowly like a stop-action video of kudzu vines spreading. 
I just hung there in that cage of roots, naked as a newborn and happy as Goldilocks in the wee bear’s bed—not too hot, not too cold, just right. I felt like I had returned home after a long trip, in the bedroom of my Ohio childhood. 
What happened in that other world didn’t matter anymore, not even mom’s death. A residual pang of loss remained unshakable, but that was there and this was here. Root seemed a completely separate plane of existence.
An earthy, mushroom scent pervaded everything, but I didn’t mind it. I liked mushrooms, especially on pizza. The only things that bothered me were the dimness and those sounds. I could hear things happening beyond the tunnel—distant belching, feet scrabbling against tunnel walls. Not that I wanted to know what made those noises. I just wanted them to go away.
I don’t know if I was getting bored or annoyed or what, but that buzz was wearing off. Thoughts intruded no matter how hard I tried to shut them out. I couldn’t believe mom was gone. It seemed impossible, and so I kept forgetting and then remembering over and over in an endless loop of grief.
I stared at a root and tried to make it glow like before, but no matter how hard I tried, it stayed dark. As I recalled, the trick involved slipping my mind around a mental corner but this time my head was not cooperating. I seemed to have lost the knack.
I didn’t let my failure disappoint me. I settled in and let the roots embrace me. The strands adjusted around my pressure points like memory foam, softening around my hips and elbows, firming around my back and bottom. Those roots under my head fluffed out to form a pillow. For whatever reason, they wanted me calm and comfortable.
But the deep rumbling kept me from getting too relaxed. Something large seemed to be dragging itself along the outside of the tunnel wall, perhaps in a parallel tunnel. The wall bulged inward as the thing squeezed past. At one point a bulbous appendage stabbed through and probed the air. 
It was a pale and worm-like thing. I freaked at the sight of it and when it veered in my direction, I tried to squirm away. But the more I struggled, the more the roots clamped down on me.
After the longest while, it slipped back through the wall and the thing it belonged to lumbered off. But I could still hear it grunting somewhere below.
A light flickered like slow, blue lightning, illuminated an entire row of pods like mine along the roof of the tunnel, all of them weighted down by occupants. I was not alone. The realization bothered me. Maybe this wasn’t my own private hallucination. 
I was no longer cool with the idea of hanging out in this pod. This was no fucking hammock. This was one of those cocoons a spider wraps its prey in to save it for later. I had vision of myself as Frodo Baggins in Shelob’s lair, only there would be no Samwise Gamgee coming to rescue me.
I contorted my shoulders and twisted around. The roots squeezed me tight. Clearly, they did not approve of my newfound anxiety. They tried to nudge me into a fetal position, but this time I fought back.
They were strong, these roots. Direct, physical actions got me nowhere, prompting only an equal and opposite reaction. I struggled again to recreate the mental trick that had let me manipulate them. I wrangled and twisted my mental energy to no avail. It was so frustrating. This had come so easily before.
I had an itch on my nose and tried scratching it, but the fibers circling my wrist prevented me and it made me mad. I gave one ornery patch the evil eye and when I did, it kicked off a flurry of tightening and raveling in that one spot, as if to spite me. That only made me madder.
I felt something flip in my mind. The fibers went limp as if the power to them had been cut. I was beginning to recover my little knack.
I looked at another strand, and tried to make it glow, but when I did, the patch I had made sag took advantage of my flagging attention to recover their tone and slap a loop along my wrist. That infuriated me. The little buggers wouldn’t mind their own business.
I bent my mind around again and made the offending fibers flinch and shrivel, curling away from my flesh in surrender. One of them burst forth with light, and right after a whole tangle of them became illuminated. My heart swelled in triumph.
I kept reaching around that corner of my brain until I had most of the pod glowing, and some of that glow began to creep up the stalk of thick, ropy strands that attached me to the roof of the tunnel. I scowled at the stalk until it untwisted and unwound a bit, spinning the pod around, lowering it from the roof of the tunnel until I dangled halfway to the floor. 
The thumping and rumbling grew louder. A belch erupted and a warm breeze kicked up and buffeted the pod, twisting it one way and the other like a kid goofing around in a swing. A stink like a mixture of rotten meat and old man’s breath overwhelmed me and made me gag. Something big was coming my way.
I laid my hands on the strands encasing me and willed them to part. They resisted fiercely. Gaps opened only to be mended shut by other strands looping down from the roof of the tunnel. I slammed my fist through a spot where the weave had thinned and the strands clamped down on my arm. I peeled away back with my other hand, assisted by every bit of mental warp I could muster. 
I flexed my mind. Something clicked. Mental energy that had been buried somewhere deep burst free, stunning the strands that were resisting me, paralyzing them, rendering them passive and inert. I slid my other arm through the hole, giving me leverage in the gap. 
I pried apart the writhing cords that had come down to seal the rent and butted my head into the parting. Scratchy fibers latched onto my hair and scraped against my ears. I kept pushing, tearing out clumps of hair, getting angrier and more determined until my head popped through. 
By that point, all my uncertainty had vanished and I was determined to leave that pod. I pressed my right shoulder into the breach and set all the force of my will against the strands that still refused to submit.
The pod swung wildly as I struggled. Strands fired out like harpoons from the tunnel walls to support their struggling comrades. I knew deep inside they were no match for me. They were strong, but so was I. If I kept at it, my will would prevail. That was clear.
Groaning. Thumping. A slap of leather on wood. Something or someone was coming up the tunnel.




Chapter 13: Karla

The sounds down tunnel made me pause and the roots took advantage of my distraction. A writhing sheath swung down from the stalk and unwound, tugging, prying and nudging me back into the pod. 
I re-gathered my strength and resisted, refusing to yield what progress I had made towards freedom. It was like wrestling an octopus with wooden tentacles. For every root I snapped, two more uncoiled to take its place. 
Something came bounding out of the dimness. It was a person—a young woman in tights and a baggy shirt that engulfed her slender form. She carried a stick with something sparkly mounted at the tip and a small cloth sack that tinkled as she ran. She stopped below me, her eyes wide and staring.
“You did this? By yourself?” she said, her English strongly accented. Her face was pale and ghostly, punctuated by a delicate chin. Her glossy, black hair was cut in asymmetric wedge, shaved close on the right with her left eye obscured by long, slanted bangs.
I strained to unwrap a coiled root from my neck. “Did what?” I grunted. 
She reached up and swiped her stick across the pod. She hadn’t even touched them, yet the roots fell away as if slashed by a razor. She reached in, grabbed my leg and pulled. 
She may have looked slight, but she was wiry and strong, hauling me free of that pod with a single tug. I slid and tumbled to the floor of the tunnel. Severed strands lashed at me like angry snakes. 
She glanced towards the darkness she had emerged from, to the source of the thumping. “We must go. The Reaper, it is coming.”
I got up and wobbled. My legs felt like jelly. She grabbed my hand and yanked me to my feet. I lurched after her. Conscious of my nakedness, I covered my privates with my free hand.
“Don’t worry about your pee pee. Just run! You think I don’t know what boys look like?”
I recovered my balance somewhat and we dashed up a steep and dark passage. The thumping behind us accelerated. Vibrations shook the tunnel floor. Waves of peristalsis made it feel like we were running across a semi-solid ocean, the roots rippling under my bare feet. 
We came to a ledge where the tunnel forked into two narrower tunnels, each about twice the width and height of a school bus. Around each bend, blue and lights flickered and flashed.
The girl vaulted nimbly onto the ledge. “Going up, always go left,” she said, helping me over. “Remember that. Right takes you toward the core. Never go near the core. Never. Understand?”
“O-kay.”
Little blobs of bluish light shuttled in all directions. This tunnel looked just like the one I had seen after the beach incident. A single pod clung tight against the ceiling. A row of shredded nubs marked the scars of old stalks.
Above our heads, a person lay inside the pod, whimpering. The girl glanced up and kept on going. But those sobs got to me. I grabbed the tail of her shirt.
“He needs help.”
She twitched her head. “Nah. This one is hopeless.”
“But you helped me.”
“You are different. You helped yourself.” Her gaze flew down the tunnel. “Quickly now, a Reaper comes!”
A dark, hulking shape appeared at the far end of the larger passage, silhouetted against a wash of orange light. It reared up and ripped a pod from the ceiling, wolfing it down in a series of spasmodic jerks. It groaned and dropped back down and scraped up the passage on stubby appendages like clawed flippers.
She jabbed her stick into the wall and the wall recoiled violently, dilating and rippling down the passage we had just left, with oscillations so violent they pinched the tunnel closed between each wave.
“Run!” she said.
The tunnel spiraled counterclockwise, narrowing gradually until we reached a stretch only wide enough for a small car to pass. The walls were shaggy with roots dark as ebony and fine as corn silk. Beneath the shag, bubbles of light shimmied through some of the larger roots.
She made a quick vertical stroke with her stick. The wall split open. “Follow me!” She thrust her arms into the slit, parted the strands, and plunged head first into the wall. I followed right behind, entering a forest of unconsolidated roots, mostly vertical. It reminded me of a birch thicket that used to grow behind our old house in Ohio.
“Stay close,” she said, slipping through that thicket like a deer. Roots sprang back and slapped me in the face. My knees and elbows kept catching on loops, forcing me to backtrack to free myself. I lost sight of her and struggled to follow the vague trail suggested by the residual swaying and writhing of roots that had responded to her touch. 
And then the entire forest shuddered and flexed. From the sounds of it, that grunting thing had arrived in the side tunnel and was flinging itself about. I surged ahead in a panic, running headlong into a curving, dome-like wall. Prongs and thorns studded its shiny, brown surface. 
I worked my way around the wall. Where the heck had she gone? I searched for an opening but the wall was seamless. Why hadn’t she waited for me?
There was a ripping sound and a whole section of roots collapsed behind me. The Reaper had broken out of the tunnel and was coming after me.
“Hello? Where the hell did you go?” My voice was shrill.
“Up here,” came her welcome voice. “Climb.”
I looked up. She was halfway up the dome, clinging to a narrow groove. Scowling, she reached out a hand to help me up.
“Where did you go? I tell you to stay close!”
“Believe me, I tried.”
She let out a sigh, leaned down and traced a circle with her finger. A seam appeared where there had been none. A hatch almost a foot and a half thick flopped open. She swung in feet first.
I followed a little too closely and we collided, dropping and rolling onto a spongy, carpeted floor. She popped up, grabbed the hatch and pulled it shut, sealing its edges with a swish of her wand, if that’s what it was.
I found myself in a chamber the size of an efficiency apartment. The walls arched up to form a domed ceiling decorated with a chaotic mishmash of flags and tapestries surrounding what looked like a circular stained glass window of a dove silhouetted against the sun.
I rested my back against the wall, my knees strategically folded to conceal my privates. She waved me towards the center. 
“That is not a good place to sit,” she said.
“Why not?”
“It is just not. Please. Come over here.”
I crawled over and set a cushion on my lap so I could sit cross-legged without shame. 
“No need to sit on floor. I have nice furniture. See?” She pointed to a chair that looked something like a gilled mushroom, flared up at one edge.
“Um … that’s okay. I’m fine like this.”
There was a tremendous thud as if the dome had just been hit by a truck. The wall shuddered. 
“Oh merda! It followed us. Would you like some tea?” she said, bustling over to a little potbellied stove on the far side of the dome.
“Wait … that thing is out there?”
The walls shook again. A circle of lamps hanging from the top of the dome clanked into each other.
“Oh, no worries. It is just a small one.”
“A small one? How big do they get?”
She shook her head. “Big.” She filled her tea kettle from a small tap in the corner.
The thing outside growled. Something scraped against the outer wall.
“Don’t worry. He cannot get you. I make this place strong.”
“You built this place?”
“My … eh … grandfather … helps me. But is not really building. It is Weaving. I think you are a Weaver, too. Yes?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“To change the roots. Make them be what you want. That is what we call the Weaving.”
“Yeah, well. Then I’m not much of a Weaver, then. I couldn’t even break out of my cage, without your help. Thanks for that, by the way.”
The dome rattled again. I wheeled to face the source of the battering.
“You are welcome. It is always nice to find another Weaver. Our colony is so small. It is not every day we find a new soul like you.”
The thing outside groaned and there was this sound like a saw ripping through wood. The dome of the ceiling bowed in and popped back up. I winced and held a cushion over my head.
The girl laughed. “No worries. I promise, it will not get you. It is just a small one. The big ones can’t leave the tunnels. They are too fat.”
“I just want it to go away.”
“Ah, but you have the smell they like and seek because you are new to the Reaping. You are like fresh meat.”
As if that was supposed to comfort me. The creature’s groan turned into a shriek that made a shiver go up my back. “You’re saying … I shouldn’t be scared?”
“Of course you should be scare! These are Reapers. Are you not scare of the truck when you cross the highway? The train when you are on the Metro platform? It’s like the bear that gets loose in the zoo. We must respect them.” She peered into her tea pot and squinted. “But inside here, you are safe.”
The Reaper scraped and scratched across the dome. I held the cushion tighter.
“Jesus! I wish it would just go away.”
“Patience. It is persistent, this one. But it will lose your scent and go back to its tunnels. That is what it is made for—the Reaping in the tunnels. But don’t worry. They are very stupid and forgetting. Once it goes, it will not come back.”
She poured hot water into two stoneware mugs, blue and bone. I found it odd that her stove had no flue and produced no smoke. It had no switches or dials, either. She brought over a mug and handed it to me. 
The water was clear.
“Is there … a tea bag?”
“Taste it,” she said. 
“Huh?”
“Go ahead, taste it. And then you tell me what you think it needs.”
I took a tiny sip and my mouth filled with rich, sweet black tea flavor, tart and astringent with lemon.
“Whoa! How did you do that?”
“Lille taught me. I just have to remember the good cups of tea I have had. And this was one of the best.”
Her pointing stick was tucked into her belt like a sword. She caught me staring at it.
“You like?” She pulled it out and ran her fingers over the sparkly tip. It was cut crystal, in the shape of a honeybee. 
“Swarovski,” she said. “I find it in the tunnels.”
“Does it have … magic in it … or something?”
She chuckled. “It is nothing special. It is just pretty. A thing to help focus my thinking. I could have used, a lump of coal or a rock. Luther just uses his eyes.”
She retrieved her sack and pulled out a handful of little metallic objects that twinkled, and started hanging them on what looked like a little brown Christmas tree that had lost all its needles.
“That’s … a lot of earrings,” I said.
“Yes. I collect them. But it is an endless job. They are always disappearing.”
“What do you mean? People take them?”
“No. You see, these do not belong to me. These are lost things. They end up here when their loss haunts the people who lose them, when they care enough to think and be sad about them. When people find them or forget them, they disappear. That is why I have to keep decorating my tree.”
“Where do you find them?”
“In the tunnels and chambers. You would be amazed what you can find there. Gloves. Money. Passports. And some people lose some very big things. How? I don’t know. But I like the earrings. There are so many. And I am not allowed to wear on the other side. My father, he is … strict.”
She smiled and lifted her hair. She had at least six earrings studding that one ear and none in the other. 
“Um … nice,” I said, with a delay that made it sound awkward. “Why do you hide them?”
“I told you. Papa does not approve.” She frowned at me. “Look at you, always hiding your boy parts. We had better make you some clothes, yes?”
She went over to a wooden chest and threw open the lid. She rummaged through a jumble of items, selecting a plaid skirt and a white blouse that each looked like it might be tight even on her. She tossed them over.
“I … I can’t wear these,” I said. “I’m half again as big as you.”
“So make them bigger.”
“How?”
“How else? By Weaving.”
“I might be able to make them glow, maybe, but I haven’t the slightest idea how to—”
“Oh, just give it to me!” She snatched them back and laid them flat on the floor. She ran her palms over them, each swipe expanding the fabric. She smoothed each item down its length and then across, and handed over a blouse and skirt that if anything, was too large now.
“I am no tailor. If you need more fitting you can do it yourself.”
I looked at the skirt and looked back at her.
“Oh, for goodness sake. Yes, it is a skirt. Make believe it’s a kilt, and that blouse is a shirt, if it makes you feel more manly.”
I nodded and pulled on the shirt, which had buttons on the wrong side. I wished that the kilt had come with some underwear, but was grateful to have any clothes at all.
I noticed a silence outside the dome. “Hey! Is that thing finally gone?”
“I think so. What did I tell you?”
“Phew! That bad boy was eager to eat me.”
“He will have to wait his turn. I get to have you first.”
“Excuse me?”
“It is not often we have new Weavers come to the colony. So, lucky me, I get to show you off to Bern and Lille … and the others.” She acted so proud, as if I was one of the little treasures she collected in the tunnels. It was really cute to see.
“But don’t worry. They are all very nice. Except for Luther. He can be … eh … unpredictable. But his heart … it is not cruel … not intentionally, anyway.”
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Me? I am Karla. Karla Raeth.”
“Sounds … German.”
“My father, he is from Dolomiti. In Alpini, near Austria border. Bolzano.”
“So you’re Italian?”
She scrunched her eyes. “Kind of. What about you?”
“Well, I’m James. I’m from Florida, but I was born in Ohio.”
“Disney World,” she said.
“Well, yeah, that’s in Orlando.”
“Is near to you?”
“Kind of.”
“I always wanted to go,” she said.
“So … what about this place … what is this place?”
She shrugged. “I like to call it Root,” she said. “But it has many names.”
“Like what?”
“Eh, some say Purgatorio, but that is false. It is not. Luther calls it the ‘Limen’ or the ‘Liminality.’ I don’t know why or what that means.”
“Who the heck is this Luther guy?”
“He is King of our colony. Mayor. President. Godfather. Grandpapa. Whatever.”
“We’re not … dead … are we?”
She scrunched her nose at me. “Stupido. No, we are not dead. Not yet.” 
Her eyes went sad and she gave me a lopsided and disappointed smile. 
“What’s wrong?”
“Already, you are fading.”
“Huh?
“Your arms. Look. They have the speckles.”
I looked down and saw empty space—holes—where there was supposed to be flesh, and what flesh remained was turning translucent, as if my body were dissolving.
“Holy shit. What’s happening?”
“You are going home. That is good. Maybe this is one time visit. Who knows? Maybe you come back. Not if you are lucky.”
“Wait … how do I … where do I find you? On the other side. Assuming that you—”
“Silly boy. Why would you want to find me over there? I am right here.”
And just like that, she was gone. I gasped and lurched awake, finding myself in that stuffy storage shed, the only light a few streaks coming through the vent from the flood lights that bathed the alley. I lay all covered with sweat, staring at the spider webs above my head as a thunderstorm drummed a brisk tattoo on the corrugated metal.
The image of that last, crooked smile haunted me—the pity and regret it combined. It touched me, the way her bangs fell over that one eye like a veil. I already missed her, and I didn’t even believe she was real.




Chapter 14: Probate

Day after day, leading up to the funeral, I tried to re-conjure a visitation. I would go into that storage locker tingling with expectation, dangling my misery like a bass fisherman trying to seduce a lunker out from under a sunken log. 
I tried my best to wallow in my gloom, I really did. But not a sprig of root ever came to visit, no matter how much I begged and prayed. It knew I wanted it and my desires were toxic. The faintest spark of hope was enough to keep it away. 
I didn’t even care about the damned Reapers. They never entered the equation. The way Karla had gone about her business like they were raccoons knocking over her garbage cans—maybe that emboldened me.
The project insisted I skip work all that week. They paid me leave even though, as a part-timer, I didn’t qualify. I should have been grateful, but having nothing to do only aggravated my restlessness.
In the daytime, I basically wandered, catching cat naps on the patio furniture of abandoned houses I knew, showering under lawn sprinklers, raiding gardens for cukes and zukes between my twice daily runs to the Burger King.
There weren’t many logistics to organize. Mom had pre-arranged for a minimal funeral, followed by a cremation. There would be no wake, but some of our old neighbors were hosting a little post-ceremony get-together at their house—a sad little party for folks that knew her. 
Uncle Ed and his family were staying behind in Ohio this time. He apologized profusely. He was so damned busy, he said, and with the two deaths so close together, it was just impossible for them to attend. I told him I understood even though I didn’t. This was Darlene—his only sister, his only sibling.
On Thursday, we finally held her pathetic little funeral. Mom had wanted it humble, and she had certainly gotten her wish. Some of dad’s buddies, a few friends from work and some families from the home school network showed up, but that was all. Turned out, mom was almost as big of a recluse as me. 
A Unitarian minister came to the funeral home and got us to share some stories about Mom and participate in some free-form praying. Marianne was there, and so was Jenny. I could barely bring myself to glance at them, never mind talk.
After the funeral our old neighbors, the Trudeaus, hosted a little memorial luncheon. I went a little nuts, pigging out on all the dishes to pass that people had brought. It had been ages since I had seen so much free food in one place. And it was so nice to be in air conditioning for a change. 
Marianne cornered me in the kitchen at one point, her eyes so earnest and desperate to help me. I wish I knew how to let her, but I was turned so inward, it just wasn’t possible. There was no room in my head or my heart for anyone real. It really was too bad. She seemed like such a good soul.
I ended up conking out on the Trudeau’s couch. When I woke up, everyone was gone. I had a pillow propped under my head and a throw draped over me. 
It was twilight and already dinner time. The Trudeau’s invited me to spend the night, but I told them I had plans to stay with friends. Mrs. Trudeau made me take a couple of roast beef sandwiches, an orange and some cookies.
I trudged back to the Handi-Stor, all wired and miserable. The turbulence in my skull was intolerable. I couldn’t calm it down. I had the sense that it would never go away unless I did something major. This was unsustainable.
Of course, there were drastic, i.e. permanent, means of escape, but I wasn’t quite ready for that yet. But maybe leaving Ft. Pierce would help. There was no reason for me to stick around here. Maybe a change of scenery would shake things up.
Ohio seemed like the most logical place to go. Uncle Ed still lived in Berea, the suburb of Cleveland where I had been born. I would be going back to my roots, so to speak. Maybe Ohio would save me, if nothing else would.
How to get there, though, was still a little bit iffy. I had a meeting with the probate attorney the next day to see if there was any chance of hanging onto Dad’s pickup. There were still credit card bills to pay, so there was a chance it would have to go up for auction. They were holding the truck for last while they tallied up the rest of our assets.
I had hung onto the spare key and kept it in my front pocket. It was my talisman. I would twirl it constantly in my fingers like a worry stone.
Gideon was already gone for the night when I reached the storage facility. Jules, the elderly Haitian night watchman, was barricaded in his booth with his fan and portable TV. 
He wasn’t much of a guard. He never made rounds; didn’t seem to even notice the world beyond his lighted windows and TV screen. He just manned his booth every night and went home every morning. It was surprising that the place didn’t suffer more break-ins.
I gave Jules no reason to turn hero. I made a wide berth around his watch station, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. There was a loose panel of chain link at the back of the complex that was common knowledge among us squatters. I slipped underneath, and made my way to the middle-most bank of sheds that was home.
I undid the lock, lifted the door of the bay and crawled under, plunking down on the mattress after setting up the window screens. Hot air wafted in from the sun-warmed pavement. 
I laid back and thought of Ohio. I remembered that park in Berea where Grams and I would feed the ducks and squirrels with crumbs of stale Wonder bread from polka-dotted plastic sacks. I used to pretend that acorns were space capsules and maple seeds helicopters.
And then I lost it. I don’t know why, I just lost it. I had barely cried during the funeral itself, but now I sprung like a leaky hose. I heaved and writhed and punched at the walls, bloodying my knuckles. 
I spent whatever energy I had left, my anguish settling down to mere snuffles. I kept checking my watch, wishing for sleep that refused to come. Midnight became 12:08 which became 12:37 and then 12:49. 
I rolled over, leaving behind a patch of sweat-dampened mattress. My shirt clung to my sticky back. A quick rinse and some clean clothes might help. There was a hose down by the main office. I grabbed a musty towel and a clean T-shirt left the locker.
As I turned the corner down the alley, I noticed the gate of one of the side entrances ajar, its padlock undone and hooked onto the mesh fence. I went over to lock it. Gideon had probably left it open by mistake. 
I heard voices. Three guys stood around the open trunk of a Honda under the glare of a flood light. Their conversation halted when they spotted me. I froze. 
“What you staring at?”
“I’m not … I wasn’t … “
“Get out! Get the fuck out of here. What the fuck you doing here? No trespassing!” One of the guys pulled a baseball bat out of the trunk. Another guy stepped back from the car into the shadows, something bulky and angular tucked under the front flap of his hoodie. 
I was a twitch away from turning and running.
“James?” said the third guy. It was Jared, leaning against the car with his tattooed forearms crossed. “What’s up man? Still chasing gators?”
“I had off this week.”
“Vacation, huh?”
“Nah.”
“What the fuck?” said the guy with the baseball bat. “You know this guy?”
“Yeah. James here is an old buddy of mine. So what’s up, man? What the fuck you doing here this late? You sleeping here?”
“Um, yeah. Kinda.”
“Oh, that ain’t cool,” said the guy with the bat. “Morrie said he’d keep the bums out.”
“I bet it’s that fucking day manager,” said Jared. “He’s got a soft heart, like me.”
“Soft in the head.”
“Go fuck yourself,” said Jared. He tossed the stub of his lit cigarette at the guy with the bat. “So … James. What up? Your mom kick you out of the house?”
“What the fuck is it with all the small talk?” said the guy in the hoodie. “Get this asshole out of here so we can finish up.”
“Shut up, Marek. I’m talking to my friend.”
“There is no house,” I said. “We got foreclosed. And my mom … um … she passed about a week ago.”
Jared shook his head. “First your dad, now your mom. That’s some hard luck, man. Need a smoke?” He held out a pack of Camels.
“Um … thanks … but no thanks.”
“Listen. You can’t stay here man. Bad shit goes down in these places. Way too easy to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, like almost happened here. Can you imagine if I wasn’t here to vouch for you?”
“I ain’t gonna be staying here much longer,” I said. “As soon as estate crap gets sorted out, I’m leaving … I’m going out of state.”
“Yeah? Where you headed?”
“Um. Ohio, probably. My uncle live’s there.”
“Ohio, huh?” Some inscrutable calculation went on behind Jared’s eyes. He looked at his friends. “Giulio got any peeps up there?”
“Dunno.” The guy with the bat shrugged. “Probably.”
He turned back to me. “So how you getting yourself up there?”
“Hopefully, with my dad’s pickup. If I can shake it loose from the creditors. It might have to go up for auction. Mom willed it to me, but … there are bills to pay.”
“Yeah, well. Good luck with that. Bankers got their hooks into everything these days.”
A cell phone buzzed. The guy in the hoodie checked his screen. “Enough with the chit-chat. Giulio’s ten minutes out.”
“Okay … um … listen James. You gotta make yourself scarce. Alright? You never saw us. Never tell anyone you saw anyone here after hours. Understand?”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I’m just gonna rinse off a bit with that hose over there and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
Jared stuck his hand on my shoulder and steered me around. “No can do. You gotta scram. We got company coming.”
“But—”
He shoved me back the other way. “I’m serious Bud. You can’t come here at night no more. Come back in the daytime. Okay?”
***
I only pretended to leave, circling around the back of the facility to the storage bay. I crawled in, pulled the screens in after me, and slid down the overhead door. 
I was stuck back in my personal tomb without the shower that would have made it bearable. I made do with wiping myself down with a grimy towel. Morning couldn’t come soon enough, and it didn’t. 
I propped the door open with a pebble to let a little bit of fresh air seep in. I squirmed on the mattress, trying to get comfortable.
I went into one of those half-trances where dreams mix with reality, but it was not an actual visitation. I was thinking about Karla, going over and over in my head every detail about her face, her voice, the layout of her little abode. I got excited when I mistook a few stray itches for roots. I took every loud thump for Reapers.
I heard a truck pull up outside the fence. A storage locker slid open. Something trundled down the alley. Heavy objects thumped into a trunk. Doors slammed. The gate rattled shut. Cars pulled away. I was left with my pounding heart, my snuffling breath and the roar of the highway.
I tucked a moving blanket under my arm and left the locker before dark. I slipped back through the fence and walked the two miles to the graveyard where Dad was buried. There, I washed up at one the spigots for folks to water flowers. 
I was dead tired, but the idea of sleeping over corpses creeped me out. But there was this old magnolia tree with roots so thick and gnarly, there was no way anyone could be buried beneath it. I spread out the blanket and found my escape in the form of sleep, blessed sleep.
***
It was light out when I opened my eyes. Beyond the low-hanging branches, palmettos and cypress bent in a stiff and steady breeze. I crawled out from under the tree. My mind was blank. I couldn’t remember dreaming.
The mosquitoes had gotten me pretty good. My ankles were covered in hot and itchy welts. 
The sprinklers were starting up on the far side of the cemetery. I knew the routine well. I used to come out here a lot to think. Over the next half hour they would advance in a slow motion wave across the entire graveyard. The grounds crew wouldn’t be in for another hour or so. 
I stumbled down to Dad’s grave, a slight mound covered in a patchwork of turf. A simple marker, flush to the ground, bore his name. There was no headstone. Weeds had already overgrown it and there were clumps of mud that looked like the scrapings from someone’s boot. I cleared it off so Dad’s name was legible again. Some day I’d get him a real headstone.
I didn’t want to break the bad news to him, but Mom wouldn’t be joining him here. She had asked to have her ashes scattered someplace green. I hadn’t decided yet where that would be, but it wouldn’t be here. She had this thing against cemeteries; said she wasn’t going to spend all of eternity in some boneyard.
When my head cleared, I remembered I had an appointment with the probate lawyer. I touched my face. A little scraggly, but not too bad. I had last shaved the morning before, but my facial hair had always been kind of sparse. Though, I suppose I could grow a wicked soul patch if I wanted. 
I tucked my shirt and brushed the burrs off my pants, deciding that I looked good enough for a lawyer’s office, particularly a weasel like Jeffrey Ohrenberger.
I loped down the center of the main avenue of the cemetery, heading for the gated entrance. Sprinklers advanced row after row behind me.
***
Jeff Ohrenberger looked nice enough. He had a sunny face and a kind, sympathetic manner. Wasn’t his fault I hated lawyers. The foreclosure fiasco had only made it worse. 
“Jeff can see you now,” said his assistant, opening the door to his cool and spare corner office. His broad mahogany desk had a single folder on it with a pen laid across, so different from the towering stacks of bills and lesson plans that had always loomed over Mom’s desk. 
He stood by his chair, a cautious smile imprinted on his lips, a crown of rusty fuzz surrounding the dome of a high forehead. He presented his hand and I gave it a quick shake. His palms were slick and soft, like a surgeon’s.
He settled into his chair and waved me into one across from his desk. “So how’ve you been doing? You hanging in there?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“You’re looking a little rumpled. Everything okay?”
“I’m fine.” I glared at him, anxious to get to the nitty-gritty. “So what’s the deal? Can I have my dad’s truck or not?”
He clasped his hands together. “Well, what can I tell you? Things are finally getting sorted out.” He whistled through his teeth. “But we had a few unanticipated expenses arise. Your Mom, she had quite a few credit cards. Some we didn’t know about. Accounts she never closed, never transferred the balances.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means it’s going to take a little bit longer to sort out the estate.”
“What about the truck?”
“It’s got a lien on it. I’m afraid it’s going to have to stay impounded for the time being.”
“No way. I … I’m going to need it.”
“I don’t see how that’s going to be possible, James. I think it’s going to have to go up for auction. Even that might not be enough to satisfy the creditors. They may want to access the stuff you have in storage.”
“They can have that shit,” I said. “All of it. I just want the truck.”
“I’m afraid that’s not gonna happen, James. I’m sorry.”
But I had Ohio on my brain and would not be denied. I got up and stormed off.
“Hang on, we still need to talk about the estate taxes.”
“You deal with it,” I said. “You’re the lawyer.” I walked out his door and kept on walking, twiddling that spare key round and round in my pocket. It was only five blocks to the county lot.




Chapter 15: County Lot

Dad’s truck sat alone in the very back of the lot, its dark blue finish gone hazy with sun damage and grime. My heart fluttered at the mere sight of it. 
Getting it out was going to be a feat. The entrance was gated and locked. The exit was blocked by a chain and manned by a guy in a check-out station, and that was the only way out of the fenced compound.
I stood around and watched as a little red Toyota pulled up to the exit booth. The driver handed over some yellow form that the guard looked over and stamped before climbing out of his booth and undoing the chain that blocked the way.
Twirling the key in my hand, I went up the front walk and entered the building. The place looked was kind of sleepy. A wall of glassed-in counters separated the customer service area from a sea of desks, most of them empty. Either half the folks who used to work here got laid off in the government cutbacks or they were out to lunch. 
A lady with blonde curls and a pastel pants suit strolled through the room. “Be with you in a sec, hon.” 
So I just stood there and twiddled my key. Posters advertising auctions were pinned to a bulletin board. I went down the listing, relieved to see no dark blue, 2003 Ford F150s.
The lady sauntered over. 
“Alrighty. So how can I help you?”
“Yeah … um … my dad’s truck is being released from probate. I’m here to pick it up.”
“Name and license?”
“Um … Moody. His name’s Roy. But it was actually under my mom’s name … Darlene. The license plate is YNG4VR”
“And you are…?”
“Me? I’m James. Their son.”
She moused around and typed something on her keyboard. She squinted at the screen. 
“Is it a Ford truck? Model year 2003? Dark blue pearl metallic?”
“Yup. That’s it!”
She gave her head a quick shake, her eyes turned down, a frown set like concrete. “Says here, it’s impounded and going up for auction on the 17th.”
“Well, that’s a mistake. I’m here to pick it up.”
“You got a DTTP? Can’t let you have it without that.”
“What’s that?”
“A Decedent Transfer of Tangible Property—the county’s new consolidated form. Replaces the old affidavits.”
“Uh. How do I get one?”
“You should have already been given one if it’s been released from probate. The court clerk should have issued one after the ruling. I assume your case has been heard?”
“Uh … yeah … I … uh … told the lawyer.”
She sighed. “I meant heard by the judge, as in a hearing. I’m authorized to issue them here, but first I’d need an order from the court.”
I shuffled my feet and looked towards the door. “Yeah. Well, thanks anyway.”
She smiled sympathetically. “Probate takes time. It really helps to have a good will. You’re never too young to have one, I always say. Life is precarious.”
I walked away, but couldn’t bring myself to leave the complex just yet, not with Dad’s truck just sitting there in the lot. I cut though the shrubberies and made my way into the back lot. It was packed with every kind of vehicle imaginable—Chevys and Audis, Smart cars and Porsches—just sitting out there, frying in the sun. 
But I only had eyes for Dad’s truck. I admired the way it stood out amongst the masses of vehicles, kind of the way Dad did walking through a crowd.
I slipped the key out, thinking I’d sneak back there and go sit in the cab a while, pay my respects the Shrine of Roy. I was walking by the dumpster when I spotted some snatches of yellow paper the same shade as the form the guy at the exit booth seemed to be collecting.
The stuff was shredded as fine as Easter hay and stuffed into clear plastic bags. I poked around the dumpster, pulling out more bags of shreddings along with basic office waste like Starbucks cups and Krispy Kreme cartons. I wondered why they didn’t recycle all this paper.
I saw some sheets in the bottom of one bag that had somehow escaped the shredder. Maybe the machine had jammed and someone had just them in the bag intact. I ripped the bag open and pulled out a handful of papers. It was a mishmash of stuff: inventory and to-do lists but there were some forms as well, some torn, some whole. 
I rifled through them until I found a multi-part form with green and pink and yellow sheets beneath the top white sheet. Only the date was filled out and the first letter of a first name—T—and that was all. The bold type at the top read: Decedent Transfer of Tangible Property.
***
I dashed to the truck. It must have been a hundred and fifty degrees inside the cab. I rummaged for a pen in the glove compartment amidst glommed together Tic-Tacs, chewing tobacco and unpaid parking tickets. 
I found a Bic under the seat. The ‘T’ was easy enough to turn into a ‘J’ and then it was a matter of filling out the rest of the form in neat block letters, making up the stuff I couldn’t answer. 
The signature was the hard part. My name went right above the authorization so I had to make them look like they originated from different hands. I practiced on a scrap envelope until I came up with a scrawl that was both alien and indecipherable. The first name could have been Charles as much as Claudia, and the last name was just a squiggle with a dot. It almost looked Arabic.
I found another pen, blue ink to contrast with the black, and put the final touches on my forgery. No chance this was going to work, but I had to take a shot.
I leaned my head back, took a deep breath and started the truck. Heart stuttering, I backed out of the space and threaded my way through the other orphaned vehicles that were strewn almost randomly across the lot. There was something sad and creepy about knowing these were all the cars of dead people.
I pulled up to the exit. A heavy chain dangled in front of my bumper. My window was already rolled down. The guy in the check-out booth looked bored or sleepy. His eyes were all puffy and red. He chomped on an unlit cigar. He took the form in one hand and inked his date stamp with the other. He lifted the stamp from the pad, narrowed his eyes some more and frowned.
“Who signed this?” he said, peering up at me, his stamp hovering. 
“I dunno.” I shrugged. “That lady … inside?”
“Christine? This don’t look like Chris’s signature.” He looked up and blinked, studying me and the truck. “Hang on.” He picked up a phone, put down the stamp and drummed his fingers on a notepad. 
I started to freak a little bit. This had been a dumbass thing to pull. 
“Huh. She’s not picking up.” He looked down at the form again, tracing his finger over it. “So … uh … who’s this … James Moody?”
“That’s me.”
“Oh? Then someone filled out the wrong section here. Unless that truck you’re driving is a house.”
I smiled and shrugged. “Oopsie.”
The guy narrowed his eyes. “Say, how’d you get that key? That should never have been released.”
“It’s my key. It’s my truck.”
“Listen kid, turn off that vehicle and step out. I want that key.”
“No way. This is mine.”
“Turn it off, son. We got issues to work out.”
All I saw was a droopy chain between me and the open road. I inched forward, pressing the bumper against the links.
“Oh no you don’t. Don’t you get any ideas.” He reached for his door.
“You got the form. I got the truck. Sounds like a fair trade to me.”
I gave the gas pedal a nudge. The chain stretched tight. A link cracked and the ends went whipping off to either side. I roared out of the lot and down Constellation Avenue.
***
I drove scared, making random turns, zigging and zagging along the back streets, expecting to see a cop car around every corner. What I had just done didn’t feel like a crime. This wasn’t a stolen vehicle, it was my inheritance. Sure, I had snapped a chain getting out of the lot, but that wasn’t exactly a felony. They had needed a new one anyway. 
I should have headed north immediately, but I couldn’t leave town without making a few stops. First, I went by the funeral home. It was risky, but I couldn’t leave mom’s ashes just sitting in some stuffy closet.
My timing was good. They had just gotten Mom back from the crematorium. She was still warm and waiting in a brass urn way smaller than what I expected. That couldn’t have been all that was left of her.
So I took her back to the old house. Screw the cemetery. This house was where Mom would want to be. She had been so proud of the place after we moved from Ohio. This was where her heart resided, if not her soul.
Plywood nailed over broken windows. Damn kids. The foreclosure notices were faded and peeling. It killed me to see the grass so tall and the bushes unkempt. I wish I had time to tidy up, but I had to keep moving. 
So I scattered her ashes around the yard, tossing a little extra around her precious roses. All that calcium and potash and phosphorus, I’m sure those plants appreciated it. Mom would become part of them now. 
I tucked the urn under the eaves, with the lid off so it would catch the rain. Maybe it would make a place for something to live, even if it was only mosquitoes.
It was so hard to leave. This was my house, and here I was—a stranger. I wanted to go inside and kick back on the couch with a bowl of ice cream. I wanted to watch football with Dad. I wanted Mom to make me waffles.
My nose got so stuffed up, I couldn’t breathe. Tears warped my vision. I got back in the truck and drove to the Handi-Stor—my last stop. 
Gideon waved as I pulled in through the open gate. I figured I’d load up with whatever seemed worth hanging onto. My mattress, for sure. Maybe the little flat screen TV, and even some of mom’s knick-knacks, not that they were valuable or anything. But they would sure help whatever place I ended up feel a little more like home.
I pulled up to the storage unit, unlocked it, heaved open the door and surveyed my legacy. I hauled out my old, battered twelve-speed with two flat tires and threw it in the truck. Next I grabbed the cherry night stand that had been in my bedroom ever since I could remember. I wondered what I could get from the rest of the furniture if I staged some impromptu roadside yard sale. 
The stuff was in poor shape: veneer peeling up from the bureau, the wicker seats of the kitchen chairs frayed on the edges. It was pure crapola viewed in the cold light of commercial value. But these were the things that had formed my earliest environment and made our home a home. No wonder I was reluctant to abandon it.
A small grey car zipped around the corner and stopped at the end of the lane. It was the Honda from the night before. Jared hopped out, wearing a black bandanna and fingerless gloves.
“Holy shit man, you got the truck! You still going to Ohio?”
“Soon as I load up the truck.”
“Whoa dude! If you can hold off a bit, I can make you some extra cash.”
A queasy dread overtook me. What he would ask me to do was undoubtedly illegal, but I could really use the money. “How much and what would I need to do?”
“How does a thousand grab you? Five hundred now and five hundred at the other end. All you gotta do is make a small delivery for us.”
One thousand dollars grabbed me just fine. I only had a hundred bucks or so in my wallet, barely enough for the fuel and food I would need to get to Ohio.
“So you want me to be a mule?”
“Courier sounds better, don’t you think?”
“What will I be carrying?”
“You don’t even need to know. Just leave us your truck for a couple hours. We’ll set it up so you won’t even know the shit’s there.”
A thousand bucks. What was the worst that could happen? The cops would catch me and lock me up in prison? A rival cartel might shoot me dead? Either outcome might be a step up from my current situation.
“Deal,” I said.
***
I probably should have mentioned something to Jared about the incident in the county lot. But if he knew the cops were looking for me, and that the truck wasn’t officially mine, the deal might be off the table. 
So I stayed mum. That thousand bucks was just too epic to miss out on
Jared’s crew showed up in a big, black Escalade. They didn’t want me to watch, so I holed up in the storage unit. I pulled down the door, propped up the screens and stretched out on Dad’s old La-Z-Boy. 
As soon as the gates closed, I heard them spring into action. Overhead doors flew open. Reversible drills whined as they unscrewed the poly bed liner. 
Whatever I would be carrying would be stashed beneath, out of side. That was cool with me. That way, I wouldn’t have to deal with any packages.
It could be meth I would be carrying, but it would most likely be cocaine. A ton of unprocessed blow came through Ft. Pierce. The place was a hub. Boats constantly brought in raw material via the Bahamas. Uncut, it served a higher class of clientele, but it was usually reprocessed into crack or cut with lactose into more of a street product. 
The drills went back to work, re-installing the bed liner. I heard clunks and thumps as they reloaded my junk. 
I settled back in the chair. A wash of fatigue settled deep into my bones. Every cell ached. A pair of Timberlands with overlong jeans bunched at the heels showed up under my door and sent a jolt through my heart. 
“Yo James, you in there?” Jared rapped his knuckles on the door.
I hopped up, flung the door open, and he stood there smiling, Tampa Bay Bucs cap askew on his brow.
“We’re just about done,” he said. “Here’s a phone.” He handed me a pre-paid disposable. “You don’t call no one but me on it. Got it? And never pick up unless you see it’s me.”
My fingers trembled as I turned the phone over in my palm. Ironic. Here was my first cell phone and I wasn’t allowed to use it. Not that I had anyone to call. 
“You shaking?” said Jared. “Hey man, no need to be so nervous. Everything’s cool. Your registration’s current. You look clean and nerdy and white. Just don’t drive too crazy and you’ll be fine.”
“So where do I bring this stuff?”
“You just worry about getting your ass up to Ohio. Once you’re there, I’ll text you the details. Thing is, you can’t dawdle. These guys, they want this shit pronto. So no stopping off to see your Aunt Sue or whatever. Okay?”
“No prob. I’m just gonna catch a few hours sleep and I’ll be good to go.”
“Um … actually, we were thinking you could leave a little sooner. Like now?”
“Now?”
“Truck’s gassed and loaded.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Shit man, you’ve been laying around all afternoon. We did all the work. And this truck … like I said, it’s loaded. You can’t just leave it parked somewhere while you nap. Are you insane? Do you know how much—?”
Jared’s eyes were getting wild. His spit was starting to fly.
“Whoa! Calm down. It’s not a problem. I can leave now. I’m just saying I’m a little beat, is all.”
Jared fished around his pocket. “Here.” He tossed me a snack-sized baggie with some little white pills. “Take a couple of these. They’ll keep you awake.”
“What is it?”
“Ritalin. Gives you a nice, mellow buzz that lasts. You’ll be like a laid-back Energizer Bunny.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
Jared stepped into the unit and peeked inside a box of old National Geographics. “Need help loading your crap? I can get the guys over here to help.”
I looked around at all the other boxes stacked on the furniture in the back of the shed. There was plenty to be sentimental about: family albums, my old comic books. But I already had all the tokens of remembrance I needed. Might as well jettison the rest.
“Nah, I’ve got everything I’m gonna take.” I worked the key to the storage unit off my key ring and handed it to him. “It’s all yours, if you want it. I ain’t coming back.”
Jared looked a little startled, but he pocketed the key. He thrust out his hand. I thought he wanted a handshake, but his palm held a slender roll of hundreds bound with a rubber band.
“Five hundred here,” he said. “Five hundred more on the other side. You got two days. Shouldn’t take more than one, even if you drive like a grandma, which I don’t recommend. I mean, don’t speed but going too slow’ll raise a trooper’s eyebrows just the same.”
I followed him back around the corner. Jared’s friends all seemed quite a bit older than him, but they were oddly deferent, tossing their butts and straightening up on his arrival. Jared couldn’t be much more than nineteen. I knew he’d been held back at least a year. I wondered how a punk so young had ever garnered so much sway in a drug gang, if that’s what this was.
Jared looked me in the eye. “Remember, these guys up north are serious about their timetables. They get jumpy when there’s major property in transit.” He slapped my back. “Key’s in the ignition. Happy trails, dude!”




Chapter 16: Mule

There was something electric about pulling out of that Handi-Stor in Dad’s truck. My body thrummed with purpose and empowerment. Every contour and texture of that road passed through the steering column and into my fingers.
My mysterious and lucrative cargo added to the vibe making me feel like a pirate, coursing through a sea filled with peril and opportunity. But the intrigue and those hundred-dollar bills in my pocket were just part of what fueled my excitement. I was leaving Florida, returning to my childhood home, starting a new life of professional landscaping, in snow country, no less.
Yet, something felt hollow about the whole affair, like it was all a big bubble about to pop. Feeling hopeful in light of what had just happened to my family seemed inappropriate. 
But why not glory in such a glorious moment? I ignored the imps trying to gnaw away my fragile optimism.
Instead of making a bee-line for the highway, I meandered around Ft. Pierce, in the darkening twilight, circling Dreamland Park, gathering a last glimpse of the place I used to hang out, the place where I met Jenny, for my memory banks. 
I found myself turning down 32nd—Marianne’s street. I slowed down as I went approached her place. I felt like a stalker, even though that wasn’t my motivation at all. I just felt bad for being so rude to her and Jenny at Mom’s funeral party. I’m sure they had cut me some slack considering the circumstances, but that didn’t make it right. 
There was a light on in her house, someone in the kitchen. What would it take to park the truck, run up the walk, ring the doorbell? A quick apology, maybe give her Uncle Ed’s address or phone number, whatever, and then I could be on my way. 
What would it take? Apparently, a lot more courage than I could muster. I kept the truck rolling, right past her house, right up to the stop sign at Boston Avenue.
I sat there a good few minutes, trying to gather something that couldn’t be gathered. It was futile, like trying to herd wisps of smoke. And then I powered across the intersection all the way to Orange Avenue.
I turned left, towards the freeway. It was getting pretty dark. I followed Orange Avenue in a daze as it split and widened. The bloom on my excitement had already faded. I was dreading the night ahead of me, all alone on that road. 
I signaled right at the entrance ramp to 95 North, but there was a car there, all dark, on the grassy verge. It was a Crown Vic, the kind cops use to go semi-incognito, with no bank of lights on the roof. 
I freaked and couldn’t bring myself to turn. I kept going straight, all the way out to King’s Highway, where I headed north, figuring I’d keep on the local roads until I got a little farther out of town. 
My heart was thumping like a sack of squirrels. Was this going to happen to me every time I saw a cop? No way would I ever survive the scrutiny of a routine traffic stop. Every twitch of my body announced my guilt.
I turned on the radio and tried to drown out my anxiety with some loud and jangly alternative rock.
***
I finally made my way onto 95 North somewhere near Vero Beach. I was almost shocked to have made it that far without getting pulled over. Maybe I was being overly paranoid.
Two hours later, I was approaching Jacksonville. It had taken almost that long to calm down, and once I did, I started to feel drowsy. I had those pills Jared had given me, but I was grimy and hungry. Every motel and fast food billboard taunted me. I needed a shower and a meal.
I booked a room at a Motel 6 just outside of Jax for forty-two bucks a night, practically a month’s rental at the Handi-Stor. But what the hell. I was feeling pretty flush for a change.
I didn’t wash up right away, I was too dang famished. I found a Pizza Hut down the road and ordered a large anchovy and artichoke pizza for myself, and almost managed to eat the whole thing. And I had room for dessert—an Oreo CheeseQuake Blizzard from DQ.
Back in my room, I took a glorious shower. I must have stood under that stream a half hour, purging the grime from every pore, steaming up the place. I put on the fresh undies and T-shirt I’d been saving, hopped into bed, and watched TV for the first time in weeks. 
My morale rallied from the depths. Life was becoming a damned rollercoaster ride. I felt a little weirded out about blowing so much cash in just a couple hours. I tried convincing myself that I deserved a treat, but I had been dumpster diving so long, it had become my identity. 
It had actually felt painful handing over that money and seeing that crisp hundred dollar bill rendered into change. But before my self-doubt could set its teeth too deep, sleep settled over me like a merciful succubus.
***
I awoke with the TV still blaring and a musky, mushroom-like smell lingering in my nostrils. The early morning news had something about a mass killing in Acapulco. Drug wars. Not the thing I needed to greet me this morning of all mornings.
That smell. It wasn’t the mildew in the bathroom. It had to be Root. Could I have been visited and not remembered it? It didn’t seem likely. All of my previous visitations had been so vivid.
The only dream I remembered was some stupid thing about wandering around a mall with no pants on, looking for Mom and Dad while trying to replace my missing jeans. I had been having recurring dreams like that one for years. God knows what it symbolized, but seeing Mom and Dad interacting again was kind of bittersweet.
That odor was already fading. I wondered if Root lurked someplace near, just beyond the scope of my vision, waiting for an opportunity to come see me. That was not an unpleasant thought. 
I had little appetite for breakfast after gorging so much the night before, so I just lay there in bed, letting the Today show shine its faux cheer and fluff news all over me. Checkout was at eleven. I stayed put until the last possible minute before getting up and dressing. I wanted my full money’s worth. I even considered taking another shower, but I made do with just brushing my teeth.
I was back on the road by noon, after grabbing a quick bite at a Waffle House. I set the truck on cruise control, right at the speed limit—sixty-five—and planted myself in the right lane, riding the bumper of a moving van like a pilot fish on the ass end of a shark.
I had one tense moment near the border when a state trooper came screaming up behind me with his lights flashing. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” I was hyperventilating and already veering into the breakdown lane, ready to be cuffed and booked, but he blew right past me, his sights set on a little black Mercedes that must have been doing ninety-five. 
When I passed them pulled over in the breakdown lane, I tweaked my speed up to sixty-eight. I had been getting passed like nobody’s business so I figured there was no harm in quickening up my pace. I remembered what Jared had said about sticking out going too slow. 
I made good time across Georgia. I listened to some talk radio but turned it off when this tea party guy and his brainless callers couldn’t stop blaming people like Mom and Dad for losing their own homes. It was Freddie Mac this and Fannie Mae that. I couldn’t decide whether they were really that stupid, or just evil.
I hated politics, I really did. I couldn’t see a whole lot of difference between the two sides. It seemed just a matter of degree. How do you like your soup, Mr. Moody? Cold or too damned cold? Maybe I was an anarchist at heart? 
It was a shame, really. Now that I was old enough to vote, voting in this country had become irrelevant to me.
I stopped for an early dinner at a Subway in Richmond Hill, getting a foot-long meatball sub to go. There was a Super 8 hotel across the street, but it was way too early to stop. I was thinking of driving straight through to Cleveland from here on, counting on Jared’s Ritalin to get me through the night. That would save a few bucks and ease my anxiety about getting there on time.
The truck chortled and spewed out a blue cloud of smoke when I tried to start it up. That was a bit disconcerting. It had never done that before. Dad had bought the truck new in 2003. He had babied it all its life, though there were a hundred-fifty thousand miles on the odometer.
I got out and checked the oil, finding it a little low, but not too bad. Just a little seepage around the pistons, nothing to be too concerned about.
I topped up the oil, turned the engine over and everything seemed okay. I filled the tank at a Sunoco and got back on the road. One more fill-up after this and I would be cruising into Ohio.
The incident sent my nerves jangling again. But the truck accelerated just fine up the ramp. I presumed it was just some fleeting thing. Once I was back on the road, the whole affair shifted off my front burner. 
I tweaked the cruise control to a hair above seventy, which was still only barely keeping up traffic. Dad’s Ron Paul bumper sticker would probably confer a little bit of immunity to the state cops. My out of state plates made me stick out a little bit, but it could have been worse. Mom’s car had a Darwin fish.
Halfway across South Carolina, I got onto Route 26 and made a quick stop at the next exit for a Snapple and an ice cream sandwich. Before I knew it, I was in Columbia, leaving 26 for Route 77, chewing up the miles like a winged demon.
At this rate, I’d be crossing into North Carolina by midnight. I was well ahead of schedule. I’d make it to Cleveland with a twelve hour cushion. I might even have time to catch a nap at Uncle Ed’s before meeting up with Jared’s buddies.
Ten miles from Rock Hill, I was bopping to some college station punk, feeling calm, confident and even cocky about my prospects, when steam began spewing from the seams along the edge of my hood. Before I could even react, something exploded beneath the hood. Frothy, green sludge splattered against the windshield and the world disappeared from view.




Chapter 17: Hosed

The glass turned opaque with slimy, green foam. Turning on the wipers only smeared the gunk around and made things worse. 
I strayed off the passing lane onto the rumble strip. I jerked the wheel right and nearly clipped a van. A car whizzed by, its horn bellowing.
I slammed on the brakes. My tires hopped a curb. I skidded to a halt on a patch of sand and scrubby grass. Heart thumping, I sat there, my hands still gripping the wheel. 
No biggie, it was just a little lost coolant, nothing mechanical. Maybe a hose had popped off. I could clamp it back on, refill the radiator and be on my way.
I stepped out of the truck. Thunderheads billowed along the horizon, piling up against the low hills. A hot and swirly wind blew up from the south. 
I hadn’t paid attention to the signs, but figured I must be pretty close to the North Carolina border. It looked at first like I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but pine and scrub. But there was an exit just ahead, and through the trees a surface road ran parallel to the highway. Just up a little ways was a house and a barn. 
I popped open the hood to reveal a steaming, sopping mess. The upper radiator hose had blown, tearing right through an embolism-like bulge below the clamp. Hot antifreeze sputtered out of the hole like a spent geyser.
I undid both clamps with the screwdriver on my Swiss Army knife, wrapped a rag around it and yanked off the mass of searing rubber, passing it from hand to hand like a hot potato. I threw it down on the sand to cool. 
I considered using the phone Jared had given me to call for a tow, but he had been adamant about me not using it for anything but direct communications with him. And there was no sense in calling him yet. It wasn’t as if drug cartels offered 24-hour roadside assistance. Why freak him out? I had plenty of time to set things right and get back on the road. 
I wrapped the rag back around the destroyed hose and tucked it under my arm. With that exit just ahead, there was a likely a town nearby. Surely there would be a garage or parts store where I could pick up a replacement hose. Ford F150s were probably as common around these parts as pine trees.
I cut through the trees and down a slope to the surface road. As I got close, I could see that the house I was heading for was in horrible shape, with shutters dangling off their hinges and the paint all peeling. The shades were drawn. It didn’t look like anyone lived there, though the fields behind it were plowed and planted with hip-high corn. 
On a whim, I walked up the front walk and rang the doorbell. I heard nothing but the wind and some distant thunder. I was about to walk away when the door swung open and a hunched old woman in a tattered sweater appeared, her eyes boring in like lances. She looked to be about ninety. 
“Brian ain’t home,” she shouted.
“Who? Um, no ma’am, I’m not looking for Brian. You see, my car broke down on—”
“He ain’t here. But he’ll be comin’ home for supper. Come back around five, then you can talk to him.”
“Ma’am, you wouldn’t know of auto parts stores nearby?”
“Heh?” She screwed her face at me like I had said something preposterous about otters.
“You know, like a garage?”
“Ask Brian when he comes. He’ll know what to tell ya.” 
“Okay.” Well, thanks. You have a good day.”
She nodded and attempted a smile, but it turned into more of a scowl. She slammed the door and locked it.
I continued down the road, crossing over a culvert with a muddy creek running through it. An empty two liter Pepsi bottle bobbed in an eddy. I scrambled down and tucked it under a bush so it wouldn’t float away. This would be my source of coolant once I got my new hose. Why waste ten bucks on anti-freeze? Water would do. It was freaking July.
I glanced back at the highway and nearly shit my pants. The lights of a police cruiser were blinking blue and bright as it swooped down like a vulture on my poor truck.
I ducked down behind some milkweeds buzzing with bees and watched him climb out and examine the slick of radiator fluid beneath the grill. He went back and poked around the junk in the back, looking under the mattress. I cringed and ducked down lower.
To my eye, there was nothing suspicious about the truck, no bulges that made it obvious something was stashed below the liner. Jared’s people had done a pretty good job. But a state cop knew what to look for—a telltale scrape or stripped screw might tell him that this bed liner had been installed more than once.
I thought for sure that this marked the end of my drug-running career; that the only running I’d be doing was through the piney woods with helicopters chasing after me. But the cop didn’t mess with the liner. He went back to his car, got a bright orange sticker, scribbled something on it, stuck it on the windshield and went on his way.
I spend a good five minutes in those milkweeds re-learning how to breathe.
***
The surface road met up with a larger cross road near the end of a highway exit ramp. A sign pointed left to an overpass and a town called Alford. To the right was nothing but scrub oak and pine. I went left. 
Alford wasn’t much of a town, just a small cluster of houses and two-story office buildings. But there was a garage with some old-style gas pumps and a weedy lot crowded with rusting hulks. It looked abandoned, but I headed for it anyway. What choice did I have?
I cut across a vacant lot to get there, which turned out to be a mistake, because I got mired in ankle deep mud trying to hop a ditch. Pickerel frogs watched me with mocking stares from the green slime coating the slow-flowing seep. 
The phone in my pocket buzzed. I jumped like there was a snake in my pants and nearly stumbled back into the ditch. I dug the phone out of my jeans. It had to be Jared. Who else knew this number? 
“Yo.”
“Holy cow man, you’re almost in North Carolina!”
“H-how did you know that?”
“A little bird told me.” He chuckled. “Jeez, guy, take it easy on that pedal. You got plenty of time.”
Jared’s guys must have installed some kind of tracking device when they were taking out the bed liner. I kind of doubted they had any kind of in with our all-knowing, almighty God. 
“Don’t worry. I’m not speeding. I’ve been careful. I’ve just kind of been driving straight through.”
“Yeah, except for last night,” said Jared. “Saw you took a break in Jacksonville. Got a girlfriend there or something? Hey man, that’s cool. Good to have you well rested. But if you’re gonna stop, just pick someplace busy is all. Stay out of them small towns. Cops are damned nosy in those places.”
They had probably stashed a GPS transponder somewhere on that truck. But where would they have put it? It really bugged me to know every step of my progress or lack thereof was being watched from afar. I wanted to find that thing and smash it.
“James? You okay, man? You’re not very talky.”
“I’m … tired.”
“Well go and take your break. Remember, the guys in Ohio ain’t expecting you till five o’clock tomorrow.”
“Five? You said I had forty-eight hours. That would make it more like eight.”
“No worries, guy. I don’t see how that’s a problem, seeing as you’re almost in Charlotte.”
“No. It’s no problem. It’s just—”
“Then forget about it, man. I was just checking in. Making sure everything was alright. Everything is fine, right? You sound a little nervous.”
“Oh yeah. Everything’s cool.”
“Hey. You ever want to do this again, James. Do a good job and there’s more work like this out there. I’m just saying.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
I ended the call. So the Ohio folks expected me at five the next day not eight. No big deal. That was still a good twenty-four hours away. I’d be back on the road in an hour or two if all went well.
As I got closer to the gas station, I could see merchandise on the shelves. It looked like the place was still in business, but closed because it was Sunday. I went up to the service bay and pressed my nose against the glass. Along the side of each service bays, taunting me, was a wide assortment of mufflers, fan belts and radiator hoses, one of which I was certain would fit a Ford F150.
I read the hours on the door. “Open M-F 8-5, Saturday 10-4.”
It was five o’clock. The place wouldn’t open for another fifteen hours. It wouldn’t take long at all to replace a hose. Sixteen hours or so cut off my cushion wasn’t exactly fatal to my chances of getting to Cleveland on time, but I would have to get that hose put on first thing in the morning. Maybe I could have the truck towed here and save some time. I could conceivably be out of here by nine. That would give me eight hours to cross three states. Was that even possible? Maybe if I went ninety the entire way.
Maybe I should have fessed up to Jared and let him know that I was experiencing some complications, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell him just yet.
I walked around the station, trying every door, just in case there might be a chance of me sneaking in and helping myself to a hose, but everything was locked up tight. As I came back out front, a blue Chevy pulled up and a guy leaned out the window.
“He’s closed Sundays.” The guy was middle-aged, with a ruddy, pock-marked face and an inquisitive gleam in his heavily hooded, slightly squinty eyes.
“Yeah. I kind of figured.”
“What’s that you got there? Radiator hose?”
“Yeah. I blew it out on the highway.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
“Yeah. Isn’t it?” I chortled nervously. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know if there are any other parts stores around here? Maybe one of the big chains like Pep Boys or Autozone?”
He scowled and shook his head. “Nothing like that around here. Rock Hill, maybe. But I’m friends with the fellow who runs this garage. I could give him a call for you.”
“Can you? Aw, that’d be great!” 
“Hang on.” The guy pulled out his phone and rang up his friend. They made a little too much small talk for my comfort, but once he got down to the nitty-gritty, it seemed to go well.
“Okay … uh … the deal is … he’s at a church function right now. But it’s getting out soon and he could swing on by on his way home. You just stay put and he’ll come find you.”
“Oh, that’s just awesome. Thank you so much!”
“You take care now.” He pulled out onto the road and into the sun hanging low over the pines.
***
Hours passed. I watched the sun dip below the horizon. Twilight spread over the fields like a plague. I was so parched. A damned Coke machine mocked my thirst, locked away behind the glass door. 
While I was waiting I had made several forays out into what passed for a town center and found nothing but a realtor, a mini-post office and an insurance company. That’s it. No restaurants. No motels. No convenience stores.
About nine o’ clock, a white Toyota Tacoma finally pulled up and a burly, bearded guy in a rumpled suit and tie clambered out of it. “You the fella with the blown hose?”
“That’s me,” I said, weary but relieved.
He glanced around the lot. “So where’s your car? Out on the freeway?”
“Yup.”
“Well, let’s see what we got here.” He unlocked his service bay and hauled open the overhead door. “What’s the make and model?”
“Ford. F150. 2003.”
“Alrighty. I’m sure we can hook you up. Upper or lower?”
“Upper.”
“Yeah, it’s a common thing you know, those upper hoses. They get singed or nicked and the next thing you know …” He perused the collection of belts and hoses hanging from his wall. “Hmm. I just saw one the other day. Here’s … uh … no, that’s for a Dodge. Maybe this one? Um … no. Guess not, then. Might be time to order some more. Seem to go through them quick enough.”
“You mean, you don’t have any?” I said, my voice rising in panic.
“Sure looks that way. Could be one stashed on the floor somewhere. Let me give a quick look-see.”
He made the rounds of his workshop, peeking under door panels and in the drawers of a work bench.
He straightened up and wiped his hands on his pants. “Nope. All out. I’ll have to order one for you.”
“Today?”
“Well, no. They’re not open Sundays. First thing in the morning. My supplier’s got a guy who delivers. Should have it by … midday … at the latest.”
A wave of panic expanded from the pit of my stomach. “That won’t do. I gotta be in Cleveland by five tomorrow.”
He bit his lip and shrugged. “Sorry son. Best I can do. One exit further and you would have had a wider choice of establishments. But such is life.” Something flashed in his eyes. “What about … duct tape?”
“Duct tape?”
“Sure. Clean it up with soap. Wrap a shitload of duct tape around the hole. Might hold for a little while.”
“All the way to Ohio?”
“Probably not, but … let’s see … give me that hose.”
I peeled off the rag and handed it to him. He rolled it around in his hands, and peered into the openings.
“That’s one nasty looking rip. The way it balloons out and goes right under the clamp. No, I don’t think tape’s gonna hold this one, not once the engine got up to temperature.”
“What about that next exit. Could we call another garage? Have them tow me?”
“Thing is, they might have been open earlier, but it’s Sunday night now. They still pumping gas but ain’t no service folks there. Probably closed at five. I can tow you into my lot, if you want. That’d at least get you off the highway. You could sleep in your truck. I’ll give the police department a heads up so they leave you alone. Not like there’s any motels in Alford.”
***
I passed up his offer for a tow. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I was desperate to get back on that road as soon as possible. 
I thanked him for coming by and started walking back to the freeway, racking my brain for a Plan B that would get me fixed up quicker.
I wondered if I could risk driving a few miles with no coolant whatsoever, just to the next exit. That would be risky. It could fry the engine and seize the block—permanently. 
I sipped a can of warm Coke the guy at the gas station had given me. It was time to tell Jared the truth about what happened. I got out the phone.
“James? What’s up?”
“Um … small problem.”
“I’m listening.”
“Right after I talked to you. I kinda blew a radiator hose.”
“So? No big deal. Just get a new one. I’ll cover it.”
“The thing is … it’s Sunday … and this happened on the freeway outside this tiny, little town. No one can help me till tomorrow.”
There was a spell of absolute silence. Digital ghosts chattered their teeth across the ether. A cicada call kicked up from a stand of oaks.
“Oh no, James. You can’t do this to me.” His timbre suddenly altered, a warble of fear creeping into his vowels. “You gotta get to Cleveland on time. I went out on a limb for you. My ass is grass if you don’t show up.” 
“But I’ll get there, I’m just gonna be a little late. I need a couple more hours.”
“You don’t understand. That’s a lot of inventory you’re sitting on. They’re gonna freak out when that stuff doesn’t show.”
“So what are they gonna do, fine me?”
“That stuff you’re hauling. It’s pure. Uncut. Top quality. Top dollar. It’s a high priority shipment. These guys, they will punish you. They crack skulls, and that’s if you’re lucky and they got laid that day.”
“Jeezus, Jared. This is my first time. Why’d you have me haul something like that? Why couldn’t I start out small?”
“You were safe, James. They like their couriers, virgins.”
“Well, I’m doing the best I can. They’re just gonna have to cut me a little slack.”
Jared muttered something away from the receiver. “You got no clue, James. They’ll assume the worst. They’ll think you made off with their shipment. They’ll hunt you down. You get that truck going; I don’t care how you do it.”
He clicked off. I stood there with the phone in my hand, staring at a meadow dancing with tall grass and vetch. Ohio seemed even farther away now than before I had left Ft. Pierce. 
Maybe I could walk or hitch the five miles to the outskirts of that larger town—Rock Hill—where I could see for myself whether there was any truck stop or 24 hour garage able to help me.
I took two steps, veered off the road, and laid down in the meadow.
***
It was just plain futile. No two ways about it. There was no way I could get to Cleveland on time. 
Cripes! One stupid hose blows and all my plans go to crap. Not only would I not collect that second tranche, I would have a drug cartel out for my head. 
Maybe there was no way I could go anywhere near Cleveland, even after I got that truck fixed. I couldn’t bring this down on Uncle Ed and his family. I would have to find that transponder, rip it out and run.
It was getting dark out, but I had no inclination to move. My muscles set firm like rigor mortis. A numbness seeped through every inch and pore. It made me not care what happened to the truck or my life’s possessions sitting unattended in the back. It made me not care what happened to those assholes’ drugs.
Problem was, I didn’t care about eating or drinking either. My breaths still came, but it was okay if they stopped. Mosquitoes could take all the blood they wanted from me. All the spiders and ants in South Carolina could tread on me. I didn’t care. Even a bullet to the brain would have been a welcome relief, about then.
And just as I slipped past the threshold of not caring about my fate, a musky smell came on, as strong as if someone had stuffed a truffle up my nose. Roots wrapped around my limbs and pulled me through the tall grass and into the earth. 
Not that I ever lost consciousness. I just shifted to a reality just as potent as the one I had left behind. I was there, again in Root, dangling from a tunnel wall in a crude woven sack.




Chapter 18: Luther

The pod of roots encasing me seemed looser and sparser this time, more a covered hammock than a cage. I grabbed two handfuls and tried pulling them apart, but the strands stiffened and resisted. 
I had no patience for this crap. I squeezed them hard and pulled with all my strength. As the frustration built in my chest, the entire section shriveled and disintegrated under my grip.
“Whoa,” I said to myself, as I wriggled through the gap and dropped to the tunnel floor. 
Rumbles echoed. At first I took them for Carolina thunderstorms leaking through my senses, but storms don’t moan like that. Reapers were lumbering about the tunnels again. Busy creatures, those Reapers. 
This was the same dim passage I had entered last time. But the tunnel seemed calmer, its spasms and waves nearly indiscernible. The individual roots lining its circumference remained restless, squirming and rustling in constant motion, yet never straying into the lumen. 
I climbed the ledge where the lesser tunnels forked. My bare skin rubbed against those scratchy, crawly roots. My nakedness annoyed me, though I had to admit, bare toes were great for climbing here. They really dug into the ropy walls.
Something sparkled in a groove atop the ledge. I plucked it out with my fingernails. It was an earring made of silver and pearl—a humble piece of costume jewelry, the kind of thing that might be sold at a flea market. I wondered if Karla had dropped it. I had nowhere to put it, so I kept it clenched it in my hand.
Remembering her advice, I went left at the branching. The walls were uniformly dim at first, but I soon reached a stretch that danced with enough light to do a disco proud. Blips of light raced along the strands, varying in shape and color and size. I wondered if they carried some kind of Morse code. I wondered what news they transmitted.
I searched for the dull patch in the wall that marked the seam leading to Karla’s chamber. I thought it would be obvious, but it wasn’t this time. When I stepped back and squinted, I spotted a patch where the roots were less neatly aligned than elsewhere, as if they had tidied themselves after being rumpled but hadn’t fallen exactly back into place.
I flattened my hand into a blade and plunged it into the wall. The roots stiffened. It took a severe marshaling of my will to make them part. And when they did, they didn’t just separate, it was like the pod all over again. They withered and crumbled beneath my fingertips. As I shoved my shoulders into the slot and pushed through, I could already see the fibers reconstituting themselves in my wake. 
Ten paces through the viny jungle of roots and there it was—Karla’s hooch, with all its gleaming knobs and thorns. I remembered Karla drawing a circle with her finger to make the seams of her hatch appear and disappear. I climbed up the side and traced a person-sized circle. Nothing happened, besides pricking my thumb on a thorn.
I wrapped on the dome with the back of my hand: shave and a haircut, two bits. I leaned back and waited, and waited some more. Nothing. 
I knocked again, harder, coming away with scraped knuckles.
“Karla!” I shouted. “You in there?”
Something grumbled in the tunnels, its vocalization rising in pitch like an inquiry.
“Karla?”
A dimple formed on the dome, bulged out into a blister and a hatch popped open. A man with a long face and a beard like a billy goat stuck his head out. 
“And what do we have here? A gentleman caller?”
Startled, my toes lost their grip and I slipped down the side of the dome.
“Egads, lad!” said the man, looking down on me. “Weave yourself a loin cloth. Have you no shame?”
There was something wrong with that face. It seemed too grotesque to be human. This was a living caricature of a man, with clown-like tufts of auburn hair, a beaky nose, stark pits below his cheekbones, eyes the pale blue of glacial ice. 
He reached down and his bony fingers gripped my blood-slickened hand and he pulled me through the hatch into Karla’s abode. 
I crumpled to the floor at his feet. He was tall. Not NBA tall, circus freak tall. He wore a suit of something black and satiny, with a brilliant white shirt and a red bow tie. A top hat and a cane rested on Karla’s table. 
He pulled out a handkerchief and daubed at the blood I had smeared on his insanely long fingers. I glanced about the chamber. Several of Karla’s tapestries had been torn down and shredded. Some of the roots that had comprised them had reverted to their native state, inching out of the wreckage like a swarm of caterpillars.
“Who the devil are you?” said the man.
“I’m … James.” 
“James?” He narrowed his eyes severely. “James, do you know I am?”
“Um … no,” I said. “Should I?”
“Preposterous! You can’t just barge into places like this without an invitation. You need to come prepared to pay the proper respects.” He leaned in close. “You need to know who you’re dealing with.” 
He straightened up and perked his ears. “Ah, here she comes.” He strode across the room, tore down another tapestry and blew a gash in the wall with a swipe of his hand. 
Karla stood staring on the other side, a sack slung over her back.
“Luther? What are you doing here? What did you do to my house?” She stepped into the chamber.
“Quality inspection, my dear, and I must say, I am terribly disappointed. These hangings are horrid. I can’t allow them. I must say that is the most awful replica of an historical tapestry I have ever seen. The Battle of Hastings? Really? What made you think this might pass for décor?”
“It is from my memory. I happen to like it.”
“It’s not the topic, your execution is the problem. It looks like a child’s impressions rendered in crayon. You can do better, is all I am suggesting.”
“This is my chamber, Luther. I can decorate it however I want.”
“Run my darlings, run!” he said to the inchworms escaping from the savaged murals lying crumpled on the floor. “Before she weaves you into something even more hideous.” Colored strands turned brown and rough and crawled towards the gash.
“I thought we agreed,” said Karla. “No surprise visits, especially when I am not here.”
“I expected you to be home. Do I not have a right to call on my filial spawn now and then? And what about him?” He extended a bony finger towards me. “Was he expected?”
Karla emptied her sack on the table. There was silverware in it this time, along with a pair of wire-framed eyeglasses.
“Out scavenging again, eh? Like a magpie, you are. Collecting your pretty little baubles, not to mention … interlopers.” His gaze hunted me down and pinned me like a butterfly.
“If you don’t understand why I do this,” said Karla. “You never will.”
The tall man swept his hand in a wide loop over the remnants of the fallen tapestry and it disintegrated into cottony puffs like milkweed seeds. They swirled away in a cloud.
“Get out!” said Karla. “Out of here. Go trash your own palace. Leave my stuff alone.”
The tall man ducked through the gash and turned to face us. “One hour. Bring the interloper to the square. Mandatory assembly … for introduction and … inspection … and if he passes muster … assimilation. But please slap some clothes on the poor lad first.” He reached up and motioned as if to grab an imaginary zipper pull. He brought his hand down and the rip in the wall sealed behind him. 
Karla’s had altered her hair drastically. It was long now where it had been shaved close to her scalp, shorter on the side where it had brushed against her shoulder. A large flap of bangs still concealed one eye.
“I am so sorry about this,” she said. “And sorry that you are back.”
“Sorry?”
“Coming back means life is bad. You are not happy. Is just … I wished for you … better.”
“Oh,” I said, remembering the prickly object in my palm. “Here.” I unclenched my hand and displayed the earring. “This is for you.”
“A gift? For me? How nice!”
Her eyes glistened. She came over and pecked my cheek and cooed over the cheap earring as if it were pure platinum set with diamonds.
She looked around the chamber, spotted the kilt I had worn the last time, and tossed it to me.
“You see? I save this for you.”
“Uh. You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of jeans, would you?”
“Ah! Who am I? Your tailor? You want pants. Weave them yourself.” 
“Yeah, right. I’ll make do with the dress for now.” I slipped it on and settled down onto a Persian rug with a dense and spongy pile.
Karla rummaged around her heaps of belongings, picked up some crumpled thing that looked like a dust rag and tossed it to me.
“This is your shirt from before. Sorry, it is a bit wrinkled.”
I shook the shirt open, finding it smudged and ripped as well, but that was the least of its issues. One of the sleeves had migrated to the center of the back and the other arm hole had knitted itself closed. 
“How the heck am I supposed to wear this?”
“Oh!” She took it back from me, all embarrassed. “It is shifting. It is not stable. This happens when the Weaving is not firm. Everything comes apart. I am not so strong a Weaver.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I can go without. Not like it’s cold in here.”
She spread the blouse in her lap and ran her fingers over it, guiding the sleeve back where it belonged, mending the tears, rubbing out the dirt. “So how are things with you? Not so good, I expect?”
“Not so good. But hey, isn’t it that way for everybody? I mean, isn’t that why we’re here?”
“True, but after some time, we learn the coping. It makes life easier on the other side. We only need to stay alive.” 
“Coping?”
She sat down across from me and brushed her bangs down to cover her left eye more completely.
“Coping. Surfing. They are skills for maximizing our time in Root,” she said. “You seem already to be making progress. You escape your pod and found my house by yourself, no? Or did Luther help you?”
“Nope, it was all me. It was easy this time.”
“I thought so. It is not at all like Luther to intervene. He likes to keep the Reapers well fed, he says. But he does respect those who show … eh … what is the word? Initiate?”
“Initiative,” said. “What’s the deal with him tearing down your embroideries?”
“His is picky about my craft. I don’t know why he cares so much. It is not like we are selling them. What a fool! He thinks I have bad taste. Do you see how he dresses? He looks like the Abraham Lincoln. Bah! I think his aesthetic is kitsch. He should not hold his nose so high.”
“So who is that guy? Is he like in charge of things here or something?”
“Luther would like you to think so. He thinks he is boss of our colony. The place he makes—Luthersburg—it just another big cave. Souls collect here only because it is the first place we see that feels like home. But Bern says there are other colonies, bigger and grander than Luthersburg. Maybe someday we go see.”
She handed the blouse over to me and I tried pulling it on. It was in much better shape now, but it was still a couple of sizes too small.
“It … doesn’t fit. And the buttons are on the wrong side still. And ... uh … can we lose this frilly collar?”
“Ah! I am not your seamstress. I am only trying to help. You want something better, Weave it yourself.”
“Yeah, but … how?”
“Take this shirt and change it. How you like.”
“How?”
“Tell the threads what you want them to be. Make them move and change. They will listen. They exist to serve us.”
“Make—me—a—T-shirt,” I droned. 
“No, not like that. With your mind and heart. Remember something real, how it looked and felt in your hands. Pass this to the roots. They will follow.”
What came to mind was my old brown ‘Firefly’ T-shirt with the spaceship ‘Serenity’ silk-screened on the front. That had been my favorite shirt for years until Mom finally intercepted the faded and hole-riddled thing in the wash and put it out of its misery.
I closed my eyes, laid my hands on that wad of cloth and conjured the feel of that shirt fresh out of the dryer. I remembered the hole in the sleeve I had made worse by poking and twirling my finger into it when I was bored.
Something changed in the wad, but not in the way I wanted. I lifted my hands to find a bristly, writhing mass of roots. Instantly repulsed, I fought an urge to cast the whole mess away.
“Keep at it! It is working. You are doing it!”
Could have fooled me, but I took her word for it, and went right back at it, remembering the time I had rescued that same shirt from the Goodwill box, crawling inside with a flashlight after mom decided to get all charitable with my prized possessions.
Things began to happen. The bristly mass flattened and softened. I could feel the fibers divide and merge and weave in and out each other. I kept it all going by keeping the image of that shirt alive in my mind and nudging its properties towards my goal. 
When I opened my eyes, everything slowed. Some of the fibers curled and reverted back to roots.
“Don’t look!” said Karla.
I jammed my eyes shut and the process continued until I had a faded brown T-shirt full of holes draped over my hands. The patchy ink on the front of it was barely discernible.
“Wow … I am impress,” said Karla, slack-jawed.
“Dang it. Why isn’t it brand new?” I said. “I wanted a new one.”
“Your feelings must be stronger for the old one.” She reached out and stroked the shirt. “I have to say, I am amazed by the level of finishing. And it feels stable. There is nothing for me to fix. I thought I will need to teach you but you … you already have it. This is very unusual. You are … special.”
I was too busy slipping on the T-shirt to be impressed with her flattery. “Yeah … well, that was a lot of work for a crappy shirt. I think I almost popped an artery in my brain.” 
“It will come easier with time,” she said. “You are clearly destined for great things.” 
Her voice had taken on this breathy, fawning tone as if she had just discovered I was a movie star or something. It really bothered me. It was like I had become a different person in her eyes. I wanted to tell her to cut it out, that this was James Moody she was looking at, not some dang celebrity. 
She passed her hands over the material, not quite touching and the holes in the sleeves patched themselves. The tightness in the shoulders relaxed. “Remember, hands are good for weaving too. Use them to project your intentions. They are an extension of your mind.”
“Will do,” I said, pushing her hands away gently. “That’s enough. I just wanted the holes patched. A little bit of wear and tear is fine. Adds character.” 
Karla got off her chair and sat across from me on the rug. “Now I teach you about the surfing,” she said. “Tell me … what is going on in your life? On the other side?”
***
I caught Karla up on everything that had happened to me since the last visitation. It felt weird, saying everything out loud, and having someone listen to the whole thing. Things that had been swirling in my brain all tight and tangled seemed to loosen up. I began to see things that had been obscured before.
“That is all?” she said, when I was done.
“What do you mean that is all? I’ve gotten myself into some serious trouble.”
She rolled her eyes. “The trivia that brings some people here I cannot believe. But … it is your heart … your soul that brings one here. Some people are just more sensitive. Small tragedies are made bigger for them.”
“Small? You think it’s no big deal that both my parents died within a half a year of each other and now I’m in trouble with a bunch of gangsters?”
“Yes. Is no big deal. Compared to some.”
“Jesus! “I’m almost afraid to ask how you got here.”
She shook her head. “You can ask me, but I will not tell you.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It is how it is.” I glimpsed something behind the pits of her pupils that chilled me, a black hole from which all who entered might never return. I didn’t dare press for her story. Not yet, anyways.
“Well, what would you do in a situation like mine?”
She kept touching her bangs, making sure they covered that left eye. “One. Sell the drugs yourself. Two. Go far, far away to some island with no people.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I am serious. That is what I would do.”
“You don’t care that these drugs hurt people? That they wreck some people’s lives?”
“They also give solace. They make some truly hopeless lives tolerable.”
“Yeah, but … only for a little while. And then you need some more.”
“I would kill for one minute with some heroin,” said Karla.
“Say what?”
“I have no access to any solace, other than Root. You have an entire truck full. Consider yourself lucky.”
“It’s probably just cocaine,” I said. “Ain’t gonna do shit to make me feel better.”
“Then I would just sell it, and go away.”
“Wanna come with? You can. I’ll come find you.”
“I cannot.”
“Why not? You’re alive, aren’t you? On the other side?”
“Barely.”
“So, tell me where you live. I’ll come find you.”
Her head tilted down. “You cannot.”
“Why not?”
“Because … it would disrupt … my surfing.”
“What?”
A deep rumble rattled the dome. Man, it was close. And then it was joined by a bunch of lesser, but more musical peals.
Karla smirked. “Do not pee your dress. It is not the Reapers.”
“Then what is it?”
“It is Luther. He is ringing the bells.”
“Bells?”
“He wants us at the square.” An impish smile spread across her face. “Now I get to show you off to my friends. Don’t you dare disappear this time!”
***
She led me through a shaggy, root-lined sleeve much like the one that connected her dome to the tunnels, but it widened and cleared out into a hallway painted canary yellow above, with white wainscoting below. The hall led to a sitting room with a floral print sofa, and a curtained window flanking an oaken door.
“You be careful around Luther,” said Karla. “He does not handle disrespect well. Especially from someone new.” 
“So I mouth off, what’s he gonna do? Spank me?”
“I am telling you, you need to be careful. Luther is a Weaver of Weavers. He can weave flesh, souls. And I am not kidding. It is for true. We can get away with some sass because we are like family. He needs us. But you? Is another story.”
I went up to the window and peeked outside. “Whoa!” I said.
A cobbled town square stretched a good hundred yards to a row of buildings that looked like something out of a Bavarian fairy tale, with their dark, geometric timbers contrasting with pale stucco. A massive stone church loomed over them all, its copper-clad steeple gone green with verdigris. 
Swallows swooped about the chimneys, hawks hovered high above in a blue sky mottled with puffy clouds.
There was something odd, though, about that sky. The clouds morphed and drifted like real clouds, but there was a texture to them evocative of brush strokes, as if they had been painted onto an enormous canvas with oils.
“Luther made all this? Really?”
“Welcome to Luthersburg,” she said, pushing open the heavy door. The scents of lilacs and freshly baked bread wafted in. “Come! I see Lille and Bern. I am excited for them to meet you.”
She burst out on to the square. I hung back, hesitant. She waved for me to join her. “Come on! Don’t be shy.”
I followed her out. The place reminded me of “Disneyworld”—one of those fake European town squares, scrubbed clean, with every detail cute and quaint, every rock identically faceted as if each were created from the same mold. 
I saw no signs that this urban landscape was woven from roots. The bricks bore glaze and char marks from firing in a kiln. The stone cobbles had crystalline inclusions, flakes of mica and facets that had been shaped with chisels.
The square was nearly vacant. A handful of people converged on the center of the plaza where an array of benches surrounded a stepped, stone platform where a couple sat on a bench holding hands.
“It is pretty, yes?” said Karla.
“Yeah,” I said, unable to keep the nervousness out of my voice. 
“There are more souls coming here than what you see,” said Karla. “What you see is the tip of the iceberg. We cannot be here all at once. But things are unusually quiet, it seems.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Never cared much for crowds.”
“If this was mine, I would make a different kind of piazza,” she said. “Something with a fountain and trees and more places to sit. This one I find too drab. Too … German. But this is what Luther he likes. Have you ever seen Trevi or Espania … eh … Spanish Steps in Roma?”
“Nuh-uh,” I said. “Never been out of the US, except for the Bahamas.”
“Well, if you ever get a chance to go, that’s the kind of piazza I prefer.” 
My gaze drifted over to the central platform, where an obelisk and podium were flanked by pedestals bearing winged gargoyles.
“Come see Bern and Lille!” She made a beeline for the couple on the park bench.
Their heads turned our way in unison as we approached. There was something odd about their faces. Their skin was waxy and too smooth, as if they wearing many layers of makeup. It reminded me of those rich people in South Florida who had every square inch of their faces cut and lifted and botoxed until they looked like mannequins. 
“And who do we have here, Mädchen?” said the man, who had a cane with a jade handle propped beside him. A bowler hat perched slightly askew on his brow. His billowy shirt was contained beneath an intricately embroidered vest.
“Bern, it’s the glow-worm!” said the woman, who was practically smothered in silk scarves, beneath which she wore something that looked like a purple bathrobe. “Remember him? From the tunnels?”
“This is the same boy?”
“Bern, Lille? This is James.”
They rose from the bench and each in turn took my hand and kissed me on alternate cheeks, three times.
“How are you feeling, Lille?” said Karla. “You were a bit under the weather before, no?”
“Terrible,” she said. “I’m coming apart again.” She ducked her head and covered her face with her hands.
“But you look fine,” said Karla.
“I keep telling her that, but she doesn’t listen to me,” said Bern. “I think she doesn’t like my cosmetic work.”
“Sorry my dear, your aesthetic sensibilities may be fine, but you just don’t have Luther’s panache. When he does me, I can go for days without worrying about threads popping out of my cheeks.”
Karla pulled me close and whispered. “Lille survived a fire. She is self-conscious about her looks.”
“A fire? Here?”
“No. On the other side.”
“What are you telling this boy?” said Lille, scowling.
“Just explaining how this place works,” said Karla. “He is very new, but I have to tell you, he has wicked skill for someone so green.”
“Oh, believe me, we already know,” said Bern. “We came across him in the tunnels ages ago. He was in a tight pod up near the branching. Of course, we would have helped him, if he had needed it, but this was an early visitation. He reverted rather quickly. But even then, we saw him, still in his pod, already influencing the lights.”
“When was this?” said Karla, amazed.
Bern and Lille looked at each other.”
“Months ago, I suppose,” said Lille.
“Yes, months.”
“I should tell you, Bern and Lille help me when I first was visit. They were the ones who free me from my pod and take me to their cottage. They teach me how to Weave too, though I learn much more slow than you.”
“We do our part, saving a few souls now and then,” said Bern.
“Such a terrible waste,” said Lille. “All those souls getting Reaped without having a chance to succeed in the Liminality. I truly believe that Weaving is in the heart of every soul, you just have to show them the possibilities.”
“Sad, but most of them don’t listen,” said Bern. “They can’t wait to be Reaped.”
“But you see James,” said Lille. “It doesn’t have to be that way. Weaving lets us create our own little Heavens.”
“Or a big one, in Luther’s case,” said Bern.
“But isn’t it … temporary?” I said. “Don’t we all have to die some day? Some way or another?”
Bern and Lille looked at each other conspiratorially. 
“Maybe,” said Bern. “Maybe not.”
“I think we all can become like Luther,” said Karla. “Maybe it is vain, but I hope someday to have powers like him.”
“Well, I hope that day comes soon, my dear,” said Lille. “And then we can all move to Karlaburg.”
“Cinque Terra, I will call my place.”
“Oh?”
“Shush everyone, here he comes,” whispered Bern.
“He has called this public assembly to greet you,” said Lille. A flash of worry sparked in her eyes. “Do not be alarmed by his appearance. He is just a man like you. Just remember, he is a Weaver of souls.”
“I know,” I said. “We’ve met.”
***
At first I thought it was some giant bird hopping across the rooftops, a huge thing, more stork than Great Blue Heron, but it was Luther. He now sported six, armored and articulated legs attached to a horse’s trunk, giant black-feathered wings and a scorpion stinger dangling over the entire affair. Only his face and upper torso remained human. 
“Jesus Christ” I sidled behind the bench.
“Oh, he’s just showing off,” said Lille.
“He’s such a drama queen,” said Bern. 
Luther galloped across the plaza, his six legs striding in perfect synchrony one tripod at a time. He wore a queer little green vest with brass buttons and gold brocade. A captain’s cap perched on a frizzy puff of ginger hair. His proportions were all wrong. His head looked too small, his face too pinched for the length and bulk of his arms. 
“I gather you here today,” he bellowed, as he pranced before them on the square, his voice pitched high and edged with a rasp. “To meet our latest supplicant.” He looked down at me. “Take a bow, son and tell them your name.”
I turned to face the sparse crowd gathered around. “Hi y’all.” I ducked my head, unable to meet their eyes. “I’m James.”
“Let me emphasize to you, James, that your residence in our community is conditional. We are a guild of Weavers. We do not tolerate charity cases.” He glared at Karla. “Thus, I will require you to pass a basic examination of competency to allow you to remain. After all, we have standards to maintain.”
“But the boy already has shown great skill,” said Bern. “Lille and I, we’ve seen it.”
“And me too,” said Karla. “That shirt he is wearing. He shapes it himself.”
Luther pursed his lips and squinted. “I require evidence not anecdote,” said Luther. “He needs to demonstrate some basic competency, right here, right now. Otherwise, it’s back to the tunnels. We can’t go cutting down every sad little soul we pass because we feel sorry for them. The Reapers must have their morsels. Don’t want them getting too agitated now, do we?”
“So we save a soul now and then. Why not?” said Lille. “It’s not like your silly little burg is getting overpopulated.”
“He freed himself … by himself! … from a pod,” said Karla. “He can … already … he can Weave.”
“Pfft. Finding one’s way out a sack does not a Weaver make. Any kitten can do that. This one can’t even dress himself properly. Look at him! His kilt has no sporran.”
“He is still learning,” said Karla. “But he is already good. Very good.”
“No Luther, this boy has real skills,” said Bern. “He’s a natural.”
“Make something glow,” whispered Lille. “Wait till he sees your talent for lighting.”
Luther swallowed, making his bulging Adam’s apple bob. “Show me. Weave me something boy. Anything. I don’t care what. A pair of mittens. A sock. Is that too much to ask?”
Karla looked at me and nodded, her expression grave but confident. “Go ahead. Show him what you can do.”
Jitters overcame me. My brain froze. 
“But … there’s nothing to weave here,” I said. “No roots. All this stuff … is real.”
Luther snickered.
“No James,” said Bern. “Everything in root is made of string. Even our flesh. On every scale imaginable, all is made of thread.”
“You can take anything … and change it,” said Lille. “True, some things are harder to budge, but Luther hasn’t locked everything down, I don’t think. The more natural things should be—”
“Don’t help him!” said Luther. “Let him figure it out on his own.” He stomped his insect feet and they clicked and clattered against the cobbles.
“I need time,” I said. “I don’t like being put on the spot.”
“Stage fright?” said Luther.
“Look closer, James,” whispered Karla. “Look and you can see the fibers. And then you will know.”
I stooped and picked up a loose stone that had rested by the leg of one of the benches, next to Bern’s scuffed brown shoe. 
“Remember what I told you … about touching,” said Karla.
“Leave the Weaver boy to his own Weaving, please” said Luther, arching his wings, swinging his tail. I couldn’t take my eyes off his stinger.
I wrapped my hands around the stone, feeling every curve and groove. I slid my thumbnail across it and it ratcheted across some fine striations. I held the stone before my face. I could see fibers now, hardly thicker than the grooves on a thumb print.
I closed my eyes and tried to conjure an image of something else about the size of that stone. My mind drifted to that box of my mom’s old knick-knacks sitting in the back of Dad’s truck. She had all kinds of crap, souvenir mugs, wooden carvings. 
When I was little she used to keep them locked up in a cabinet to keep them away from my curious and destructive little fingers. I must have spent hours staring at those things behind that glass. 
I pressed my fingers into the stone and sent myself back to those days, at the old apartment in Cleveland, with Dad in the living room, reading his Sports Illustrated and mom with a pot of corn chowder on the stove. 
The stone softened and then collapsed, turning into a repulsive ball of writhing, wiry larvae-like creatures. I almost dropped them on the plaza. 
“Keep hold! Don’t let go,” said Karla.
The larvae shrank as they shifted and then stiffened. A new, slender and elongated shape asserted itself as the surface went from bristly to fuzzy to slick. It hardened and froze into a something cool and glossy.
“Okay, that’s enough,” said Luther. “Let’s see what wonders you have wrought to that stone.”
I opened my hand. Karla gasped. Bern and Lille started clapping.
A perfect replica of Mom’s glass giraffe slipped from my trembling fingers and shattered against the pavement.
***
Karla cleared some of her furniture away and dragged a great big futon to the center of her chamber. I sat in a chair and sipped on a cup of her strange colorless tea. 
“Did you see Luther’s face?” she said, beaming. “He was not expecting. I was not expecting … none of us were.”
“No idea how I did it. It just happened.”
“No, it did not just happen. You made it happen. You are already a very good Weaver. It is amazing.”
She tossed some pillows onto the futon and made it up with some gauzy blankets. 
“There,” she said. “For us.”
I choked on my tea and sputtered. “Excuse me?”
“What’s wrong? Is big enough for two, no?”
“Um … sure … but—“
“Is for when we get sleepy. You don’t think I am expecting the hanky-panky do you? What kind of slot do you think I am?”
“Slut,” I said.
“What?”
“The word is slut … and no … I don’t think … I just—”
“Get off it, huh?” She plopped down on the bed. “I am tired. I plan to sleep. I am just suggesting that you should rest too. Even your soul gets tire. Our conscious cannot go twenty-four hours, all the time.”
I sat scrunched on the chair, tucking the hem of my kilt, nerves thrumming.
“I’m not tired,” I said. “Not in the least.”
“Well, I am tired. Very tired. So what will you do, sit and watch me sleep?”
“Sure. I’ll be your guard … your night watchman.”
She pulled off her moccasins and slipped under the covers. “You know, that sounds nice. Someone to watch over me. Like the song.”
“Don’t know that one,” I said.
I saw her staring straight up. I followed her eyes to the stained glass dove that topped her dome.
“I like your little bird window. Did you make it yourself?”
“Thank you, yes,” she said. “But it is not my design. I copy it from Vaticano.”
“The Vatican?”
“San Pietro.”
Distant rumbles sent vibrations rippling through the walls.
“Christ, that’s a big one,” I said. “Do Reapers ever sleep?”
“Eh … that is a good question. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I never go where they stay.”
“Do you ever worry … about getting Reaped?”
“Nah,” she said. “I am a Weaver. They never Reap us.”
“Really? Why not?”
“They don’t dare. They are not stupid. They know Luther can turn them into a pile of worms. They are scared of us.”
“Reapers … scared?”
“I mean, I think so. I hope so. They don’t chase us. Only the pods. They like the fresh meat. Even you … maybe … you are spoiled to them now. Shall we try? You go stand in the tunnel and see if they eat you?”
“Real funny,” I said. “Why don’t you go first?”
“I am not scare of them. I respect them, but I am not scare. And you should not be, either. They are just animals.” She laid her head back and closed her eyes. “Especially not you. I think you are already a powerful Weaver.”
“Nah. I’m just James Moody. Never been anything special. Never will be.”
“Shush. Save your whining for the other side. Now we are here in Root. All the rules have changed.” She yawned and sighed. “I am very sleepy. Is okay if I make the light lower?”
“Um … sure.”
She raised her hand and the ceiling darkened as if the implied sun behind the window with the dove had slipped behind a thick cloud.
“Pretty nifty … you Weavers.”
“Is nothing. You can do this and more, I am sure.”
Her head sank heavy onto her pillow and her breath softened into a gentle wheeze. I pulled the covers up over her shoulders and went back to the chair. The chair legs scraped harshly against the floor. 
“James? Are you still here?” She spoke without opening her eyes. 
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.” 
“No. It’s okay. I’m just glad … you are still here … to watch over me.”
“Not a problem.”
She drifted off again and right then I realized that this—right here—was where I wanted to be. I never wanted to go back to that broken truck and that drug deal gone bad. But as soon as that feeling hit me, my fingers started to tingle. I was afraid to look at them, but I did, and those translucent spots again blotched my skin.
“Oh Christ! Karla! It’s happening again!”
“What is happening?” she said, sleepily.
“I’m falling apart.”
She propped herself up on her elbows and looked up at me.
“Oh!” She looked alarmed at first, but then her face softened and she smiled. “But this is a good thing. It means you still have hope. It is better not to be here. When you are here so short, it means you find a way to make your life on the other side tolerable.”
“I don’t want to go! Can’t you make it stop?” 
“No,” she said. “I am sorry, but that is beyond any Weaving.”
“Tell me! Where can I find you … on the other side?”
“Find me? Forget about it. We Weavers are a sorry bunch on the other side. You do not want to become like us.”
“I want to see you again. Will I?”
She sighed and gave me a sad look. “Probably. Though I wish not, for your sake.”
The tingles in my hand spread to the rest of my body. Something cold splatted against my face and seeped into my clothes. I held up my arm and could see tall grass waving through the emptiness outlining what had been my elbow. My flesh became a window to the other side.
“Ciao James. It was nice to see you.”
“But—”




Chapter 19: Land of the Cleves

My senses snapped and sizzled back into place. I lay inert, on a slope, staring up at a dense and swirly cloudscape, its underside brushed by the sodium glow of a thousand street lamps, its gaps backlit by the approach of dawn.
Lightning stitched the horizon. Black knobs—funnel clouds—jutted down like judging fingers. A cacophony of grumbles rebounded across the fields and hills. I pictured legions of Reapers advancing across the landscape.
A beam panned the overpass like a search light and a truck whined past. Reality, in a dose pure and unadulterated, struck me cold and hard. The webs clogging my brain blew away.
I rolled onto my knees, all queasy and disoriented. A blast of wind mussed my hair. Great gobs of rain splatted against my face.
I got up and plodded through the sopping weeds, fighting the wind, my jeans collecting burrs and hitchhikers. Marble-sized hail pelted and stung. A lightning bolt cracked into the low hills across the highway, not an instant of lag between flash and thunder. 
“Go ahead! Fry my ass!” I displayed both middle fingers to the sky. “See if I care!”
I crossed the overpass and spotted my truck still stranded on the shoulder, illuminated by the occasional passing headlight. I felt buoyed to see it, though I’m not sure why. I wasn’t going anywhere without that radiator hose. 
Still, it might be nice to go down and curl up in the cab. At least it would be dry inside. I could towel off, scrounge a pack of chewing gum or even a Slim Jim, from the deepest recesses of the glove compartment, something to calm the pangs cramping my stomach.
I had at least one bag of clothes protected under plastic. My books, though, had only cardboard between them and the elements. 
No biggie. I was getting used to shedding possessions. With every loss, I had a few less things to worry about.
The glow of my watch showed me it was a little after five a.m.—two hours before the garage opened up. What the heck? I supposed I might as well take up the owner’s offer to call in that parts order and come and tow me to his shop. I was going to be late getting to Cleveland now, no matter what.
Jared had said his bosses had zero tolerance for lateness. What would they do, would they whip me once for every minute I was tardy? Fine me? Unleash their pit bulls? So why should I bother?
It made me think I might be better off taking whatever I could carry from the truck and walking away from everything. I could get on a bus and go to California, or maybe Canada. Somewhere tucked away in all my stuff was a valid passport.
Problem was, that truck was linked to me—perhaps criminally. And eventually, some cop would find the booty hidden under that liner and track me down. I might be better off drenching it all in gas and torching it.
Who was I kidding? As if I could ever bring myself to inflict such harm on the Temple of Roy.
Maybe I should just skip the all the suspense and turn myself in. Given the likely scale of my haul and the semi-stolen nature of the vehicle I was driving, that would probably land me in prison. 
Which, in and of itself, didn’t bother me much, but it would likely cost Jared’s employers a ton of profit. They probably had people in the pen who could take me down, as an example to others if not merely for spite.
It looked like I had no way out of this mess. All of my options were crap.
At least the storm seemed to be easing. Only the edge of it seemed to have brushed Alford. The main body was passing north and from the looks of those clouds, those poor suckers had tornadoes to worry about. I was no stranger to strong storms in Central Florida, but this thing looked like a different sort of beast altogether.
I turned up the surface road that led past the farmhouse with the old lady who had thought I had come to see Brian. A truck was now parked next to the barn. Apparently, Brian was home. 
It took me a moment to realize, but this wasn’t just any old truck. The chassis was jacked up high on monster wheels. Chromed dual exhaust stacks gleamed under the floodlights. And from that white scripted blue oval smack in the middle of the tail gate, I was pretty sure I was looking at a late model Ford 150. Inside that hood was a radiator hose that Brian wasn’t using at the moment.
***
I snuck up the driveway, keeping tight to the rain-drenched yews that lined it. I was sopping wet. Every breeze that kicked up gave me the shivers. 
The lights were all dark in the house except for one dim bulb in the kitchen over the range. I took a deep breath and darted out from the bushes, diving low onto the damp gravel, crawling on my elbows under the front bumper. 
A calico cat trotted by, stopping in its tracks when it saw me. It crouched on its haunches and stared a while before deciding I was no big thing. It sat up, swished its tail and started licking its paws.
All that ground clearance beneath those monster wheels was a blessing. It gave me plenty of room to work from below, though the upper hose was a bit of a stretch. I undid the clamps with the screwdriver on my pocket knife and yanked. A gush of warm antifreeze sloshed down the front of my shirt and splashed all over my face.
That dang stuff tasted sweet. I sputtered and spit out the traces, remembering someone telling me how toxic it was. 
I was worried that Brian’s F150 might be too new, its radiator hoses incompatible with Dad’s, but it looked pretty much the right girth, with bends in all the right places.
I was about slide out from underneath when the screen door creaked open.
“Suzy! Breakfast! Soo-ZEE!” the second syllable soaring like she was calling hogs.
“Better go have your chow, Sue,” I whispered. “Momma’s callin.’”
The cat ran off around the corner of the barn. I heard the screen door slam. But then a pair of fuzzy, pink slippers appeared, scuffing along the gravel drive. Threadbare pajamas rode up swollen ankles.
I squirmed a little farther under the truck, sliding back under the differential. About halfway down to the road the old lady stooped and groaned. Gnarled hands reached for a newspaper in a plastic sheath.
I held my breath as she made her way back to the house, wedding band clicking on the body of the truck as she braced her hand on it. She paused at the corner of the barn, turned and hobbled back slowly, stopping beside a puddle of green antifreeze.
“Oh my,” she said. “Oh my, oh my.”
She trotted back to the house in quick little steps. The door slammed. Clutching the stolen hose, I scrambled out from under the chassis and hurled myself headlong down the grassy sward leading down to the creek, tossing glances over my shoulder as I fled. A light flicked on upstairs.
I found the Pepsi bottle right where I had stashed it, filled it with muddy runoff from the ditch and ran my tail back to the truck, cutting through a patch of pines. 
I popped the hood and jammed the hose on, not even bothering to tighten the clamps. Two liters of ditch water were not nearly enough to fill the cooling system, but I wasn’t about to go back for more. 
I hopped inside the cab and turned the key. The starter only whinnied at first, but a couple hiccups later and I was rolling down the shoulder getting up to speed.
A barrel-chested guy in boxers came running down the driveway—Brian, I presumed. He swooped down, picked up a rock and heaved it. Dang if it didn’t nearly reach my truck. This Brian had a major league arm. I stomped on the accelerator and made Alford fade in my rear view. 
***
Two exits later, I pulled off the highway. I probably should have gone a little farther down the road, but I was hungry and with what little water I had time to add, I didn’t think the truck could go much farther longer without overheating. 
As the rising sun bled over the clouds in the eastern sky, I got that hose clamped down tight and filled the coolant tank up to the brim with a gallon of Diamond Springs from a Seven-Eleven. The aroma from the pancake shop across the street made my stomach whine and my mouth weep.
As I was changing my greasy shirt, envisioning the steaming stack of blueberry pancakes in my future, the phone buzzed.
It was Jared, of course.
“What the fuck, James? I go to bed, get up and I’m seeing you’re still in the same spot. What’s going on?”
“Actually, I’m back on the road. Everything’s cool. I fixed the hose issue.”
“It’s been like twelve hours! It took you that long to find a freaking radiator hose?”
“Sunday night. Everything was closed.”
“Jesus, dude! You could have called me. The guys on the other end are freaking out. They’re sending a posse after you.
“A posse? What are they, cowboys? Listen, the truck’s fixed. I’m on the road again. And I got plenty of time to make it if I go fast.”
“Too late. You just stay put. Some folks are coming down from Raleigh to take over the job.”
“Hold on! I can still be in Cleveland by five. I’ve got this, Jared. I can do it.”
“No way. You’d have to drive a hundred the whole way. You just stay put and do what they tell you when they get there. They’ll be taking the shit off your hands. Oh, and don’t expect them to pay you. You’ve already got all you’re gonna get.”
“What do you mean? You said five hundred—”
“That was for getting it to Cleveland. Halfway means half pay.”
“Fuck you. I’m getting back on the road.”
“No James, these guys, they—”
I hung up.
The phone immediately rang again. I ignored it. 
No time for pancakes, I ran back to the Seven-Eleven and got a box of mini-donuts and a carton of chocolate milk. I ripped the orange sticker off my windshield, stuffed it down a storm drain and headed for the freeway.
***
I drove four hours straight at seventy-five—quick enough to make good time, but not fast enough to draw the attention of a speed trap. Of course, my plate number was probably all over their databases by now. I might be just as vulnerable going fifty-five. 
The phone buzzed again. This time I answered it. 
“Yeah?” 
“Okay guy, you lucked out. The Cleveland folks are pleased with your progress. They’ve called off the dogs.”
“That’s … nice.” 
“Um … James … in the future … you might want to think twice about taking off without permission. These guys we work for? Wildcats make them nervous. They like team players. Understand?”
“Sure.”
“You got the okay to be a little late. So slow down. They want you there in one piece.”
“When they gonna make up their minds? Do they want me there at five or not?”
“I’m just saying, you can relax. They see you’re back on track. No need to sweat.”
“I’ll get there when I get there,” I said. “I just want to get this over with.”
“Okay, man. Listen. I’m going to text you the address once you get a little closer. Don’t write it down. I want you to memorize and delete it. Can you handle that?”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”
Something about Jared’s call simmered in my craw for the next hundred miles. So they liked their couriers submissive. Obedient. What was I, some pack animal? That’s right, I was a mule.
I wondered how my pay compared to the street price of all the stuff I was hauling. The thousand bucks they were giving me was likely a tiny fraction of their profit. There must be a hundred K worth of cocaine beneath that liner.
Karla’s devil of an idea began to sprout. What if I ran off with this stuff and sold it myself? I sure as hell wouldn’t need Uncle Ed’s landscaping job to sustain me. I tucked that option in the back of my mind. 
Whenever my thoughts drifted to Karla these days they tended to stick there. There was something about that girl. The way it hadn’t even fazed her to lend me her own skirt. Naked, I wasn’t something to be ridiculed or feared. I was just a boy without pants. 
I couldn’t imagine any Ft. Pierce girls reacting that way. It took a lot less to set off their weirdness detectors. They had strict limits as to how one could act, dress and talk without getting branded a geek or worse. It was like walking a tightrope. 
Ft. Pierce girls spoke in codes and signals that an out-of-loop homeschooler like me had no chance of ever emulating or deciphering. That’s what I got for having no siblings and a mom who had no faith in the Florida public schools. It was like being raised by wolves.
The possibility that Karla might exist in the flesh somewhere on this earth seemed too much to ask. She was too good to be true, and I still had trouble accepting that Root was a real place.
I chewed up the miles all that morning. Most of the time I drove ninety, slowing down to sixty-five only when people coming the other way flashed their headlights or when the jackrabbits in the left lane slowed abruptly in response to their radar and laser detectors going off.
North Carolina turned into Kentucky. I crossed into Ohio about three in the afternoon. I actually had a chance to make it to Cleveland somewhere near the scheduled time.
I grabbed the phone and called Uncle Ed to let him know I was on my way. I didn’t care what Jared said about not using this phone. 
I probably should have called Ed before I left Florida, but no biggie. I was sure he wouldn’t mind me dropping in. This was my Uncle Ed. It wasn’t like I was some stranger.
The phone rang and rang, until finally someone picked up.
“Hello?” It was Aunt Helen.
“Hi, this is James. I was just calling to say—”
“Oh. Hi,” she said, flatly. “Hang on. Let me have Ed talk to you.”
She called into the other room, referring me to Uncle Ed as ‘your nephew.’
Ed cleared his throat. “Hey James. How’s it going down there? I’ve been meaning to call but I forgot to ask who you were staying with.”
“Actually …. I’m on my way up to Cleveland. I’ll be there by tonight.”
“What’s that you said?” His voice cracked.
“I’m driving up in Dad’s old truck. I was wondering … would you guys be able to put me up for the night?”
“Uh … well … this is a bit of a surprise. You know this is not the best weekend. We’ve got the in-laws coming over.”
“Don’t worry. I can stay out of your hair. I can sleep in the garage. You don’t even have to feed me.”
“Oh no,” said Uncle Ed. “That’s not how we do things in my house. If we’re gonna put you up, we’re gonna put you up right.”
“So … you’re not gonna put me up at all?”
“Wish we could, and we can … but … like I said, not this weekend. Helen’s parents, they …” He lowered his voice. “Between you and me … they’re kinda … snooty … if you know what I mean. They never liked your mom. Not that they like me any better. But … if you’re gonna be around more than a few days … once they leave … I’ll talk to Helen and I’ll see if you can stay in the spare bedroom. How long do you plan to … uh … stay?”
“Uh … permanently maybe? This is more than a visit. I came to see about that job you promised.”
“Job?”
“Landscaping. Remember? You said if I ever needed work I should come up to Cleveland. I mean, that‘s the whole purpose of my coming up there.”
“James, that was years ago.”
“It was last Christmas.”
“Listen. A lot has happened since then. The economy here’s kinda imploded. Hardly any clients sign up for our enhanced services anymore. I’ve had to scale back. No more fancy gardening. It’s mostly just mowing and blowing now. That’s 90% of what we do. I got three teams of Dominicans working and that’s all I can handle. It’s hard enough some weeks keeping all of them busy.”
“I see.”
“Things could get better I suppose, but right now…? I’m sorry, James, but I got nothing to offer you. I wish you would’ve called ahead first. It’s a shame for you to come all the way up here for nothing. But give us a call after the weekend. I’ll talk to Helen. Maybe we can have you over for dinner or something. It’d be great to see you.”
I sank lower in my seat, staring at the reflectors separating the lanes.
“James?”
I could have sworn that seat belt cinched me down and the shoulder strap made a move to strangle me. 
***
The instant I crossed into Ohio, a warble from Jared’s cell phone heralded the arrival of his promised text: 
77 to 490W Exit 1B R on 7th. R on Jefferson. R on 3rd 1054 W. 3rd St.
It looked jumbled and cryptic at first glance, but when I parsed it, I found it to be a simple series of directions ending with an address. 
The traffic thickened as I approached Cleveland. There were no jams, just slowdowns and bumper to bumper traffic going fifty. I was going to be late and there was nothing I could do but minimize the damage.
It was cool enough that I opened my windows for the first time since leaving Florida. I got off at the right exit, made all the correct turns and it was still 5:45 when I found 3rd Street. It was in a transition residential and industrial zone near the river and train depot. Little factories and warehouses mixed with occasional apartment houses, only a block away from some green residential streets.
The place was an auto body shop, a plain, squared-off building of concrete block with three service bays side by side. A guy in Carhartts stood on the corner. When he saw me coming he stepped out into the street and waved me into the lot.
He was tall and bald and ripped, with a millimeter of shadow on his cheeks and cold, probing eyes with not a hint of humor behind them. He jabbed his finger at the closed bay.
“That door opens, you pull in and get your ass out of the truck!”
***
I rolled into a drive-through garage that opened front and back. Once the overhead door came down behind me I was boxed in, though the back door the next bay over remained open. It looked out into a muddy junkyard full of stripped down hulks of every make and model. There were a couple sheds and a construction trailer in the middle of the desolation. 
The guys hanging around were not the Mexican mafia types I expected. They were just a bunch of middle-American Anglos. They were quite a bit older than Jared and me. Maybe they had nicer clothes and a few more tattoos and earrings than the average Joe who worked in a garage, but not by much.
A guy in an over-sized trucker’s cap came up to my window and handed me an envelope.
“Cut the engine. Leave the keys. Robbie will give you a ride wherever you need to go.”
“What about my truck?”
“You can pick it up tomorrow. The Walmart on Steelyard.”
I opened the envelope. It held two hundred dollar bills.
“What the heck? I was supposed to get five hundred.” I kept the truck running.
“Since when?”
“Jared said—”
“Who the fuck’s Jared? Listen mule, get your ass out of that fucking truck.”
He had just pissed me off big time. I could almost feel the hormones oozing from my adrenal glands.
“Get out of that cab or I’ll drag you out by your fucking scrotum!
The truck was still in gear. My foot rested on the brake. I gunned the engine and veered hard left. I clipped the guy’s hip and sent him flying into a stack of cardboard boxes. The overhead door in the next bay started coming down. A guy scrambled out of my way.
I surged through the opening. The hood cleared, but the door scraped the roof and ripped off the antenna. I careened into the junkyard and roared around the side of the building. A guy in a suit and tie burst out of a trailer. Weapons appeared from pockets and jackets. 
Another guy tried to swing a chain link gate closed. I slammed into it before it could latch. The gate flew open, rebounded back and slapped against my bumper. I could see guns pointing at me in the rear view. I expected bullets to fly any moment. I braced myself, wincing, for the inevitable as I stomped on the gas. 
Burning rubber, I fish-tailed into the opposite lane. A UPS truck blasted its horn at me as I cut across its lane and screamed through an underpass, squealing around a hidden curve to find myself on a long straightaway flanked by a massive rail yard. 
My heart couldn’t beat any faster. I was shocked to have made it this far without getting my ass perforated.
***
They must have chased me, but I saw no signs of it. It probably helped that I had switched roads and reversed directions at least a dozen times, spiraling ever so gradually away from Cleveland. 
I had just passed a sign for Solon when the phone went off. It was Jared.
“Oh man. You’re dead meat. You’d better stop that truck right now if you want to live.”
“What makes you think I want to live?”
“Don’t fuck with me. We know you’re in Akron. Those guys are closing in on you as we speak.”
Dang. I had forgotten to look for the GPS transponder. 
“James. Say something. Have you gone nutso?”
“Yeah. I’m nuts.”
“Why’d you do it? I mean you were right there.”
“They stiffed me.”
“That’s not what they said. They said they paid you. And you took the money and made off with their stuff.”
“They only gave me two hundred.”
“You’re lucky they gave you anything with all the shit you pulled.”
“Huh? What shit?”
“James. You turn that truck around and go back to Cleveland. Forget the money. I’ll make up the difference. I’ll give you three hundred of my own if you just go back.”
“Nuh-uh,” I said. “I ain’t never going back.”
“Christ, James, pull the fuck over! I’ll make them promise not to hurt you.”
“Too late,” I said. “They fucked up.”
“THEY? They fucked up?”
Another call clicked in on call waiting. “Hey, someone else is trying to reach me, hang on.” I switched over.
“Joe’s Pizza,” I answered.
“Asshole. Think you’re funny?”
“Not particularly,” I said. “Who is this?”
“You want to live. You park that truck somewhere quiet and wait for us to get there. Otherwise, you die.”
“Promises, promises.
“Listen asshole. Doesn’t matter where you go. We got a wide net. We got your name, your license, your picture, even your fucking fingerprints and DNA if we need it. We’re gonna find you. And when we take you out it ain’t gonna be quick or pretty.”
I pulled off an exit behind a flatbed hauling a bulldozer. 
“Yeah? Well, happy hunting.” I tossed the phone out the window and onto the flatbed. I squeezed by on the right, turning south while the flatbed went north. 




Chapter 20: Backslide

I wound my way out of Cleveland, sticking as much as possible to the smaller county roads. I was too visible on the interstate, too catchable by the fleet of Escalades with tinted windows I imagined speeding after me, though I had no way of knowing who might actually be chasing. But I sure freaked out every time another car came up on my bumper.
These slow roads sometimes led me into potential traps—miracle miles clogged with Walmart and Kroger’s traffic. I felt less exposed and more in control, my direction less predictable among the corn fields and wood lots. 
I had no particular direction or destination in mind. Getting away from Cleveland was my only goal. That I seemed to be gravitating south and east was more by accident than any conscious aim.
When it got dark, I stopped for fuel in a town called Warren. I circled the truck under a fluorescent lighted awning thick with gnats and got my first look at the damage taken in the escape. 
It wasn’t quite as bad as I had expected. The roof and back quarter panel taken the brunt, the roof all dented and scraped, while deep scratches scored the right rear fender. Only the stub of the FM antenna remained. That explained why the reception had gone to crap.
As I rounded the bumper, I saw some wires sticking out of a shattered brake light. I went to stuff them back in, but it was clear that these were not part of the standard equipment. 
I tugged on one and out came a little black box the size of a deck of credit cards. ‘WorldTracker SMS’ was inked in white on the front. It was the freaking GPS unit! 
It meant they knew I was in Warren, that all my evasive maneuvers had been for naught. They were probably homing in on this gas station this very moment.
I stomped the tracker to bits on the pavement, got back in the truck and squealed out of the station. I drove like a madman, doubling back, circling blocks, cutting through parking lots. 
Wouldn’t you know, as I was screaming through Youngstown on 289, there came this charcoal Escalade in the other direction. An Escalade with tinted windows! It slowed abruptly as I passed. And in my rear view I caught them waiting for a line of traffic to clear so they could make a U-turn. 
I couldn’t be sure they were Jared’s crowd but I wasn’t about to stick around to find out. I slammed my foot on the gas and surged down that road taking the first Y into an area with lots of tightly packed houses. 
I plied a twisty route through the neighborhoods, and promptly got myself stuck in a cul-de-sac. I didn’t panic. I got turned around, facing the main road and turned off my lights. It might be the last place they would expect to find me, assuming there were no more trackers stashed on this truck. Maybe this dead-end was not a refuge but a trap.
I sat there, watching and waiting until some lady with a garden hose started giving me the evil eye. I took a deep breath, flicked on my lights and moved along.
I thought for sure they would be on my tail as soon as I back on a through road, but I found myself on a lonely, windy state highway with a single set of tail lights way up ahead, and no one behind me. 
I seemed to have lost them, if indeed that Escalade was ‘them,’ and not simply my paranoia. Still, I couldn’t relax. My palms stayed slippery. I could still hear my pulse pounding in my head.
I wished to hell now that I had never left Florida. But how could I have stayed? What was left for me there, but to wither and die? 
No one had forced me to become a mule. A simple call to Uncle Ed would have let me know his job offer was a sham. I could have gone someplace else—some place without drug smugglers out to kill me. Some place interesting, like New Orleans or Manhattan. 
Wet stuff started streaking down my cheeks. I had no idea why. Who cared if life was hard or unfair? If life wanted to be that way, then so be it. I just wished my fucking eyes would dry so I could see where I was going. Tears refracted the heck out of oncoming headlights. 
A couple hours later, I had finally calmed down. I was sick of driving. My eyes stung. My back ached. I was wired, wrung out and starving. I rolled into this place called Beaver Falls, full of rusting crucibles on rail cars and spooky, abandoned steel mills, rows of them, with banks of windows all smashed. I turned the corner and a neon vacancy sign for a Super 8 appeared like magic. It lured me into its lot. 
I parked in the far back corner, behind this big Ryder moving van that screened it from the road, and wandered the grounds for a bit, making sure no one was already here watching me. Visions of that psychopathic villain from ‘No Country for Old Men’ haunted me. Now I wish I had never watched that movie.
I registered under the name ‘Jerry Johnson.’ When I got to my room, I considered getting a pizza delivered, but the image of opening the door to Javier Bardem’s automatic pistol put an end to my cravings. I made do with some pretzels and a Coke from the vending machines down the hall.
I plopped down on the bed, not bothering to wash or turn on the lights or TV or anything. I buried my face in a pillow. 
As I lay there thinking, this barrier eroded in my head, and suddenly it was like a dam breaking. All the fear that had been gnawing at me washed away. Why should I care who came after me, as long as they didn’t torture. A quick death promised relief. Why not welcome it?
Such feelings had visited me before, but this time I was serious. This time it hit me like a blazing epiphany. I wanted out. I wanted to blink out like a candle, tune out all of my senses, end my worries. My path was not sustainable. So let them come.
And wouldn’t you know, that damned bedspread wasted no time in unraveling its threads into a thousand strands that rose up and twined into larger cords that tangled themselves around my limbs like a goddamned Wisteria. Here it comes, I told myself, my heart ticking faster in anticipation.
***
Again I was tangled in roots, dangling from the roof of a dim tunnel. But this time I was glad to be here. I smirked in anticipation of busting out of the pod and making my way to Karla’s hooch, which was beginning to feel more like home than anything I had left on earth.
Problem was, the roots entangling me had other ideas. These were tougher and wirier than those that had confined me before. They were aggressive little buggers, attacking me, wrapping back around as quickly as I could peel them off. 
I took a long, deep breath and concentrated on a few key strands, applying what Karla had taught me about Weaving—focusing my intense desire that they crumble away or turn to slime. But nothing happened. At most, I managed to tinge one of them blue.
What the fuck? 
Something felt way different this time—way wrong.
I panicked and flew into a tantrum, writhing and flailing at the roots. They held firm and pressed their advantage at every opportunity, until I had no choice but give in, like a rat in the grip of a python.
I settled back and caught my breath, listening with dread to distant groans and rumblings, hoping they remained far below.
Something rustled behind me. I squirmed around to see a bald head poke through a patch of frayed roots along the wall. A man crawled through an opening, got up and looked up and down the tunnel. Satisfied, he smoothed the roots back into place with a long caress. He brushed himself off and started to walk away.
“Hey buddy! Can you give me a hand? I’m stuck.”
He glanced up, perking his ears like a bird watcher who had just heard an interesting call. He had a huge beak of a nose and a mustache to match. He was dressed like a biker with tight padded leathers top and bottom.
“It speaks,” he said.
“Listen, I can usually get myself out of these pods, but this time … I don’t know why … I’m having trouble.”
He puckered his face in distaste and turned away.
“Wait! Can’t you help me?”
He shook his head. “No meddling. Luther says, if you are not free, you are not meant to be.” He had a lilt to his English that sounded Scandinavian. 
“But I’ve been down, twice already. I’ve met Luther. He won’t mind. I’m sure.”
The man turned up his palms and shrugged.
“We do not intervene. That’s now how things work. It is survival of the fittest.”
“Aw, come on!”
He squinted up at me and something his expression changed. “You. You’re the young fellow who wears dresses. The one who made the glass giraffe.”
“You were there?”
“Ach. You don’t need any help. You are a Weaver.”
“No. I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried. Nothing seems to be happening.”
“Well … you had better figure it out quick,” he said. “Because I am off. Best of luck.” He strode away up the gently pulsing floor of the tunnel.
“Please! At least ... tell Karla I’m here. Can you do me that?”
He continued on, not even bothering a glance.
“Please?”
I twisted back around, struggling to find a more comfortable position. The nasty things were giving me hardly any breathing space. I jabbed them with my elbows, nudged them with my knees. They were as dense as oak and about as pliable as steel.
Another pod hung in the dimness, about fifty feet down tunnel. An arm, pale and delicate protruded from a gap, dangling limp beside a cascade of long, blonde hair.
“Hey!” I said, perking up. “Anybody home down there?”
The pod rustled. A girl with narrow, mousey features squeezed her face into a cleft and stared. She couldn’t have been more than twelve years old.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
There was a long pause. “Sheila,” she said, sluggishly. 
“You should get out of that thing if you can. Go up tunnel, where it’s safer. There are people who will help you. They’re not all like that guy.”
“What for?” she said. “What would be the point?” She had an odd accent. South African or something. I couldn’t place it. 
“The point? Well, the point is you can’t stay in these tunnels. There are nasty things in here. Don’t you hear them?”
She shrugged. “I don’t care. I’m quite content just hanging out here, thank you.”
“Sheila. You need to get out of that pod. You’re too young for this place.”
“Too young for what place? My own head? I wish I could get out. That’s why I took mum’s pills. But it’s only made things worse. Maybe I should take some more … maybe I will … when I wake up.”
“This ain’t your head, hon. This is real.”
“Yeah, right. So who are you? My fairy Godfather, or a phantom?”
“Sheila. You’re too young. You shouldn’t be here. This feeling you have … you might outgrow it. It might just be puberty doing this to you.”
“Of course. Hormones. That’s what they all say.”
“But it’s true,” I said. “That’s what it could be.”
“Everyone’s a bloody therapist,” she muttered. “Even the phantoms. So tell me, Mr. Phantom, why are you here? Did you not outgrow your hormones?”
“Well, I’m a … I’m a late bloomer.” I sighed.
“Who the heck are you and what are you doing in my dream?
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Sheila. This ain’t no dream.”
“Pfft. What else can it be but a bad dream? But I’m not impressed. I’ve had worse.”
The tunnel floor heaved and bulged. Something scraped against it from beneath. It thumped along in spurts, as if pausing to track a scent. It was close. Way too close.
“Listen. You don’t want to stay in that pod. You need to get out, and get out of this tunnel.”
“Whatever,” she said. She gave me this cold fish look as if I were a parent trying to get her to do her chores.
“I mean it. Squeeze out if you can. If not, focus your mind. Stare at them. Make softer, looser. Make them fall apart. It can be done. You just need to convince them that they need to be something else. It worked for me … once.”
“You’re daft.”
“Come on, Sheila! Give it a shot.”
The Reaper pounded closer. I honed my gaze onto a strand gripping my left arm. I reached inside myself, conjuring all the intensity I could muster. Cotton candy. I wanted to turn it into shreds of cotton candy.
Something released in the pit of my stomach. The strand transformed, not into cotton candy but into dozens of finer threads that held me just as firmly.
I clawed my fingernails into them and plucked them away, one by one.
“Sheila. Trust me. We don’t want to stay here. Give what I said a try. At this rate, I’m not gonna get out in time to help you.”
“Please … just … shush. Can’t I have some peace and quiet for once? That’s all I ask of you, phantom.”
Something between a bellow and a belch erupted in the darkness. A foul breeze reminiscent of road kill and swamp muck billowed up the tunnel. A prehensile whisker as thick as a garden hose uncoiled out of the darkness, tapping its tip against the tunnel walls, probing. Another whisker appeared and hooked around the stalk from which Sheila dangled.
That finally got Sheila’s attention. “Excuse me, but what exactly is happening here?”
“It’s a Reaper. You need to get out of that pod. Now! However you can. Get out and go!”
I tore my way through sheath after sheath of the fibers enveloping my legs. The less force I used, the less they seemed to resist. I was barely touching them and they slipped away, almost on their own.
Sheila tugged at the strands, twisting her pod around and around, one way and then the other, like a child messing around on a swing.
“I can’t!” Her voice was panicked now. “I can’t get out.”
A ring of pale, anemone-like tentacles waved and curled behind the longer whiskers. A sphincter opened at their center, exposing a dark and toothless maw. Stubby, clawed appendages thrust out and gripped the walls of the tunnel, muscling forward a bloated body covered in sleek, black fur.
She struggled like a moth caught in spider’s silk. I pressed my face against an opening in the roots and tried influencing her pod from afar, without much effect. But on her own, Sheila managed to wriggle her shoulders through a part in the roots.
“Attagirl! Keep at it!”
Her arms and torso slipped free of the pod, but her hips got hung up. She looked up at me, trembling, her eyes like open windows.
“Drop and run! Left past the ledge. There are folks up there who can keep you safe.”
The Reaper pounced. Tentacles closed around her pod like fingers around a grape and plucked it. 
“Oh no! Oh Christ,” I said, through spasms of disgust and fear.
The tentacles shuttled the pod back and stuffed it into its orifice. The creature sucked at the pod with a horrible, whistling wheeze. Sheila shrieked like a hurt puppy. With a dull pop, she and the pod disappeared deep down into the gullet. The sphincter slammed shut. The tentacles snaked forward and probed the air in my direction.
I cringed, certain I would be next. But the Reaper hung back, lurking in the shadows, its moves deliberate. Something was making it cautious. 
A man in a bowler hat appeared atop the ledge below the split. He leaped down, bracing himself with his cane and reached up to help a woman with orange, frizzy hair bound up in ribbons. They hesitated at the bottom of the ledge. Bern looked at the Reaper and then looked at me, dumbfounded.
“Bloody hell! What are you doing up there? Get yourself down, boy. My Lord, don’t you see it?”
“I can’t. I’m stuck.”
“Nonsense.”
“Bern, he’s backslid,” said Lille. “He needs our help.”
“The boy’s a Weaver!” said Bern. “He has to learn to help himself.”
“This is not the time for a Weaving lesson!” She strode forward, her arms reaching towards my pod, fingers stretched. “Damn that Harvald to hell for leaving him behind.”
The roots enclosing me relaxed their grip. Some went limp. Others grew brittle and snapped. I yanked them apart and rammed my head through the gap.
“Careful, James! Here it comes!”
Nine yellowed claws on three stubby limbs dug into the tunnel wall and thrust the Reaper forward. 
A skein of whiskers came whipping at Lille’s feet. She barely evaded them with a nimble leap. Bern whacked them impotently with his cane as they swept by.
“If we’re going to tango, I’ll need a better weapon than this,” he said, cupping his hand over the cane’s grip. He lifted his palm and the shaft lengthened and thickening into a staff. With a swipe of his thumb and forefinger, the end flattened into a blade, and just like that, he had himself a potent lance. 
Lille ripped a root out of the wall and swirled her arms in a graceful curlicue as if playing air violin. Her root became a long bow nearly as tall as her. Another swipe of her hand and the brittle detritus at her feet became arrows. She strung one up, set it aflame with a glare, and sent it flying into the face of the oncoming Reaper.
“Get your tuckus down here, boy,” said Bern, advancing beneath my pod, jabbing at any tentacle that probed too close. “What are you waiting for?” 
I swung upside down beneath the pod. “It’s got me by the ankle!” One pesky clump of fibers refused to let go.
“You’re a Weaver, boy!” said Bern, slapping at a swarm of whiskers that harried him like a nest of cobras. “Show them who’s boss.”
A burning grew in my chest. I roared with frustration. I wanted those pesky roots to turn to jelly. To my surprise, jelly they became, plopping me down on the floor of the tunnel in a sticky pile of goo.
Lille sent flaming arrows flying into the beast as quickly as she could string them. They accumulated in its hide until it looked like some hideous birthday cake.
“Get up! Get up!” said Bern, batting away another hurtling whisker. 
When I tried to rise, I flopped back down. My muscles were useless.
“Crawl if you must,” said Lille. “Just get away. Don’t worry about us. You’re the one it wants.”
As I crept along the tunnel floor, Berne and Lille kept the creature at bay. The beast altered its shape, becoming blunter and stockier, filling the breadth of the tunnel. A hard, brown cuticle accreted on the tender pink tips of the tentacles. Its hide thickened and expelled Lille’s arrows.
I managed to stand and stumble towards the junction. Bern and Lille retreated up the tunnel with me. We backed away, cautiously. Bern steadied me with his free hand. The tunnel floor was still, but it felt like I was crossing the deck of a heaving boat.
I swooped down and plucked a root from the floor thinking I would make myself a battle axe. I envisioned the nastiest double-edged weapon I could imagine as I passed my hands over the root, but it remained pretty much a root. One end stiffened to create a handle, but the other end stayed limp, like a stubby whip. 
The creature gathered its tentacles and groaned. Bumps like goose pimples projected from its hide and swelled into thick, horny plates that darkened and thickened into an exoskeleton. The whiskers swelled at their tips to form blades and bludgeons. It bellowed and lunged. My nostrils filled with its stench.
“Run!” said Lille, her arrows deflecting off the beast’s new armor.
As we reached the ledge, the tunnel wall ripped open just beyond the leftward junction. Karla burst out, wielding a long, slender sword. A wiry Asian fellow followed her, bearing a long pole, hooked and spiked at both ends. A blond woman with a thick ponytail brought up the rear. She wheeled a sling over her head and flung a stone that whistled between us and slapped into the body of the Reaper, exploding like a grenade, causing it to recoil back down the tunnel.
“Heh, heh!” said Bern. “Astrid’s always had a way with munitions.”
Karla and the Asian leaped off the ledge, sword and staff adding to our defenses. She looked askance at the partially modified root in my hand.
“Fighting Reapers with such a sad, little whip? Are you stupid?”
The beast surged forward, swinging bladed whiskers at our heads. “Duck!” Karla’s sword flashed high and severed the tips. The pieces slapped against the ledge and crawled away. 
I looked at her, stunned. She had just saved me from a scalping, or worse—a beheading.
“Go! Run!” she said. “Why are you waiting?”
“My legs … don’t work right.”
“Oh, Madonna. Do we have to carry you?”
Another flight of bladed whiskers came winging in. Bern and the Asian batted them away, but a recoil nicked Bern in the leg. Slashes in his trousers exposed pale skin smeared with blood that seeped and glistened on the dark fabric. Lille knelt to attend to his wounds, even as he fought.
“For goodness sakes, Lille, can’t you wait until we’re out of here?”
“It is okay,” said Karla, stepping forward with her sword, brandishing it at the Reaper. “The monster, it is staying back. It knows we are strong.”
I staggered to the ledge. Bits of severed whisker, still alive, grew attentive as I approached and came creeping after me.
“What the hell?”
“No worries.” Lille came to my side, pointed at one and set it aflame. “They can’t hurt you. They’re just pests.” She stomped on another as if it were a roach.
Bern limped over to the ledge and grimaced as he attempted to climb. The blonde woman took his hand and helped him up. I went next, feeling clumsy, like my legs had fallen asleep and not completely woken up. Lille gave me a boost.
“It’s changing again,” said Bern.
“What now?” said Lille.
A long, disgusting snout-like thing evaginated from its gullet. 
“What is that?” said the blonde woman.
“Oh dear Lord!” said Bern. “Something to fire projectiles with, maybe?”
“We need to go,” said Karla scrambling up the ledge and taking the lead in the retreat. “It is not going away. I think it has anger now. We must leave before it decides to be brave.”
We hurried into the lighted portion of the tunnel. Karla parted the seam with her sword. “Everybody out! Out of the tunnel!” she said, holding the seam open for us to pass. Bern went first—he was limping severely—followed by Lille.
The Reaper flung itself up against the ledge. A long thing like a lizard’s tongue spewed out from the center of the snout and came careening at our heads.
“Watch out!” 
I tackled Karla. The weighty end of the tongue smashed into the wall, sending bits of root flying everywhere. Barbs ripped into the tunnel as it retracted, ripping roots free.
The Asian guy hustled over and helped us back up.
Karla shoved me hard into the seam with her free hand, keeping her sword extended down tunnel at the lurching beast. “Go!” she said.




Chapter 21: Victoria

We clambered into the chamber and Karla slammed the hatch behind us. I had regained some mastery of my legs, but they still felt numb and quivery. 
The Reaper bashed and bleated about the tunnel, sharing its frustration in a noisy but futile tantrum. It made no effort to follow us through the wall. 
The sound and image of Sheila getting sucked down its gullet refused to fade. I couldn’t think straight with that vision haunting my brain. I wished I could have done something to help her.
“Never heard a beasty so angry,” said Bern, whose pants were tattered and bloody. ”It must have really wanted you.”
“I tell you, Bern,” said Lille. “This boy is special. Even the Reapers know it.”
“Funny, I don’t feel so special.” I said, collapsing onto Karla’s rug. 
Astrid rapped her knuckles on the wall. “Are we safe here? Are we not better off in the ‘Burg?”
“I guarantee the Reaper cannot come into my house,” said Karla. She handed over the kilt and shirt I had worn my last time here, both neatly folded. 
“No worries, Astrid. As I recall, Luther created this bubble,” said Bern. “Should be plenty sturdy to keep the buggers out.”
“Hah!” Karla stuck her hands on her hips. “You imply I cannot myself build a sturdy villa?”
“Not at all,” said Bern. “I’m just saying … you know Luther … everything is overkill. The things he builds … they’re like tanks. Inviolable.”
“This place is just a bare shell when I find it,” said Karla. “I make everything you see here.” She swept her hand across the interior of the dome. “And I help make it strong.” 
Karla sent a glance my way and her gaze stuck. Creases formed in her brow. She sidled over and whispered. “What is wrong? Why so quiet?”
“This girl. Sheila.”
“Who?” She scrunched her eyes. “Your … girlfriend?”
“No. She was this girl … here in Root. She had the pod next to mine. That … thing … got her.”
Karla shrugged. “Happens. Too bad, so sad. It is a dirty business, this Reaping, but some souls, this is what they want, why they come here.”
“Yeah, but does it have to be so gruesome?”
“Someone likes it done this way, apparently,” said Bern. “Someone with a dark sense of humor.”
“Humor?” said Lille, attending to his wounds. “Maybe just a dark sense.”
“Someone like Luther,” said Karla.
“Pull down your trousers, Bern,” said Lille.
Bern raised an eyebrow and gave her a naughty smirk. “Here, my love?”
“Unless you want your slacks knitted to your flesh, I suggest you pull down your slacks.”
Bern looked at me. “Cheeky little thing, ain’t she?” He pulled down his pants, revealing the deep slash in his thigh. Clots had slowed the bleeding, but bloody trickles still ran down his leg.
“Little,” muttered Lille. “I’ll give you little. And don’t call me a thing, I’m your better half and you know it.” Her fingertips hovered over the wound, working in and out, meshing the edges of the wound together a millimeter at a time. Bits of dried blood flaked off and turned to lint before they hit the ground.
The intricacy and delicacy of Lille’s finger motions fascinated me. I couldn’t pull my eyes away. “It’s like … magic,” I said.
“Pish. No magic here. It’s more like mending clothes,” said Lille. “We are all string on this side of life.” 
“Nice to know we’re so patchable,” I said. 
“Speaking of which,” said Bern tugging at the blood-stained fabric heaped at his bony ankles. “When you’re done with my mole scratches can you have a go at the trousers?”
A single, nearly subsonic bell tolled, followed by more bells, a mad cacophony of them, in many pitches and tones.
“Ah! Not now!” said Lille, exasperated.
“What is it?” I said.
“Another general assembly,” said Karla. “Luther is calling us.”
“I ain’t going out there,” I said. “Not with that … thing … rampaging about.”
“It is not a problem,” said Karla. “We can go. The Reaper will not come so deep. It has fear of us.”
“For good reason,” said Bern. “It know I’ll give it a what fer with this.” He patted his cane, which was once more a cane.
“There,” said Lille, releasing the folds of Bern’s trousers. “Now pull up your pants. Let’s go see what this ruckus is about.”
“I bet it’s Luther aiming to scold us,” said Bern, frowning. “Leaving the playground without daddy’s permission.”
***
We pushed through the shaggy corridor connecting Karla’s chamber to the ‘Burg. Bits of root hung in sheets and shreds like Spanish moss.
“James, I think you meet Astrid, no?” said Karla, indicating the blond woman with the ponytail who nodded and smiled, her sling tucked over her shoulder like a purse.
“And this is Xiao Ke,” she said, dragging the Asian fellow over to me by his hand. The man averted his eyes, too nervous to even smile. “He does not speak English, or anything we understand. He is shy, but he is also very loyal and brave.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I mean it. Thanks a lot. All of you.”
“Not a problem, dear. But I still can’t believe that Harvald,” said Lille. “The way he mocked you.”
“That’s just who he is,” said Bern. “He’s the sort of chap that finds road kill amusing.”
“He is stronzo,” said Karla. “A goon! The kind of man who kicks the puppies.”
“Then again, if he hadn’t been such a mocking fool, we never would have known the boy was in trouble,” said Bern.
The corridor smoothed out into a paneled hall and we entered the sitting room looking over the square. We passed through a door, entering a little rose garden on the edge of the square. People were gathered at the center, a larger crowd than last time. 
“Brace yourselves,” said Bern. “I’m sure Harvald’s spilled the beans about our intervention. We might be in for a public flogging, so to speak.”
Lille touched my arm. “Don’t be alarmed, but things could get a little strange, here. You know Luther and his theatrics.” 
“But James is one of us now,” said Karla. “Why should we not help him?”
“Yes, but you know Luther,” said Bern. “Every tub on its own bottom.”
“That is why our community stay so small,” said Karla. “We are never allow to help anyone.”
“I fear James’ little feat the other day might have inspired some jealousy,” said Lille. “Not even Luther could weave such things when he first came here.”
“He’s got nothing to worry about,” I said. “I couldn’t even turn a root into a stick just now.”
“You backslid, child,” said Lille. “It’s not that unusual. Especially when one doesn’t have full command of this place.”
We took our time, strolling across the cobbles. None of us were in any hurry to face the wrath of Luther.
Karla touched my arm. I looked over to find her leaning close. I could feel her breath on my cheek. “You had a death wish. A strong one. No?”
I shrugged. “Don’t we all?”
“But this time, you were very serious.”
“But I was before, too.”
“But not like this. This time, you make your wish for death become too clear.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing,” said Bern. “But Karla’s absolutely right. It’s best to keep things murky. That’s something you’ll need to learn, if you intend to stick around this place.”
“You see,” said Lille. “When you make your intentions obvious, it tends to excite the Reapers.” She hissed through her teeth. “And you don’t want that.”
“Ambiguity is your friend,” said Bern. “Let death attract you, but don’t get too close. Be like a clever moth. Keep circling that candle.”
“I’ll … keep that in mind,” I said.
“How you feel now?” said Karla. “Are you strong?”
“Stronger, anyhow,” I said.
“I will teach you how to prevent this,” she said. “So this does not happen again.”
“Take her up on it, son,” said Bern. “We need you here with us, not in the belly of some mole cow.”
A small crowd was gathered at the center of the plaza. Some faces I remembered from the last time I had been here. Others were new.
The stone pillar and gargoyles that had dominated the middle of the platform were gone, replaced by a tall oak, probably woven from the same material that had comprised them. The tree seemed to sprout straight out of the stone.
Luther paced back and forth, wearing a jacket with red and gold epaulets that would have looked at home on Michael Jackson. He held a shepherd’s crook tucked over his shoulder. He had reverted to a human shape with almost sane proportions, though his physique was a mite too buff for good taste. His pecs and biceps threatened to burst the seams of his white dress shirt. A tiny bow tie looked lost against a stout neck bulging with supernumerary cords and sinews.
“Well, well, here come the ne’er-do-wells!” he said, wheeling to face us “Late, as usual. Out in the tunnels again I see, tampering with the offerings. No wonder the Reapers are restless.” His roving eyes homed in on me. “What happened? Wonder boy lose his touch?”
A man—a black man—the first I had seen in Luthersburg, sat at the base of the tree, his shirt torn to shreds, his hands chained together over his head and behind the bole. His ankles were tucked and secured in a pair of rough-hewn notches between two massive rail ties. Metal spikes pinned the assemblage together and into the faux stone of the central platform. 
Harvald stood over him rolling a small baton-like club in his hands. The man’s face displayed no signs of distress. He sported bright, curious eyes and a faint smile. He had the bored air of a father doing his best to remain polite at a family picnic he would rather not attend—this despite the nasty lumps and welts on his head and back where Harvald had apparently struck him repeatedly. 
“Oh my,” said Bern. “Who do we have here?”
“A man,” said Astrid.
“Obviously,” said Lille.
“An interloper,” said Luther. “I caught him trespassing.”
“Why the chains, Luther?” said Lille. “Oh, and that nasty bump on his brow. You’ve been hitting him. Why?”
“He deserved it,” said Luther. “I didn’t like his attitude.”
The captive’s eyes met mine and his gaze was so intense, I couldn’t hold it. I had to blink and look away.
“To better his treatment, he needs to talk,” said Luther. “But no, he keeps looking up his nose at me with this … audacity … this air of superiority.”
“What do you want him to say?” said Lille.
“Simple. He needs to tell us who he is, where he came from and what he wants. Look at his eyes. The way he looks at me. This is not just any negro. This is an old soul here. This man has experienced Root. Look at that disdain! We need to know his designs. He obviously has hostile intentions in his heart.”
The man smirked, and as soon as he did, Harvald rapped his ear with the baton. The man hardly flinched at the blow, which only seemed to inflame Harvald more. He cocked his arm to strike again, but Lille seized the baton.
“Enough!” she said. “Give him space! You ask him to speak but then you attack him when he so much as blinks. Give him a chance to state his case.”
“He’s had plenty of chances,” said Luther. “But alright, let’s try again. Speak man, speak.”
The man glanced up. A faint smile creased his face. “I have nothing to say.”
“See!” said Luther. “Don’t go making me into the monster here. I am not the trespasser.”
“Please,” said Lille. “Who are you? Why did you come?”
“I just came here to see if you all were ready … for us. It’s what I do.”
Luther guffawed. “Ah! He is an angel come to vet us, to open the gates of Heaven for the worthy.” He slipped his crook under the man’s chin and lifted gently. “Am I right? Are you an emissary, sent by the Lord?”
“No,” he said, maintaining his calm smile.
“From where then, Hell?”
“I am from Frelsi. A community of free souls. We have no binds to any world but this.”
“Free? You mean dead? Preposterous.”
The man just stared back with his indelible, inscrutable, unflappable smile.
“What makes your community any better than ours?”
“We are not bound to flesh and we rule by consensus. We believe in anarchy and equity.”
“Nonsense! People need leaders to get things done. This place would be chaos without my vision. Look around you. Behold my creations!”
“Quaint,” said the man. “But it’s mostly façade. You people basically live in caves.”
“Caves? I’ll give you caves!” Harvald whacked the back of his shoulder with his baton.
“Stop it, Harvald!” said Lille. 
Luther scowled. “We’re not done interrogating!” 
“Come, let the man go. He’s done no harm,” said Bern.
Luther stood over his prisoner and pointed at his bony finger down at his face. “How … did you find us?” he hissed.
“It wasn’t difficult. We see you about the tunnels.”
“See!” said Luther, erupting. He wheeled about, eyes accusing. “See what your wanderings cause? I bet they want our space.”
“No,” said the man, still smiling. “Space is not limiting here.” 
“Souls, then. You’ve come to recruit … or enslave.”
“Those who belong with us will find us. You, however, would not be welcome.”
“Not welcome,” said Luther. “Did you hear that? This trespasser has the gall to say we are not welcome. Well sir, you are not welcome here in Luthersburg, and yet you trespass.” Luther turned to us. “Well, I say that deserves fifty lashes! Fifty days in the dungeon. What say you all?”
“Set him free,” said Bern. “For goodness sakes, the man was simply curious. How is that a crime?”
“This man is a violator! He must pay,” said Luther, glaring at Bern. He glanced over at the captive, who remained as calm as ever. “You! Stop looking at me like that!”
The man’s gaze did not waver.
“I said stop! STOP! That’s it! I’m sealing your eyes shut!”
“Luther, no!” said Karla.
Luther fanned his fingers at the captive and held then outstretched until they trembled with strain. 
Nothing happened.
“Don’t bother,” said the captive, sighing. “You can’t unweave me. Alright, I’m tired of this. It’s best I leave. I’ve seen all I need to see.”
“Hah!” said Luther. “You will leave only when I say you—”
The links of the chain fastening the man to the tree turned into little silvery moths and fluttered away. The heavy beams holding his legs transformed into thousands of ants that scurried off and dispersed across the square. Astrid squealed and skittered out of their way.
The man got up and strode across the plaza. As he walked, his complexion faded and his body shifted, hips widening, waist narrowing. His hair lengthened. His features became finer, more delicate. A bosom budded beneath his shirt. He became a her.
Those looking on gasped.
“Wait! Tell us your name,” called Lille.
“Victoria,” she said, without looking back.
Luther reared his head, arched his back and flared his fingers. Stalks of rye grass grew along a row of curbing, their plump seed heads morphing into viper skulls. With a swish of his hand, they collapsed into coils, detached their tails and slithered after her.
Victoria sank into the cobbles step by step, as if descending a staircase only she could see. The snakes converged and struck at her face and torso. One by one, each sizzled off into vapor like raindrops on a hot grill. She vanished beneath the square.
Luther rushed over to the spot where she had disappeared, tapping gingerly with his foot, searching for weak spots or hollows. “Petty trickery,” he said, turning to us. He pulled on his jacket and stomped away. Three steps along, he stopped and turned to face us. “From now on, no one leaves the ‘Burg. Never. Not for any reason.”




Chapter 22: Surfing

Layered sheets of charcoal and ash swept in to blot away the snowy puffs that only moments ago had sailed like clipper ships across a crisp, blue artificial sky. The murk and smudge smothered the sunbeams and shadows that had dappled the square and made the cheerful pastels of the stucco façades seem dirty and blighted.
“You should see the weather when he’s mad,” said Bern.
He and Lille said goodbye and strolled off hand in hand to a small cottage that made the only break in an otherwise solid wall of townhouses, shops and churches. The alleys flanking it, bricked off, led nowhere. 
Luther’s comeuppance made me see the ‘Burg in a much less flattering light. What Victoria had said was basically true. The place was just a bunch of caves with prettified fronts. I had yet to see a building that went more than one room deep.
This made Luther much less than the god-like figure I made him out to be in my first encounters. The ‘Burg was just a playground and Luther a big kid bullying toddlers until a grownup came by to put him in his place. 
I couldn’t imagine the sorts of marvels folks like Victoria could create from the fabric of this world. In my eyes, Root had just become a bigger and more exciting place.
I followed Karla back through the rose garden and into the salmon-colored stucco façade of the townhouse with the sitting room. Her invitation was unspoken but understood. Where else would I go? That chamber was home.
But then I remembered Luther’s edict. “Your place—is that considered part of the ‘Burg?”
She wrinkled her nose and smoothed her hair down. “Who cares?”
“Well, because Luther said we couldn’t—“
“Ah, don’t listen to him. He is nothing but bluster. This lady, Victoria, she hurts his pride. He is just acting out to save face. Always he threatens, but does nothing.”
We pushed through the shaggy corridor until we reached her dome. Patches of shell pulsed with soft, diffused light. Blips like fireflies glided along a network of slender strands threading between the bumps and spines. It looked like a toadstool decorated for Christmas.
Karla touched her fingers to the wall and cracks appeared in the seamless surface, outlining the hatch. She pulled on a loop of root and opened it.
The interior brightened as we entered.
I collapsed among the futons and pillows heaped in the middle of the floor, lying back with my hands tucked behind my head. Rays filtering through the stained glass skylight danced on the wall.
“That window … it’s almost looks like the actual sun is shining behind it. That’s pretty cool. How did you manage that?”
“Ah, it is nothing,” she said, fluffing and stacking the pillows beside me. “It is not as nice as the real one,” 
“Real one?”
“I tell you. This is a famous art from Bernini. I make a copy from my memory, but my memory and my skill is not perfect.”
“Are you kidding? It looks great.” 
“Thank you. But you should see the real one someday. It is from San Pietro Basilica. Made of stone, not glass you realize. Alabaster. The Piazza San Pietro, it is only a few block away from our flat. When I would go for mass, I would always watch this dove, how it changes in the light. In church, I am always this way, thinking my own thoughts, never paying attention to the priest.”
“Yeah well, join the club. I used to daydream all the time during services. Back when I used to go, that is.”
She sat down directly across from me, fidgeting with the pillows and fussing her bangs until her left eye was well-obscured by a solid wedge of hair. She looked over at me, a grave expression adding years to her looks.
“We need to talk,” she said.
Something about her tone made my stomach go a little queasy. “Okay,” I said.
“About your back slide.”
“My … what?”
“I want to know why you have such a hard time with the Reaper. Where does it come from, this death wish, with such a power? What happened?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just the same old, same old.”
“Not ‘same old.’ Don’t give me that. Something is different this time.”
I sighed. “Well, I had a long day. I was tired. Things were getting weirder and scarier … by the minute. I just didn’t want to face it anymore. I thought with a good night’s rest I would—”
“Specifics please. What happened?”
So I told her about all Cleveland and Uncle Ed and the drug runners.
“You were a busy boy,” she said. “But I see no reason for you to give up everything.”
“Like I said … I was tired. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting up with more of this crap. I wasn’t looking forward to the next day at all. Not at all. I just wanted everything to go away.”
“Everything? Including Root? Me? Do you ever consider this?”
“Yeah, but … this place wasn’t even real to me. I couldn’t depend on it. It was fantasy.”
“Fantasy?” she said, her voice rising. “Am I, really? Touch me. Am I not a real person? Is my heart not real? Then why does it beat … like yours? Listen. Here.” She touched a finger to her chest.
“Dreams can seem pretty real sometimes,” I said. “On the other hand, if I could find you … meet you … on the other side…”
“Forget other side. I am right here. Right now.”
Something snapped in my head. I lost all restraint.
“I missed you, Karla. When I went back, I couldn’t stop thinking … about you.”
Her face went blank and slack.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
She scootched forward and folded her arms around me, melting into me as if I were her security blanket. 
Her action took me by surprise. It sounds odd, but I had never been hugged like that. I’d had plenty of air hugs, shoulder pats and nanosecond bumps, but this was way different. 
I didn’t resist but was too startled and uptight to reciprocate. I felt discombobulated, as if my fibers were unraveling.
“Listen,” she said, still clinging to me, her words muffled because her face was pushed against my shoulder. “What happen to you in the tunnel today will never happen again. I will show you how to keep strong in Root. Okay?”
She lifted her head. “Okay?”
“I’m listening,” I said, my hands holding her loosely, hovering about a millimeter above her flesh.
“These feelings inside you that call Root, they are like storms. When Root comes, it comes like a wave from far away. In Florida, do you ever go surfing?”
“Yeah. But I suck.”
“Well, this feeling that brings Root to you, it is like a storm that brings waves. You need to feel the wave coming so it does not crash over your head like today. When you lose control and give up complete, you come here weak and the Reapers they can take you.”
“But … if you want to stay a long time in Root and stay strong, you cannot let the wave wash right past you. You need to ride this wave. Otherwise, your time here will be short.”
“This is not simple. But all of us you see in the ‘Burg, we learn how. Luther, of course, is a Master. He stays here almost all the time. Me, I am okay. Better than Astrid or Xiao Ke. They only stay, like you, for short times.”
She looked up at me.
“It is good you learn this skill, no? When life is so bad, Root is a better place to be. I think you agree, no? Otherwise … there is the Reaper.”
Some of what she said sank in, but I was mostly thinking about those fingers kneading my back, that delicate chin digging into my shoulder.
“Surfing, huh?”
“It should be no problem for someone like you, no? Me, I am not so special, but I learn it. My weaving, it came slow, compared to you. It takes me almost one year. At first, I was like you, a rescue, from the pod, from the tunnel. I was meant for the Reaping. So many visits, maybe ten, before I can do the things you can do already. Bern and Lille had to teach me.”
“Huh,” I said. “I wouldn’t have thought, I mean. Look at you now. Look at this place you made.”
“So I am saying, be careful. We don’t want to lose you. You are special.”
“I wish you guys you stop saying that. I ain’t special. Not one bit.”
“Of course you say this. If you felt good about yourself, you would not be here.”
I held up my hand and looked it over front and back.
“Don’t worry you are not fading. You are still here. But maybe … you are thinking of leaving? Do I bore you?” She started to pull away but I held onto her.
“No, wait! I’m not bored. I’m just scared. I don’t want this to end. I’m not ready to go back to that … life thing. Seems like whenever I start to get comfortable here, I fade away.”
“Were you not listening? I told you. It is all about the surfing. You ride the wave as long as you can. But when it is done, there is nothing you can do. You must go.”
“I’m … still not sure what you mean by a wave. Times I come here, I don’t feel anything. I mean … I’m numb. Things start shutting down. I lose my appetite. I don’t even want to look at the TV.”
“You baccalà. This numbness. That is the wave. That is it.”
“But how do you ride it?”
“Savor it. Enjoy it like some tasty food you do not want to finish. Like sex you don’t want to stop too soon.”
“Can you … make … a wave come? Whenever you want it? Can you call one?”
“Ah … but this is another level of skill, and it depends on the storm inside you. You need a storm to make waves. But storms are dangerous, if you do not know yet how to surf.”
“Whenever I go back, it always feels like I’ll never find my way back here. It feels like it’s over.”
“That is good. If life is good, enjoy it. Root is only for the desperate.”
“But I want to be here … with you.”
“You are welcome. But … I cannot guarantee I will always be here for you. My life has many storms. Many more than you, it seems. And sometimes the storms get very strong, and the waves too big to ride … even for me.”
“What? Are you saying you might get Reaped? No way.”
“It is possible.”
“Karla!”
“I am just saying.”
“If I go … when I go … promise me you won’t die … you won’t off yourself before I see you again.”
She shrugged. “It is not something I expect.”
“Promise me!”
She leaned back and looked me in the eye, her one eye veiled in that perpetual curtain of hair.
“I can’t. Maybe someday the wave will be too much and I will let it fall on my head. For now … I am okay. But I can’t promise. I can’t predict the future.”
I reached my hand up and brushed the bangs out of her face. I wanted to see both of her eyes for a change.
“No!” she shrieked, and yanked herself out of our embrace. “Don’t touch!”
She threw her hands up to cover her face, but not before I glimpsed a complex of jagged scars running from the corner of her eye, up her brow and across her temples—a meshwork of keloidal ridges, like a crumpled swastika run through with a lightning bolt.
“Whoa, Karla. What the heck happened to you?”
She lowered her eyes and pulled her bangs back down to cover her scars. “So you see? How ugly I am?”
“No, you’re not ugly. You’re just … hurt. How did that happen?”
“My father. He gets mad. He hits me with the whiskey. The glass, it breaks. And he doesn’t want for take me to clinic. For problemi. Troubles. He would get. Oh! I am losing my English.”
“That’s horrible! I’m sorry you had to go through all of that.”
She hung her head. “It is not the worst of it. There are worse things he has done. But these scars I cannot hide as well. After he does this, things are better for a time. He does not touch me. He is ashamed. So, it is good. It is the price I pay … for some peace.”
“But Lille can fix that for you, right? She can mend flesh, no? You’re in Root, for Christ Sakes. Why keep it scarred? Even on the other side, there are things they can do.”
She looked up at me, her chin firm, a cold fire blazing in her one visible eye. “This is me,” she said. “This is who I am. Why I should change? If you don’t like my look, why do you move my hair?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I was just curious. I wanted to see your eyes.”
And her face became a storm all unto its own, her features racked with chaos, precipitation flooding down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry.” I took her hand and squeezed it. “Forgive me?” She tensed her fingers almost imperceptibly. Her sobs calmed. She wiped her face on my sleeve.
“What if … what if I came and found you?”
“Find? What is to find? I am here.”
“On the other side, I mean. What if I came to see you?”
She released my hand and pushed me away. “No. That is not possible. Do not even think of this.”
“Why not?”
“My … circumstance. My father. It is not possible. It will ruin everything. It will … destroy … everything if you came to me.”
I chuckled nervously. “How so? I mean, if living with your dad is such a drag, then run away. I could meet up with you. We could go somewhere … together.”
“You don’t understand. It is not so easy. On the other side … I am not like this. I am not like you see here. I am not … me.”
“What? I don’t get it.”
“Just forget about finding me, please. Leave things be. I have worked hard to make these things … my surfing … sustainable. Please. Just forget. If you come, you will destroy everything.”
“I hate this never knowing for sure if I’m ever coming back here … if I’m ever gonna see you again. It’d be a heck of a lot easier if … on the other side … if we could—”
“Forget it!” she shrieked. “Please, just forget. Please.”
“Okay! Calm down. It’s okay. It’s … forgotten.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Whatever.” I stared up at the dove, my determination unabated, but I would have to keep that part to myself.
“James, you must understand. My lives in Root and on the other side are separate. It is how I persist. The only way I can exist.”
“But … why come here at all, if we can make the other side better? I might be able to help you if you gave me a chance.”
She shook her head. “It is impossible. Some damage cannot be undone.”
A tingly feeling started to spread through my extremities, and not the good kind. “Oh crap. It’s happening.”
Karla took my hand and examined it, spreading my fingers, turning my palm. Translucent blotches had appeared in my skin, like oil soaking into paper. “It is true. Your storm, it is passing.”
“What if I don’t want it to pass?”
“Silly James.” She placed my hand against her sternum and gave me a feeble smile. “You cannot control the weather.”




Chapter 23: The Pits

I awoke fully clothed and panting, my face pressed against a cold puddle of drool. Both pillows were strewn on the floor beside the tangled top sheet and quilt. The instant I realized I was in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, a flood of deep despair washed over me.
Nothing against Beaver Falls. I’m sure it’s a lovely place. But the mellifluous tones of Karla’s voice still resonated in my head. I could still feel the press of her cheek against my shoulder, smell the soft lanolin musk of her hair. I wanted to be back in Root with her.
My own stink rose up to smother any traces of Karla. I sat up on the edge of the bed and struggled to adjust my eyes to the light. 
My undies clung like an unshed snake skin. I peeled them off and picked through the plastic shopping bag holding the last bunch of T-shirts and boxers that remained clean and relatively dry.
I dragged myself into the shower and let the flimsy spray scald and melt the crud that had accumulated on my skin. I lathered up twice, let steam fill the room and breathed in deep the essences of the floral soap. 
I didn’t bother shaving, figuring whatever beard I managed to grow might help conceal my identity from my pursuers. Though, it might have been more effective if I could actually grow some stubble on my cheeks.
I pulled on a black and silver Oakland Raiders T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts that had gotten baggy on me. I had to cinch up the belt an extra notch.
I needed food. Out the window, across the main road, I could see some golden arches next to a Holiday Inn. I trashed my dirty clothes, checked out of the hotel and crossed the street on foot, leaving the pickup hidden behind that big old Ryder rental. 
I ordered two Egg McMuffins, one side of hash browns and an orange juice. I skipped the coffee. Some people seemed to like it, but I couldn’t stand the sour dishwater they served. Mom had spoiled me with her French Roast cappuccinos. Mostly, I had done without coffee since we lost the house. I was plenty alert and wary; my nerves jangled just fine on their own.
I started wolfing that crap down even before I was out the door, my body telling me in no uncertain terms how many calories I’d been depriving it. I was halfway across the Holiday Inn parking lot, gulping the last of the hash browns when I saw something that made me choke and nearly heave up my whole breakfast.
There was an Escalade parked in the lot—charcoal grey with tinted windows—just like the one that had pulled a u-ey and come after me the day before. To top it all, it had Ohio plates. What were the odds?
I stood there and scanned the lot, staring down some poor guy standing just inside the glassed-in lobby of the Holiday Inn, who was probably just waiting for a cab.
Was it just my paranoia rearing its nasty head yet again? Grey Escalades with tinted windows just might be popular around these parts. As for the plates, the Ohio border was only ten minutes away.
I went over and peeked into the window, seeking some clue that would either confirm a threat or ease my worries. A child seat or some tourist brochures would have done wonders to calm me down.
It was hard to see through all that tint, but the back seat was clearly empty. On the dash there was this black box with wires and antennas coming out of it. I didn’t know what to make of it. It didn’t look like any radar detector I’d ever seen. 
I pressed my face up against the glass and there on the floor, peeking out from under a newspaper, was an empty shoulder holster. Chills took hold and I shook.
Some voices startled me. I dropped to the pavement. It was just some girls laughing as they passed through the lot behind me. I waited for them to go by. 
As I knelt there on the pavement next to those sparkling white walled tires, the fancy chromed hubcaps with the spinners, my fear frittered away and transformed. A slow burn of annoyance of ignited. 
These punks would have been out of my life already if they hadn’t decided to stiff me. What was the deal with that? The truck broke down. It was not my fault. Not like I had missed some scheduled maintenance for radiator hoses. 
Three hundred bucks meant a lot to me, a lot more than it meant to them. To these guys it was peanuts. They probably lived a lifestyle beyond anything I could imagine. Served them right that I had made off with their haul. They might think twice about screwing with the help next time.
I had this urge to mess with them. All I could think of was scraping my keys against the door. I went as far as to pull the key ring out of my pocket. I fingered our old house key, the one that didn’t open anything anymore, except my heart and the well of memory. It was my talisman.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Why aggravate them any more than I already had? These guys had enough reasons to torture me. 
I got up in a crouch and started to move away, but I caught a glimpse of the license plate and figured it might be worth noting for future reference, in case there were more grey Escalades in my future. 
I felt around but found no pens in my pocket, but the vanity plate was easy enough to remember—8XKLD8. And then I spotted that blue 2012 Ohio registration sticker in the top left corner. I still had my keys in hand. On impulse, I reached over and scraped it off. Maybe some cop somewhere, some day would give them a hard time.
Two guys exited the Holiday Inn. My heart lurched, until I got a good look at them. They had black suits on. One of them had a comb over. They looked like Mormons or coffin salesmen. No way did they drive this Escalade.
Next time I might not be so lucky. I had to get the heck out of here and there was no stealthy or graceful way about it. I just stood up straight and walked away fast. Who knew who might be watching me from that wall of windows?
I probably looked culpable as heck. But thankfully, druggies slept late, because when I did sneak a glance, there was still nothing going on in the lot.
Across the road, however, that Ryder truck that had screened dad’s pickup from the main drag had pulled out. There was my Ford, scraped roof and smashed tail light fully exposed to the world. That wouldn’t do. I had to get the hell out of here quick. I was glad I had already checked out.
I ran across the street, dodging delivery vans. I went straight for the driver’s side door and unlocked it. I looked back across the road and no shit—there were a couple of dudes walking up to the Escalade with a pair of duffel bags.
I got into the pickup, started it and pulled behind the hotel, hoping there might be a back exit. There wasn’t. A chain link fence separated the Super 8 from some garden center. The only way out was through the front, directly across from the Holiday Inn.
I was tempted to turn off the engine and hang out a while, give those other guys a chance to clear out. But what if they had seen me? There wasn’t much room to maneuver between the back wall of the hotel and the fence. They could corner me back here and I’d be at their mercy, like a raccoon in a tree.
Panic and claustrophobia got the better of me. I had to get out of the lot and onto the road. I pulled around the side of the Super 8 and there was that Escalade, still in its space, backup lights on. They were taking their sweet time getting rolling. That was a good sign and all, but I had to get the fuck out of Dodge.
I pulled out the lot without even looking. I didn’t care where the road led, I just had to put some distance between me and that Escalade. Though, I wondered if it mattered. If they had another freaking GPS stashed on the pickup somewhere, they could take their sweet time catching up with me. How else did they get so close to me last night? Luck?
I followed Big Beaver Boulevard south along a river, spending more time looking in the rear view than through the windshield. Maybe it was a false sense, but I felt less conspicuous and safer on the smaller roads. I veered onto the first side street I came to and it led me to another less traveled road overhung with trees that sort of led in the same direction.
Those tree limbs overhead felt like arms shielding me. Their embrace combined with the lack of traffic helped calm me down. From the knots of fear curdling my gut, it was safe to say that my death wish was gone. I guess I had something to live for now.
The idea that Karla was real kept throbbing through my brain like a pulse. It didn’t matter how thorny her situation; I don’t care what she said. I had to find her—on this side of life. I knew if I did I could help her. Whatever her situation, I could bust her out.
Together, maybe we could salvage something out of our screwed up lives. There would be no need for either of us to mess around in Root. We could carve out some niche in this world that would make getting up in the morning every day worth our while, not to mention … growing old. 
Synapses began clicking in ways I hadn’t felt in a long time. The possibility of finding Karla filled me with a buzz I hadn’t known since Jenny invited me to the beach. But this one went way deeper—to the roots of my soul. 
But she lived pretty far away, if my hunch was right. I would need a lot more cash to reach her. I knew exactly how to get it, too. I was driving a freaking gold mine. 
***
I weaved my way into Beaver Falls proper, traversing its checkerboard of squared off blocks of the town through blue collar neighborhoods cheek to jowl with light industry and office parks. 
My path was still mostly random but had a distinct southward tug. I had Pittsburgh on the brain, but only because it was the biggest, closest city that had a market for what I was hauling. 
I was in no hurry to get there by any obvious route. I avoided highway entrance ramps like the plague. I still clung to the hope that the guys tailing me had only their instincts to guide them now, no more freaking satellites.
The whole business about getting stiffed still simmered in my craw. What was the deal? I had gotten to Cleveland almost on time. It wouldn’t have hurt them to give me the whole five hundred. 
Why punish me? Because they could. They thought all their money and guns gave them privilege and power. But I knew better. I knew that beneath all that attitude, that bling, those wigger clothes, they were losers like me.
Starting out, they had probably been twerpy suburban potheads like Jared, only now they had a few years in the biz under their belts. They had no clue what losing a proposition it all was. It was only a matter of time before they all got their chests ventilated with lead or were socked away to rot in some prison. I was happy to take some of the evidence off their hands. 
About an hour out of Pittsburgh I drove through an obscure little state park with these turn-offs with graveled lots for hikers and dog walkers. I waited till I found one that had no cars parked and pulled in. There was a nice row of scrawny hemlocks between me and the main road that gave me the privacy to do what I needed to do. 
I got out my tool kit, hopped into the bed of the truck and went to work on the screws holding down the liner. I still had no idea what exactly I was carrying, how it was packaged or how much there was of it. It was most likely cocaine, but what kind? Crack went for ten-twenty bucks a rock in Florida. Powder, cut, fetched twenty bucks a gram on the street, maybe a hundred bucks for the pure shit. Even if I carried only a kilogram cut, what was that? Twenty thou? Enough to get me pretty dang far, if only I could figure out how to sell it.
But first I had to find it. I undid the first dozen screws in the bed liner and there was nothing but air and dust in the spaces closest to the tail gate. As I worked my way back, though, I struck gold. 
I reached under and pulled out a long strip of heat-sealed polyethylene packets of pure white powder. There were more strips running down the grooves between the reinforcing ridges of the bed liners. Maybe twenty strips altogether that I could see. I pulled out the one and guessed it was probably a half a kilogram. So, ten kilograms total, that I could see. And the stuff looked pure—raw material for further processing. This was quite the pricy treasure I was hauling.
I stuffed that strip under my shirt, screwed the liner back down and sat there in the bed catching my breath, waiting for my heartbeat to wind back down.
***
I made it to Pittsburgh by mid-afternoon. I had no idea where to go, I just cruised around until I found what seemed like a promising neighborhood—a place called the Hill District.
I couldn’t park the truck on the street, not just because of what it carried but because all the damage made it noticeable. Any cop cruising by would be curious, especially with my Florida plates. 
It took a while, but I found a parking garage, wound my way to the tippity top, parked on the roof and made my way down the urine-scented stairwells to the street.
Weird place, this Hill District. Few streets led into it. It was ringed off like a quarantine zone, the roads surrounding it forming barriers lined with high stone walls. These effectively sealed it off from the body of the city, like scar tissue around an infection. I had to climb tier after tier stairways to enter its heart.
I’m not sure what made me come here to sell my wares instead of some fancy suburb, but I might have been guided by my prejudices. The place certainly fit the clichés. It had the right critical density of graffiti. Everywhere, there were these abandoned shops with crumbling brick and boarded up windows. 
Together, these things told me there were desperate people living here. But it made me wonder how folks so poor could afford to supply a drug habit. Maybe they were so desperate, they couldn’t afford not to. 
Though, to be fair, as I wandered through I could see plenty of ordinary family activity going on. There were grandmas out shopping for beet greens and yams, first graders at recess playing kick ball in a paved lot.
Old men stared at me as I passed by their front stoops. Knots of younger folks checked me out as I passed, their conversations squelching or shifting into whispers. Most of these cliques were teens, way too young for the kind of business I had in mind. I was looking for middle men not end users. I wanted gang-bangers and small time pushers.
Down the street I saw a cluster of twenty-somethings loitering around the side of a Dominican grocery. I thought about using my old ‘lost my wombat line’ to break the ice, but thought better of it. From the looks of these guys, they might not even speak English. 
They certainly noticed me coming, their eyes flitting my way as I approached. But I sensed no danger. They were just big kids goofing around on a corner.
“Polly wanna cracka?”
“What’s this white boy doing here? Lose his way from Pitt?”
“He looking to buy some shit,” said a lanky, light-skinned guy whose forehead was a wasteland of pimples. His baggy clothes seemed to float over his slender frame.
One of the other guys giggled. “Yeah. He probably thinks we deal. Sees some brown skin hombres on a street corner and he thinks we got the goods. Shit.”
“Actually,” I said. “I’m looking to sell.”
That got them all stirring like wasps in a nest that had been poked with a stick. 
“Say what?”
“You know what’s good for you, get your ass out of here,” said the pimply guy. “Nobody slings rock around the Hill but Crips. Do yourself a favor. Get the fuck out before they grab your ass.”
One guy with wire rim glasses slipped a phone from his pocket and thumbed the keypad. 
“Tonio! You texting them?” said the guy with the pimples. “Aw, shit. This poor kid don’t know any better. Why you bringing down the heat?”
“I have to, George. It’s my civic duty.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Bring ‘em on. It’s not you guys I want to sell to anyhow. I’ve got bulk goods. I’m looking to sell wholesale.”
“Shee-it!”
”Who you with?”
“Nobody,” I said.
“He lucky he ain’t wearing no red, no blue.”
“They’re on their way,” said Tonio, tucking his phone back into his pocket.
“Fuck it, I ain’t sticking around,” said George, all antsy and agitated. “Listen. Stay respectful and maybe you got a chance.” He and everybody but Tonio ambled off down a side street. 
Tonio was a short fellow, about my age, his hair neatly combed and gelled, with a checkered button-up dress shirt. He had no visible tattoos or piercings. He would have looked at home behind a desk in an H&R Block office. 
I was getting nervous, shifting my weight from foot to foot. Tonio stayed casual about the whole deal, maintaining a calm, flat visage. A message chimed into his phone. He glanced down.
“You hang tight,” he said. “They’ll be here in a minute.”
“So … are you a member or something?”
“I got family,” he said, though I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, whether he was doing this because he was worried about his family, or because his cousin was a Crip.
I leaned against a brick wall whose the mortar had been picked out by too many idle blades. The graffiti tags were ghosts of their former glory.
“Here they are,” said Tonio, shuffling his feet.




Chapter 24: Chinstrap

A silver PT Cruiser rolled slowly down the hill. A busted suspension made it lean to one side. Its finish was scratched and dull, like it had been rubbed all over with fine steel wool—the work of too many Pittsburgh winters. Not exactly the kind of wheels I would expect from a drug lord. 
It pulled up alongside, the throbbing reggaeton going silent as an untinted window rolled down. Two Latinos in their late twenties glared out at me with a cultivated menace that almost seemed comical. The driver wore a soul patch so tight and dark it could have been a tattoo; his passenger had a pencil-thin chinstrap of a beard that stretched from ear to ear.
“You the guy with the yayo?” said Chinstrap.
“The what?”
“Llello,” said Soul Patch, inflecting the word with its full pizzazz. “He means blow.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I got the yayo.”
“Check him out.” 
Tonio came over and patted me down kind of haphazardly. “He’s clean. No hardware.”
“Get in the back,” Chinstrap barked.
I hopped in without hesitation. These guys looked agitated, but it was probably mostly bluster. Their eyes betrayed a diffidence that had been absent in those assholes from Cleveland.
The doors slammed shut. Tonio squirmed around, pressing his back against the door, facing me. Was he actually worried I might attack him?
The car pulled out and went cruising down the street, the back left suspension creaking with every bump, bottoming out in the potholes.
“Tonio says you come to sell,” said Chinstrap. “That right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”
“Zángano!” said Soul Patch. “Where you come from? East End? Shadyside?”
“Florida.”
“Shit. What makes you think you can just stroll into our hood and do business with our customers?”
“Didn’t Tonio tell you? I didn’t come to sell to them. I came to sell to you.”
“Say what?”
“So … are you guys Crips?”
“Crips? Who told you we was Crips?”
“Those guys on the corner.”
“George,” said Tonio, rolling his eyes.
“Them guys. They don’t know shit,” said Chinstrap. “We ain’t Crips. No disrespect. They some fine dudes, but we just some cacos. We got our own thing going. The Crips on the Hill got busted couple months ago. Big ass clampdown. FBI. ATF. Whole shebang. Since then, been kind of a vacuum here. We just trying to fill it. Taking advantage, you know, of the opportunity. Course, Crips want their turf back, they welcome. We just filling the void. Temporary-like.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I don’t really care about the details. I just want to unload my stuff as soon as possible.”
Soul Patch made a turn onto the major street that formed one of the Hill’s ramparts.
“That’s all nice, but the question I got is, who you wit?”
“Nobody. I’m a free agent.”
“Shit don’t work that way, man. Where you get your supply?”
“Um. Out of state,” I said.
“What cartel you work for?” said Soul Patch.
“None of them,” I said.
The guys looked at each other for a longish spell and then burst out laughing. Tonio pitched in his girlish giggle. 
“Is this guy for real?” said Soul Patch.
I pulled out the strip of sealed packs and the laughing ceased as if someone had flipped a switch.
“Ostia puta! Get a load of that! Holy crap!”
“Looks like it was packed in a factory,” said Chinstrap. “It’s pure. Uncut. Straight from Colombia. If you stole this, you messing with some dangerous shit, dude.”
“I don’t care,” I said, sliding the packets into the front seat. “Here. Take it. All yours. Free sample.”
“Joder!” Chinstrap reacted to the packets falling into his lap as if he has been burnt. “What the fuck you doing?”
“Take it. Sign of good faith. There’s nineteen more, at least, where that came from. And it’s all yours. I’ll get you a bargain price.”
“That’s way more than three grams,” said Tonio. “Automatic Class C felony.”
“What the fuck you do, jump their mule?” said Soul Patch.
“I am their mule,” I said. “Was.”
“Aaaah! Now we getting somewhere,” said Chinstrap.
Soul Patch pulled the car into a parking space along a quiet residential stretch. 
“Pedro, why you stopping?” said Chinstrap.
“We got contraband,” said Soul Patch. “I’m not getting pulled over in Julia’s car. She’d kill me.”
“Don’t be a lo loco! What makes you think we’re better off stopped here? This is a bad neighborhood. Keep on driving, man!”
The car surged back into traffic.
“Now tell me, what’s with this free sample shit?” said Chinstrap. “This ain’t Costco. You want something from us.”
“I just want to do business. Like I said, I got nineteen more of these.”
Chinstrap squinted. “How much you got, total … by weight?”
“Don’t know for sure. Maybe ten kilos.”
“Mierda!”
“Where’s the rest of it?” said Tonio.
“You guys make me an offer … get me a down payment … and I’ll tell you where to find it.”
“This is too strange,” said Soul Patch, shaking his head. “Shit like this just don’t happen. Not to cacos like us.”
“Listen. I just want to go to Europe. That’s all. I need enough money for a one way ticket … to Rome … and some spending money … hotel … food.”
“So how much? How much you expecting to get?”
“Depends how much the ticket is. I don’t know … two thousand, maybe three.”
Chinstrap breathed in deep, his eyes vacant and calculating. He let his breath out slow. “How soon you need it?”
“Soon as possible,” I said. “I mean, tonight would be great.”
Chinstrap looked me in the eye. “Okay. The thing is … we … we ain’t very liquid right now. We could use the inventory … but it’s gonna take some doing to round up enough cash.” He turned to Soul Patch. “What do you think? Julia?”
“No fucking way,” said Soul Patch. “Don’t you even think of asking her.”
Chinstrap pulled out a knife and poked the tip into the corner of one packet. He pulled it out and licked the light coating of white dust clinging to the blade.
“Oh yeah! This stuff’s the shit alright. Hundred percent pure, unprocessed. We talking upscale, way uptown.”
“I’ll even throw in a truck to haul it,” I said.
“Oh stop! You’re killing me. Who do you think you are, Santy Claus?”
“This don’t smell right,” said Tonio. “I’m thinking … he might be a narc.”
“He ain’t no narc, man. Look at him. He ain’t even old enough to drink.”
“Still … we should check him … for a wire.”
“You check him,” said Chinstrap. “You in the back with him.”
I opened my jacket and lifted my shirt to show them I was clean. I started undoing my pants.
“Okay dude, that’s enough,” said Chinstrap, waving me off. “We believe you.”
“So?” I said, anxious. “We got a deal?”
“We’ll see what we can do. Like I said, liquidity’s an issue … with the short notice and all. And, uh … we probably should check things out … make sure there’s no heat coming down. Understand?”
That last bit worried me. I don’t know what kind of connections Jared’s cartel had in Pittsburgh, but if word had gotten out about my deeds in Cleveland, I would be sunk.
“We can sit on it, Pedro.” said Soul Patch. “Warehouse it. Turn it into rock little by little.”
“Yeah. Maybe so.”
“Listen. Drop me off at a travel agent. Go do your thing, come back with the money and I’ll tell you where to find the rest. That strip I gave you is worth 2k easy. Like I said, there’s nineteen more if you hook me up. If you don’t … I’ll find someone else.”
***
They circled around Hill and dropped me off at a place called Three Rivers Travel, just a block or two down from the parking garage where I had parked the pickup.
Soul Patch reached back and handed the strip to Tonio.
“What you want me do with this?”
“Stuff it down your shirt and go take a walk. I don’t any trace of that crap in Julia’s car. We’re going back to the house.”
“Bring it to Frank’s,” said Chinstrap. “But tell him, he takes any, he’s paying.”
Tonio’s face went sour but he complied, exiting the car with odd lumps protruding from shirt. He shifted it around to try to hide it better.
“Meet you back here in an hour, maybe two,” said Chinstrap. 
They drove off.
“Be right back,” said Tonio. “I need to get rid of this.” He shuffled off down the street, looking antsy and suspicious as all heck.
I entered the travel agency, savoring the air conditioning and the minty aroma in the air. There was nobody else waiting, but the lady behind the desk didn’t even look up at me. She clattered away at a keyboard, shuffled papers and took two calls before she finally glanced my way and smiled.
“So … how can I help you?”
“I want to go to Rome. Cheap.”
“Departing?”
“Soon as possible.”
She peeked over the rim of her glasses. “You have to give me a date.”
“Today. If … that works.”
“Today?” She scrunched her mouth. “Returning?”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no?’ No return? You mean one way?”
“That’s what no means.”
“Don’t get smart with me kid. I’m just doing my job.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to … I just …”
She took off her glasses and squinted. “How old are you?”
“Old enough,” I said. “Eighteen.”
She slipped her glasses back on and focused her attention on the screen. I listened to flurries of keystrokes, a pause, and then more frantic little clusters of clicking. “Believe it or not, there are some seats available on the red-eyes.”
“How much?”
“Well … this one here on Delta is fourteen hundred.”
“Dollars?”
“What did you think I meant? Rubles?”
“It’s just that … that’s a lot … a lot more than I expected.”
She sighed. “That’s how it is, booking travel at the last minute. If you could wait a couple weeks—” 
“No. I’m not waiting.”
“Well, then let’s see if there’s something cheaper. Hmm, here’s one for eight, but you don’t want this one.”
“Why not? Of course I want it. If that’s the cheapest.”
“It’s … an African airline.”
“So?”
“Their safety record is not quite up to par … by industry standards.”
“What’s the name of the airline?”
“Ethiopian.”
“I never heard of them crashing. Have you?”
“Well, no. But …”
“When does the flight leave?”
“Eleven-ten p.m. But that price I quoted is just the Dulles to Rome leg. A connector from Pittsburgh on United … um … hang on.“ She clacked at her keyboard. “Would add another five hundred.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding!”
“Nope. That’s just how it is with a last minute reservation.”
I checked my watch. It wasn’t even one o’clock yet.
“Book me that Ethiopian Air flight. I’ve got plenty of time to get to DC.”
***
She reserved the flight with the promise that I would return within the hour with the cash to cover it. Now, I could only pray that Chinstrap and Soul Patch came through with the dough.
There was no sign of Tonio, so I went up the street to the parking garage and climbed the stairs to the rooftop. Seeing Dad’s truck in its spot, secure in its space, felt like coming home. I went into the cab and just sat there a while, soaking in the vibes.
I opened the glove box and fished out my passport and registration. There was an empty CVS bag on the floor. I took it, climbed in back and lifted the soggy mattress to winnow what remained of my belongings into their final essence. I was ready for the next degree of severing my physical connections to this world.
There wasn’t much I absolutely needed to bring. One 1964 silver dollar from the year Mom and Dad had both been born. Two chunks of a broken boomerang I had made as a science project for Mom—the dang thing had worked! A few family photos picked out of frames and protected behind layers of Ziploc. My good luck rock from a beach in the Bahamas—smooth grey basalt with a line of white encircling. And lastly, the little plastic figure of Mr. Magoo, the mustachioed PlaySkool mechanic who had been my imaginary friend as a tyke. I couldn’t bear to leave Mr. Magoo behind.
Everything else stayed. I would miss my books, my harmonica, my music, but they were all replaceable. I locked the truck and walked away.
***
As I turned the corner from the garage, I found all three of my new friends pacing in front of the travel agency. It took them a minute to spot me, but once they did, they came storming up the sidewalk.
“Where the fuck did you take off to?” said Chinstrap.
“I went for a walk. You know, some fresh air, exercise. Did you get the cash?”
Chinstrap and Soul Patch looked at each other sheepishly. 
“Not quite 2K,” said Chinstrap. “But we got most of it.”
“How much?”
“Thirteen … thirteen hundred.”
“What? That’s unacceptable!” I said.
“Hey man. On short notice … it’s the best we can do. You can hang on to some of the blow if you want.”
“Fuck that. I’ll keep it all! That strip I gave you is all you get.”
“Hey man … you said—” 
“I said 2K minimum, not thirteen hundred.”
“That’s just the cash,” said Chinstrap. “We could … write a check … for your ticket … as long as it wasn’t too much.”
“How much is too much?”
Chinstrap shrugged. He could only hem and haw.
“Can you swing eight hundred?”
Soul Patch nudged him. “We make a quick sale, we make a deposit. Papi never has to know.”
“I’m giving you guys a deal like you never dreamed of.”
“He said he could write you a check,” said Soul Patch. “But you gotta show us the stuff.”
“Write the check, then we’ll talk.”
Chinstrap looked all sweaty and agitated. He kept looking down the street. “Let’s do it over here.” He turned the corner onto a side stoop that opened onto an alley, sat down on some concrete stairs and pulled out a checkbook. “How much?”
“Eight hundred, thirty two bucks.”
“Phew-ee! Just to go to Italy?” He wrote out the amount, signed it, but left it attached in the book.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what I got to give.” I pulled out the truck keys, the registration, the parking garage ticket and a screwdriver.
“What’s the screwdriver for?” said Soul Patch.
“You’ll need it to get at the stuff. That’s all I’m gonna say. But there’s one other thing I need—a ride to the airport.”
“Oh! No problem man,” said Chinstrap. “The airport’s just up the road.”
“Not Pittsburgh,” I said. “Dulles.”
***
They made Tonio drive me to Dulles in a little Ford Focus with pink seat covers and a cotton candy-scented air freshener. He had borrowed the car from his older sister. I had suggested that he drive me in my own truck, but Chinstrap and Soul Patch insisted on keeping it off the street. 
It felt weird being chauffeured. And it made my stomach all queasy, realizing I would never see Dad’s truck again, never mind drive it.
Tonio didn’t say much at first. He just kept flipping through the radio stations, never satisfied with what he found. “Shoulda brought some fucking CDs,” he muttered, at one point. 
“Yeah? What kind of stuff do you like?”
“Dubstep, believe it or not. The guys make fun of me for it, but what can I say? I like it. What about you?”
“Me?” There was an awkward pause. I had to think pretty hard to realize that I had no preferences, really. “I’ll listen to anything. Country. Hip-hop. Gregorian chants. Some days it all sucks and I can only handle the songs I make up inside my head. Other days it all sounds good.”
“You’re a fuckin’ weirdo. You know that?”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “So I’ve been told.”
We crossed into Maryland and Tonio slurped the last of the Big Gulp he had gotten from the Seven-Eleven before we left Pittsburgh.
“Shit, this is a long drive,” said Tonio. “Why couldn’t you fly from Pitt?”
“Too much money,” I said. “If you guys came up with the cash you promised, maybe it wouldn’t have been an issue.”
“Say what?” he squeaked. “You got more than two grand if you count that check. 
“Yeah, but you guys also ended up with a truck.”
“Which they was gonna get anyway.”
“Listen, you all got a good deal. Admit it.”
“’You all?’ Pedro and Robert got the deal. You think I’m gonna see any of that? I’m just their go-fer. And as for how good it is, we’ll see how good once the shit comes down. If they had asked me, I would’ve said no. Whoever you got that shit from, that’s some big machotes we’re messing with. I wish they had just stuck with the small stuff.”
“You guys’ll be fine,” I said. “They’re never gonna know if you just sit on it a while. Wait till things cool down. Sell a little at a time. It’s not like the stuff is perishable.”
“So why didn’t you do that instead of giving it up like a fire sale?”
“No time,” I said. “I got places to go, people to see.”
“Yeah? And who’s that? Who’s so important you gotta dump a shit load of prime blow to run off to Europe?”
“A … friend.”
Tonio giggled. “Oh, don’t tell me it’s some bitch.”
“Yeah, she’s a girl.”
Tonio rolled his eyes. “Puta madre! Them fucking bitches get you every time. Every man’s downfall.”
“You got a girlfriend, Tonio?”
”Um, nah. Not at the moment. I’m in between.”
“Not a bad place to be.”
“Unless you want to get laid.”
“So what the deal with you and the other guys?” I said. “I assumed you were equal partners.”
“Yeah, right. I’m just their lookout. Fucking errand boy.”
“Hey listen. If you want to stop and get something to eat. Go for it. It’s on me.”
“Mighty big a you,” said Tonio, with a bit of sarcasm.
“I mean it,” I said.
“Thanks. I ain’t that hungry.”
***
As we hurtled through the outskirts of Frederic, I studied the AAA map I had found in a side pocket. Tonio was counting on me to do all the navigation. He had never driven this far outside of Pittsburgh before.
“You want 15 South,” I told him as we whizzed past a mill dam with a rampaging spillway. “We need to cross the Potomac.”
“But the sign says DC that a way.”
“We don’t want that. Dulles is in Virginia.”
“Say what? You mean I don’t get to see the Capitol?”
“You can do whatever you want once you drop me off,” I said. “But the airport is this way.”
Tonio gawked at the river as we crossed the steel frame bridge at Point of Rocks. Despite his grumblings, I think he was enjoying this drive. The scenery sure was pretty, with all these rambling fields and barns. 
Traffic got a bit heavy in places and slowed us down. I had expected to have reached Dulles by now, but it was only a little after five. Still plenty of time.
As we crept through the center of Leesburg’s business district, Tonio got a little antsy.
“Man, where the fuck you taking me?”
“Short cut,” I said. “Trust me.”
A couple blocks farther, a big sign for the airport redeemed me. We turned onto 267, a toll road that cut straight down to Dulles.
I went to gather my things, but there was not much to gather, just that CVS bag, the passport in my shirt pocket and a boarding pass. 
As we closed in on the airport, Tonio’s cell phone buzzed and he answered it. At first he was all calm and loosey-goosey—it sounded like he was talking to Chinstrap. But then all of the jokiness went out of his voice, and his face set like Bondo.
“Yeah? No shit? Shit. Fucking Christ. Yeah. No Problem.” He threw me a worried glance. “I can handle it.”
He jerked the wheel and pulled onto a ramp one exit too soon. 
“Wait! Where are you doing? It’s not this exit, it’s the next.” We sat behind a line of cars leading up to a toll booth.
“The guys … they want me to run this errand … first.”
“An errand? What the fuck? Can’t it wait? We’re almost at the airport.”
“Don’t worry, we got plenty of time. Your flight don’t leave for four hours yet. That right?”
“What kind … of errand?”
“Uh … they just want me to drop something off … you know … while I’m down here.”
Tonio was a horrible actor. His idea of nonchalance was to stiffen every muscle of his body and avoid eye contact. And yet he kept glancing my way. And the more nervous he got, the more nervous he made me. 
Something was wrong. What possible errand could they want him to run? And why wait to tell him until after we’ve been driving four and a half hours? We were only a couple miles from the airport. It made absolutely no sense. 
I had this vision of Tonio turning into an abandoned parking lot and there’d be this grey Escalade waiting for us.
The line crept forward. We were one car away from paying the toll.
“Tonio, drop me off here. I can walk.”
“No man. I can take you. Just let me do this one errand.”
“No. That’s okay. I’m gonna walk.
Tonio slipped a hand into his hoodie and pulled out a gun. His hands were shaking. “I can’t let you do that. Sorry man.”
But I didn’t hesitate. I snatched the plastic sack holding my last possessions and was out that door in a flash, tearing through a fringe of trees and onto a grassy sward, heading for an office park tucked among the highway cloverleaves. 




Chapter 25: Dulles

I ran down the embankment to a parking lot surrounding a huge office park. Angular, glass-sheathed buildings sprouted from the sea of pavement like alien crystals. Three steps across, I hesitated—the architecture too stark to feel like a refuge. 
And then I heard this little engine rev up to a shrill whine. Tonio’s car bolted free from the toll booths like a sprung colt. 
I had often complained about movie scenes where someone is fleeing from bad guys in a car down the center stripe of some, probably just because the director thought it looked cool. Well, it’s just plain stupid and enough to make me lose all sympathy with the characters (not to mention, dragging me out of the story—wink wink).
So I didn’t run across that lot. I doubled back into the trees where Tonio couldn’t reach me with his car. I ducked down behind a patch of blackberries as his car came whipping into the lot, weaving back and forth, creeping down each row of parking spaces, hunting for me.
But I couldn’t stay put so close to the scene of my escape. The toll booth was just the other side of a long row of pines. So I followed some power lines deeper into the woods, skirting the edge of a bulldozed area where they were putting in more parking lots and office parks.
All in all, I had made out well. I had a ticket to Rome and a good fifteen hundred bucks in cash stuffed in my pockets. With more time and patience, I could have done even better, but if the deal had taken any longer to set up, those Cleveland guys would have nabbed me in Pittsburgh.
It shocked me how quickly they had homed in on Chinstrap and Soul Patch. Apparently their network had its fingers in every pie. I felt sorry for those two. I hoped nothing horrible happened to them. Maybe the bad experience would steer them out of the drug trade, or … lead to better business opportunities. Whatever.
As bad as I felt, I obviously had no intention of giving the money back or making it easy for Tonio to find me. I plunged deep into the woods, crossing muddy sloughs and fighting my way through patches of brambles that ripped at my clothes. 
When the woods ran out, I found myself on the edge of a series of cornfields separated by windbreaks—narrow strips of oaks and junipers. The corn was only chest high, so I used the windbreaks to screen my traverse, keeping to the side away from the main road. There was a long drive leading to a farmhouse behind me, but I could spot any cars coming that way before they spotted me.
Planes came howling down one after the other, each about two minutes apart, locking their landing gear right over my head. It heartened me to see how close I was to the airport, only a couple miles north of a major runway. Hard to believe I would be sitting on one of those planes only a few hours from now.
The windbreak led me to a stone wall running along a larger road with some light but steady traffic. No way around it, I was going to have to expose myself and cross. But for now, I rested in a patch of spongy moss, sitting with my back against a fallen tree. 
I turned my head and was struck by how the fields behind me caught the slanting light of the setting sun. It would have looked amazing in a painting or postcard. 
Experiencing beauty in such moments confused me. When I was depressed, walking down a beach surrounded by all these golden dunes, feathery clouds and glittery waves—it just didn’t seem fair. The world had no right to flaunt its prettiness at me like that. Why couldn’t my surroundings match my moods?
I turned my attention to the residential complex across the road, planning my next move. They were condo and townhouses mostly, pretty upscale for being directly beneath the landing pattern of a major airport. The buildings were densely packed but nicely landscaped, with patches of grass to walk your dog in and plantings of dogwood and oleander, all of it nestled in this pocket of woodland.
I went over the wall, waited for a gap in the traffic and darted across. I worried this move would bring an Escalade full of gangsters with Uzis after my ass, but nothing happened. The traffic just kept whizzing by.
I entered the complex, which seemed eerily quiet for a weekday afternoon. No kids anywhere. No toys in the yard or even playgrounds. I trained my eyes on a couple of suspicious cars lurking in the visitor’s spaces, but they weren’t even occupied.
Twilight fell. Street lights flickered on. I tried to make it look as if I belonged here, swinging my shredded CVS bag as if I had just taken a stroll to the corner drugstore and was headed back home for an evening of sitcoms and cop shows.
I could see the forest looming on the far side of the complex—the last obstacle between here and the airport. It would be no fun stumbling around those woods in the dark, but what choice did I have? At least there was no way I could get lost with that endless train of jet planes coming down to point the way.
I snaked my way through a curvy grid of streets, heading for the far corner. One street over, there was a guy standing under a street lamp, talking on a phone. 
Checkered shirt! It was Tonio! That sucker didn’t give up easily.
I turned the corner and sprinted into this recreation complex. I jogged past a bank of windows—a zoo of people on treadmills, plugged into white ear phones, gazing through the glass with unseeing eyes.
Behind the gym, there was a chain link fence with a locked gate leading to a dirt road that undulated through the piney woods, narrowing as it rose, disappearing into the shadows beneath a tangle of branches. I slipped through the gate and into the dark. 
***
I lost the trail almost immediately and had to plow my way through some thick underbrush and slog through a swamp, but the lights of the planes and runway markers kept me pointed the right way. I eventually blundered back onto the road, which was barely wide enough for a single jeep to pass. From the well-worn grooves, patrols of some sort seemed to come through regularly. 
After a half hour of splashing through puddles and tripping over rocks, the trail finally met the perimeter of the runway. A twenty foot fence topped with razor wire bounded a no-man’s-land of closely mown scrub. Far down the other end, the glowing tower and terminals of Dulles beckoned.
The jeep trail dumped me out onto a commercial vehicle access road lined with hangars and warehouses. I paused a moment to catch my breath before continuing onward.
I hadn’t gone a hundred feet before a security van with lights flashing came careening off the main terminal road, stopping with its high beams in my face. I froze like a jack-lighted deer.
One of the cops stepped out, arms loose at his side. “Lost?”
“Just trying to get to the airport. My ride broke down at the toll booth one exit back. I decided to walk. I’ve got a flight at eleven.”
“You walked all the way from exit eight?”
“Um … yeah.” It was exit seven, actually—the one before. But he didn’t have to know that. My story was weird enough already.
“Put down that bag and step away.”
“I … I have a boarding pass,” I said.
“Show me.”
I pulled out the card and held it high. He clicked his flashlight on and directed the beam at it.
“Bring it here.”
I slogged over, muddy water squishing out through the lace holes of my sneakers.
His partner got out from the other side of the van and came up behind me, poking around the stuff in my bag.
“Ethiopian? Really?” he said, squinting at the boarding card.
“Hey, it was cheap.”
“Why are you going to Rome?”
“To meet a … friend.”
“Just random junk in here,” said the other cop, poking through my bag.
The first cop eased his posture. “Jeez, kid … what are you doing crashing through the woods in the dark? Why couldn’t you just call a cab?”
“I don’t know. Saw all those planes coming in, thought the airport would be closer than it was.” 
“You have no idea how dangerous it is to be pulling stuff like that post 9/11.”
I shrugged. “Sorry. I thought it would be obvious that I’m not any terrorist.”
The officer clucked his tongue. “Look at you, all filthy and sopping wet. Hop in. We’ll give you a lift.” 
Now he sounded like Dad.
***
The rent-a-cops took me back to their headquarters, which was tucked away down an alley behind the main terminal. There, they fingerprinted me, snapped my picture and photocopied my passport and ticket. 
“You gonna book me?”
“What for?” said the cop who brought me in. “I mean … we could … for trespassing. But nah, this is just precautionary.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Take a cab next time. Okay?”
I couldn’t be more thrilled about this turn of events. What more could I ask for than an armed escort straight into the terminal? Whoever might be watching the main entrances would have never seen me enter.
I was hoping this would count as a security screening and they would send me directly to the gates, but when I went through their little side door, I found myself in the ticketing area. I guess even they couldn’t supersede the mighty TSA. 
I checked the departures screen to make sure I was in the right terminal. My flight would be leaving from the H gates, whose planes apparently had no direct connection to a concourse. I would have to ride this bus-like contraption to get out to the actual plane. No biggie.
I took my place at the end a very long line at the security checkpoint. I tried to blend in as best as I could, but people gave me lots of space in that line. It was no wonder. I smelled of swamp water and rotting vegetation. I kept picking bits of leaf and twig off my clothes. I pitied whoever had to sit next to me on the plane.
I got a little excited when I realized that once I got past the scanners, there was nothing anybody could do to me. It was a safety zone. You couldn’t even smuggle toothpaste past these guys.
The line moved so slowly. I was going to have to take off my shoes and run them through the scanner. That was gonna be embarrassing. My socks were completely waterlogged and stinking of mud.
This guy strolled past the line, looking everybody in the face. He looked to be in his thirties, wearing a sports coat over a tight T-shirt. There was a cocky, angry element to his body language that disturbed me.
A minute later, he came back the other way. This time he was on his cell phone. I tried not to look at him directly. Hopefully, he was just an air marshal or undercover cop of some sort.
The line inched forward. There were still about ten to fifteen people in front of me. Scads of hand luggage crowded the belt. A young couple wrestled with a baby stroller that refused to fold.
Someone bumped me hard from behind.
“Hey! Watch it.”
It was the guy in the sports coat. He had cut into line behind me.
“You and me need to talk,” he said.
“What?”
“Remember me? Cleveland?”
Shit! He was one of the guys from the garage. In fact, he was the one who had handed me the envelope.
My instincts told me to run. But we were only ten feet from a couple guards with automatic rifles, along with a whole slew of TSA types. They wouldn’t dare kill me here, would they? Was he bold (or dumb) enough to carry a concealed weapon into an airport?
“How’d you find me?”
“Wasn’t hard. We got friends in Pittsburgh. Now all I want you to do is stay calm and follow me outside. There’s a man outside wants to talk to you.”
I took a giant step forward to make up the gap that had formed in front of me.
“About what?”
“Stop with that shit. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You fucked up, Jim. Come on. Don’t cause a scene. Come on and get this over with.”
“What do you all want from me? You know I don’t have the truck anymore, right?”
“Mr. M wants to talk to you. He wants an apology.”
“For what? I did my job. You guys stiffed me.”
“Listen, kid. You’re lucky. You’re a newbie. Maybe he’ll cut you some slack. He probably just wants to see you show him some respect. Apologize. Make sure you understand there’s no way you will ever pull that shit again.”
“Tell Mr. M to go fuck himself.”
The guy rolled his eyes and sighed. “Kid. You’re just digging yourself a deeper hole. Now, I won’t tell him you said that. So come on. It’ll just take a minute.”
”Yeah, right.”
“Honest. An apology. That’s all he wants. We already got the stuff back. All of it.”
“So, I apologize to this guy, then what? He gonna make me say a bunch of Hail Mary’s and let me go?”
The line crept forward. I was only a few passengers away from being screened. Security guys were starting to look our way. I saw one guy nudge another and get on his walkie-talkie.
“Come on, kid. You really don’t want to be on Mr. M’s shit list.”
“Why not?”
“He knows where you live.”
What a crock of shit.
“Hah! Lot of good that does him. I ain’t never coming back to the States.”
“Don’t forget your family … your parents. We know where they live, too.”
My eyes widened. This asshole was bluffing. What else was he making up?
“Apparently, you don’t know shit, do you?”
“What are you talking about? Come on!” He grabbed my arm and yanked me out of line. I twisted around and squirmed free.
“Help! Somebody! This pervert’s hassling me!
Two guards rushed over. “What’s going on? You know this guy?”
“He knows my name somehow, but no, I’ve never seen him before.”
“Both of you, let’s see a picture ID and boarding passes.”
Mr. Sports Coat had this dazed expression, like a boxer fighting to stay alert after taking a punch.
“I ain’t flying anywhere.”
“Well buddy, then you need to leave this line. Only passengers allowed here.”
He backed away slowly, looking me straight in the eye. “Expect us,” he spat. “Somebody will be in touch. No matter where you go. Mr. M’s got connections. And he ain’t one who forgets … or gives … an insult.” 
He pulled out his iPhone and snapped my picture. “Have a nice flight.” He smiled, turned and walked away.




Chapter 26: Roma

I spent a good half hour in the men’s room trying to make myself look and smell presentable. I rinsed out my muddy socks and sneakers in the sink, wringing the socks as dry as possible before slipping them back on, stuffing paper towels into my sneakers to absorb some of the moisture.
I practically showered under that tap, washing my hair with that medicinal-smelling soap from the dispenser. I didn’t care about the stares, and I drew plenty.
I emerged from that washroom a much better representative of humanity that the one who had entered. At least folks wouldn’t be as disgusted to sit next to me on the plane. 
I was still giddy over the idea that I was in a weapons-free zone. Here, past security, no one could touch me. I hadn’t felt this relaxed since Florida. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be calm.
It seemed unbelievable, but it was true. By this time tomorrow, I would be walking through the same city as Karla, breathing the same air, watching the same clouds. That made me positively giddy.
Feeling so up, of course, negated any chance of seeing her in Root any time soon, but I if I ever saw Root again if I could link up with Karla in the flesh. 
I wandered the terminal, too restless to sit. I had thick wad of cash in my jeans but resisted the temptation to load up on a bunch of junk from the gift shops. I would have loved to have gotten a travel pillow and a fresh T-shirt but they were way overpriced. 
I passed by a display of junky earrings and immediately thought of Karla, but an airport was a ridiculous place to buy a gift like that like that. I was sure I would have plenty of opportunity in Rome.
I did pick up a newspaper, though, along with a Peach Snapple and a Kit Kat. I thought I might as well catch up on what was going on in the world and calm my hunger pangs. I didn’t want to stumble into the middle of a war or a natural disaster, not that either were likely in a place like Italy. 
The front page had a big article about the Occupy movement. I still had no idea what that crap was all about. All I knew were the jokes and quips I had overheard in public and by DJs on the radio—in other words, folks as ignorant as me. At least I had the sense to keep my mouth shut until I had a chance to figure out what that deal was all about.
Apparently, a big protest march had just gotten busted up in DC with hundreds of people getting arrested on the National Mall. And now there were solidarity protests popping up around the world. My take on it? Good for them. At least someone cared enough about what was going on in the world to do something.
The chocolate bar only made me hungrier. I couldn’t help myself and grabbed a slice of Sbarro pizza from the food court. When I returned to the gate, I saw the pilots and aircrew arrive in their green and gold uniforms. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They were real African pilots, not some European mercenaries. Cool. 
When the boarding announcement came, I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. My heart thumped with anticipation. I could feel Root retreating from my consciousness at light speed, making for the weirdest mix of triumph and worry. In one sense, Karla and I were getting farther apart in one world, and closer in the other. I just hoped I was making the right choice about which one mattered more.
I stepped through the gate and onto the weird little bus with benches that would take us to the plane. Good bye America.
***
I had only flown a couple times before. The first time was with Mom and Dad just before we moved to Florida. They told me we were just going to Disney World but in actuality we had gone to close on the house.
I went down the aisle, looking for my seat. For an African airline, it seemed as professional as any. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Chickens in the overheads? Goats in the aisle? The seats even had a video screen embedded in every headrest with a selection of on-demand movies. 
I had a middle seat, and both of my seatmates were Ethiopian, as were most of the passengers, it seemed. They didn’t seem to notice my sogginess, or the musty odor that still permeated my clothes. To tell you the truth, one of those guys could have used some deodorant.
Only about a quarter of the passengers were American or Italian. This was supposedly a brand new route for Ethiopian Air, though they had long been stopping in Rome to refuel. Only recently had they started letting passengers off and on, before continuing on to Addis Ababa, which I guess is their capital. 
The in-flight magazine had an article about some tourist destinations with the most exotic names—Axum and Gondar and Lalibela. There was a crossword puzzle too, but someone had already completed it. 
I was more sleepy than hungry by the time the flight leveled off and the stewardesses came around with the food. But the darned stewardesses woke me up every time they had something to give. Man, were they pushy, practically shaking me by the shoulders until I opened up my eyes. But it was probably a good thing I forced down a meal while I could. Who knew how long my cash would last in Europe?
I drowsed off before they had even taken my dinner tray, waking only when the stewardesses had come around with breakfast. I was startled to see the location screen with that little plane superimposed over a map. We had already crossed much of Spain and almost in Rome. It was as if we had been teleported across the Atlantic.
That sure got my heart pittering again. Only a few more hours and I would be on the ground. I wish I’d had the time to buy a map or something. I had no idea about the layout of this city or its transportation options. I knew more about Root and Luthersburg than I knew about Italy or Rome. 
But I was confident I could get it all sorted out. Once I found Karla, everything would be fine.
***
I raised my seatback in preparation for landing. The plane banked over a bunch of dry looking fields and orchards. That was fucking Italy down there! Oh my God! 
People clapped after the wheels touched down, as if some had not expected to survive the trip. I sat there all nervous and sweaty as we pull up to a gate. 
I got up when the door opened and retrieved my CVS bag from the overhead bin and waited to exit the place. Most people stayed put in their seats, traveling on to Ethiopia, which despite the tourist propaganda, I still thought of as a place filled with starving people and scrubby deserts. I was glad to be getting off here in Italy. 
I stepped out into the terminal in a daze, grateful for all the signs in English. I had no clue how to speak or read Italian. The only words I knew were pizza and spaghetti. If Mom’s home schooling had been deficient in any area it had been the language department.
I cruised through immigration, which was basically a rubber-stamp affair. I had no baggage to claim other than the anxieties weighting my brain. I approached a crowd of all these anxious, waiting faces greeting passengers. 
And then there was a guy there, tall and tan, with a cruel smirk that stood out from all the other expressions. He held a placard bordered in black and gold. In block letters, my name was written in Sharpie. ‘James Moody.’
***
I nearly peed my pants. I forced myself to look straight ahead, but out of the corner of my eye I could see this guy looking at people and glancing at his phone. The fucker probably had my picture.
Why would they show their hand like that? Did they actually think I was stupid enough to walk up and say hi? Were they just taunting me?
I ran into the nearest rest room and locked myself in a stall. These weren’t like American toilet stalls, they had no gap below or above the walls, so I had this little sound-proofed closet all to myself. I felt pretty safe in there. For nearly an hour, I didn’t dare come out. 
When I did emerge, that guy was gone. There was a new crowd of people greeting the arrivals. I shuffled past, turned the corner towards the ground transportation area and took off running. 
I found a map posted on a wall with train and bus routes. I wanted to go to straight to Vatican City, but I was shocked to see how far the airport was from the city proper. It was like 30 km away, which is about 20 miles. I wasn’t even in Rome yet. 
The train—the Leonardo Express—cost fourteen Euros, way more than I was willing to spend. The bus was like one third the price, so I found a currency exchange booth and handed over five twenty-dollar bills. It was a bit sickening to get back only about seventy Euros. I hoped the prices I had seen so far weren’t representative of the overall cost of living here, or I would be screwed. I wasn’t feeling as good about the deal I had made with those guys in Pittsburgh.
Euros in hand, I started walking away and spotted that guy with the placard over by the taxi stand. The fucker actually thought I was flush enough to hire a taxi. 
I left him behind, rushing down a hall that led to a bus terminal, bought myself a ticket from a machine, and pretty soon I was on a bus heading the right direction. I didn’t know where exactly it would bring me, but I was pretty sure it was headed towards Rome.
***
The traffic was horrendous, but we finally reached a place called Termini, which sounded kind of fatal. I had exact no address for Karla, only the vague sense that she lived within walking distance of the Vatican, since she had said she often attended mass under that alabaster dove. So I headed off on foot in that general direction, thinking I’d save a little cash by not taking the subway.
Rome dazzled me right off the bat. The Termini area was a little blah, but I was soon cutting through alleys and plazas that looked like something out of a movie set. It was so unlike Central Florida or Ohio. I loved it.
I stopped in front of a few restaurants and looked at the menus posted by their doors. The stuff I saw on people’s plates looked amazing, but the prices made me lose my appetite. If only those Euros didn’t count for half again as much as a dollar, maybe I would have sprung for a bowl of pasta. For now I kept walking, consulting the free map I had picked up from an information booth at the Termini.
The sun was getting low. I came to this square dotted with several fountains. These Italians were big on fountains. 
There were tourists all over the place, including lots of kids my age or slightly older. I got the feeling though, that most of them weren’t nearly as worried about their money, from the looks of all those shopping bags and the way they didn’t blink at shelling out the Euros for those overpriced bottles of water from the refreshment carts.
The map told me I was getting closer to the Vatican. I was about to turn left when I reached another plaza with yet another fountain and steps that seemed to go on and on up a series of terraces. I couldn’t help but be drawn up to the top, even though it was the opposite direction from where I wanted to go.
I scanned the faces sitting on the steps as I went up, and they spanned the spectrum. There was a middle-aged woman crying and being consoled by a young woman I assumed to be her daughter. There were couples making out. Young men drinking beer. Old men trying to catch their breath. 
I didn’t stop until I reached the railing at the top and there, down a long avenue brushed with shadow and glinting in the late afternoon sun, was the dome that could only be St. Peters Basilica—the very place that harbored the alabaster window with the dove.
The thought of being so close to the real Karla Raeth was enough to send me soaring over Rome.




Chapter 27: Vaticano

From the heights above the Spanish Steps, I could see these huge boulevards leading like spokes down to the river and to the Vatican City beyond. For some reason, the sight brought Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz to mind. Who was I? Dorothy?
I trotted down those steps in triumph. I hadn’t felt this glorious since before the whole depressing deal with Dad and Mom and the house went down. It felt like I had survived some trial by fire and emerged hardened and ready for the next phase in life. 
I hung a right at the fountain and made my way down the long and wide Piazza di Spagna. Some sort of commotion was going on around several islands of grass and palm trees edged by curbing. Each island was crowded with little tents and protest signs. Apparently, this was part of Occupy Roma. 
It didn’t look like much. There were people banging away on laptops, handing out food to whoever wanted it, and another bunch standing in a circle banging on drums. I stood beside the other tourists and gawked for a bit before continuing on.
I weaved my way through and around the throngs, cruising all the way to the river into the blinding sun without stopping. I crossed the Tiber just as the river fell under shadow. I knew it was the Tiber from the plaque in the middle of the bridge—the Ponte Umberto. 
All these ancient marble arches and glittery domes made my head flutter with the unreality of being here. The place seemed so ethereal and surreal, even more so than Root. Each time I stepped it felt like my feet were not quite landing on the ground.
There again was that dome in the distance—St. Peter’s. I recognized it from a picture on a tourist map I had rescued from a trash barrel. Karla had said that she lived only a few blocks away from St. Peter’s Square, which was called Piazza San Pietro on the map. I decided to focus my search on a couple neighborhoods immediately adjacent to the Vatican City. 
I hurried along while there was still light, coming up on this huge fortress-looking thing called the Castel Sant’angelo. When I came to the next intersection and crossed the road, there was that dome again, looming ever larger. 
I saw some people on the corner make the sign of the cross, so I did the same, for good luck and to blend in, if nothing else. 
The apartments in the few residential buildings I passed on the main road had huge doors, lavish balconies and picture windows. They looked like places bankers and business executives might live—way too upscale for Karla. Something about her made me doubt that she was a rich girl. 
I turned up a small street past yet another small church, until I found a street where the apartments looked more humble, built on a more human scale. 
My head threatened to flutter off my shoulders. I suspected that some of my giddiness was due to low blood sugar. I had to eat something, so I stepped into this neighborhood pizza joint. My lack of Italian proved less of a hurdle than expected, once I figured out their ass-backwards system for paying for food. 
I pointed at a couple of squares of cheese pizza and they whisked them up, wrapped them in paper and ribbon as if they were a birthday present, set a skinny can of Coke beside it and then handed me a slip of paper that looked like a receipt. But the big guy behind the counter refused my money, and when I went to reach for the pizza, he yanked it away. 
Someone tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a lady at a cash register behind me. I handed her the receipt and a ten Euro note. She rang up the order and handed me back a different slip along with some change. This was the ticket to free up my gift-wrapped pizza. I walked out of that shop victorious, feeling like I had mastered some arcane ritual. 
So I went down the street, munching pizza and systematically examining the names on every mailbox and doorbell in the foyers and outer walls of each building, looking for Raeths. 
That pizza was gone before I had reached the end of the block. And man, that crust made Sbarro’s taste like sawdust. Even the Coke tasted better here, somehow less sweet than the American stuff and much more effective at quenching my thirst. I kind of liked this Roma place.
***
Street after street, building after building I searched and found not a shred of luck. I couldn’t find a name posted anywhere that was even close to Raeth. It was enough trouble finding names on name plates that didn’t end in vowels. 
I did buzz a Carla with a ‘C’ at one point, just to be thorough, but he turned out to be a man whose brother’s name was Andrea. Go figure.
I worked my way up another short block, all the way to this major east-west thoroughfare between the castle and the walls of the Vatican. It was starting to get dark. Though the sidewalks were well-lighted, in some doorways I had to squint to make out the writing on the mailboxes. I wish I had brought a flashlight.
When I started, I was determined to find her if it took all night, but now I was beginning to wonder if I had badly miscalculated. Not every apartment was marked. Some buildings had no names above the buzzers, only numbers. 
So I had probably bypassed dozens of anonymous apartments by now. Karla could be a needle living in a part of the haystack that I never got to see. That realization made my stomach bottom out. 
I sat down to rest on a bench just outside the walls of the Vatican, on a street called the Via Belvedere. It had been dumb of me to assume I could just show up and find her without an address. 
If I could only get back to Root, I could simply ask her. There, I knew where she lived. 
But coming to Italy had raised the stakes, Would she be more or less likely now to tell me where she lived? 
Why she had to play so coy with me, I didn’t know. It didn’t seem fair. She knew I was risking my skin, coming all this way.
I closed my eyes and invited those viny tendrils to come and wrap me in a ball and take me away. And when I felt something brush against my leg, I thought I had hit pay dirt, but it was just someone’s cat strolling by.
Though, I was starting to feel discouraged, I was a long way from abandoning all hope. Just being in Rome meant there was the possibility if running into her simply by chance, and as long as any shred of hope remained there would be no Root and no Karla. Coming to Italy had trapped me in a vicious cycle. 
One would have thought that realization alone would suffice to drive me down a spiral of despair. But something was gumming up the works, and that something was that I was too darned close to finding her. For all I knew I could be sitting in her fucking neighborhood. 
I still believed I could still find Karla here in Rome. I would just need to try a different tact.




Chapter 28: Bells

I was beginning to doze off on the bench when some police showed up in a little blue and white car and shooed me along. They were nice enough about it, though I couldn’t understand a word they said.
I really needed a nap, though. With the time difference it was only about six o’clock on the east coast, but I was running on fumes. 
I went down this narrow, cobbled street called the Via dei Corridori. There were scooters and apartment buildings to my left and what looked like a low castle wall with bricked-in arches to my right. The wall looked just like the castle walls I used to doodle when I was eight, fighting slots and all. It was weird seeing plastic dumpsters juxtaposed against all that medieval architecture.
The Via met up with this larger street that curved around a massive set of columns that opened into a large open space just beyond. At this point I was just looking for a place to crash. I crossed the street, passed through the columns and … whoa! There was this giant obelisk in the middle. This was freaking St. Peter’s Square.
I sat down on some steps and just gawked, blown away by the immensity of it. There were scads of people wandering about. I wondered, what were the odds that one of them was Karla? I would have prayed if I thought that had any possibility of increasing my chances, but instead I just sat there in a daze, hunting through the swarms of faces for the one I sought. 
I saw another policeman roust some bums on the other end of the steps and I knew I was going to be next, so I retreated, looking for someplace a little less public and exposed. By that point, even the dumpsters on the Via dei Corridori were looking attractive. I found an alley leading to a courtyard with some pocket gardens packed with parked Vespas.
I spread some paper on the ground and cozied up to a rosemary bush, only to be awakened a few minutes later by the end of a broom handle that some witch of a lady jabbed into my ribs. 
I moved on to the next courtyard, found another space in the deep shadows beneath a broken street lamp and did the same. My arms were my pillow and this time the locals left me blessedly alone.
***
I was awakened by bells. Massive bells. Earth shuddering bells. There was an old woman watering flowers on the balcony above me, sending withering glances my way. I rolled over, my face coming inches from some dog poop and rose up. I smiled and waved at her before moving on, eyes crusted and all groggy. I’m sure I looked drunker than shit, though in truth I was more sober than a nun. 
I couldn’t even see the sun yet, but I knew it was up because though the buildings remained dark, they were silhouetted against a brightening sky. Street lamps flickered off as I wobbled down the alley, heading to the St. Peter’s Square and the source of the ringing.
I found a fountain with a drinking spout. It seemed sketchy to drink from such a place, but I had seen other people doing it, so I rinsed my mouth and swallowed.
While I was at it, I dunked my head and rinsed my hair, wishing I had some soap. One of these days I would have to bite the bullet and find a cheap hotel room if such a thing existed in Rome, otherwise I wasn’t going to be able to tolerate being in my own skin. Being a clean freak and homeless was a frustrating combination.
I had to pee really bad, but there were too many people around to just let loose on some wall. I saw a crowd lining up to get into St. Paul’s so I joined them, figuring they might have public restrooms in there.
I was wondering how steep the admissions charge would be when saw there was no one selling tickets. The line was just for security. They were checking purses and having people empty their pockets. 
I had nothing to worry about. I had no weapon of any sort, though it might be prudent to pick one up if I was going to continue sleeping out on the streets.
When I finally got in, I made a beeline for the restrooms near the bag check area. I freaked when I saw myself in the mirror. I looked like some victim from a concentration camp. Where my hair wasn’t plastered to my skull, it stuck straight out. I had a beard like the fur on a mangy dog, and my clothes were all smudged and blotched with dust and grease.
I was pretty much to myself the whole time in that washroom, and it was a good thing because it gave me a chance to do some pretty intensive cleaning up, even though all of the soap dispensers were empty. I must have gone through a hundred feet of paper toweling and I still looked like crap when I was through.
I peeled my shirt off, rinsed it and wrung it out. The dingy water I squeezed out of that thing disgusted me. It went against all instinct to put that rancid rag back on over my relatively clean skin, but I sucked it up, promising myself I’d get a new outfit by the end of the day and get this set of clothes laundered. There were gift shops nearby, but I wasn’t about to get myself a Pope John Paul T-shirt, never mind that Benedict creep. My new wardrobe would have to wait.
I went into a stall and checked the wad of cash in my pocket. It was all there, all fourteen hundred or so. All this skimping had to stop. It was time to invest in making myself human again, and that meant buying more than a slice of pizza. 
I left the washroom and started to leave, but the enormous void I could sense behind me pulled me in like a vacuum. The sheer size of the basilica’s interior stunned me. You could fit a good-sized village under here. 
I wandered around, looking at all the sculptures and chapels tucked away along the sides. I reached this place with a barrier where a guard was letting a few people in a time to go down to a group of pews tucked down at the end. They were dwarfed by all the space around them. It was like someone tried to stick a church inside a massive cavern.
I started to walk away. I had no interest in attending any mass. For one thing, I wasn’t Catholic, and for another, I didn’t believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, even despite (or maybe because of) my experiences in Root. The only faith I had was in the certainty that the universe was a very weird and mysterious place.
But this huge awning caught my eyes. It was about a hundred feet high with spiraling columns that look like something straight out of nature, some massive set of Kraken’s tentacles frozen in place as they twisted and writhed.
The guard let me in past the barrier. I’m not sure why. I sure wouldn’t have, if I were him and saw myself in a queue. Maybe I looked like I needed to pray. 
So I went up to this awning thing for a closer look. Its surface was dark brown. Twisty, viny things threaded their way up to the canopy. I felt this sort of déjà vu happen, certain I had seen some semblance of this before in Root. Some of the facades of Luthersburg had columns like these. I wondered if Karla had anything to do with their design.
I thought at first that the columns were carved of wood—massive boles, felled by barbarians in some primeval forest, trees that may have held gods themselves for the pagans who worshipped there, but the placard told me they were clad in bronze, which almost impressed me more because it meant this was the spawn of a single human’s imagination. Turned out, some guy named Bernini created the thing, and it was called a ‘baldacchino’, whatever that was supposed to mean.
When I walked around the back, a shiver ran through me. High above the altar, framed by a writhing mass of sculpted humanity, was that window with the alabaster dove. It was glowing faintly and it seemed a miracle that it glowed at all because all the morning light was striking the other end of the basilica.
I went to the backmost pew and knelt, not because I was overcome with any urge to pray, but because everyone here in the sparse crowd was kneeling. I ignored the mumbo jumbo going on at the altar and stared up at the dove.
Karla’s replica, as compelling as I found it, did little justice to the real thing. Its placement blew me away, smack amidst a tangle of battling, struggling, groping angels and demons, with little cherubs floating above the fray. And at the center of all that chaos, a pure and simple bird landing in a starburst of alabaster, bloodied at the edges, brilliant at its core, like a beacon of hope in a mad world. 
Once again, my inspiration came hand in hand with a curse. The hope that it gave me that I was getting closer to Karla in the flesh pulled me ever farther from Karla in the spirit. 




Chapter 29: Occupy Roma

I walked all the way back to the Spanish Steps, to that Occupy encampment where I had seen some people using laptops. I had no interest in protesting anything, I just wanted to see if someone would let me borrow their computer for a minute, just long enough for a quick Google search. 
Search terms: Raeth and Rome and Karla. 
I had hoped I could find some electronics shop or library on the way over so I wouldn’t have had to resort to this, but no dice. Where was an Apple store when you needed it?
The encampment seemed to have grown since the day before. Every bit of space on the grassy islands was now taken up by tents and awnings. There were also more police on the scene, some arrayed in a sparse cordon in front of a bank. Another group milled about near a bus, pulling on riot gear. They joked around with each other, not looking stressed in the least. 
I hovered on the edge of a group of people sharing a card table. A girl in a floppy hat kept glancing over at me while she engaged in an intense discussion with a guy typing frantically on a MacBook Air. She patted her friend’s shoulder and approached me directly, her eyes quick and sharp.
“Sembri perso. Posso aiutarla?”
“Excuse me? I … I don’t speak Italian.”
“I say you look lost. Are you okay?”
“Um … yeah. I was just hoping to borrow someone’s laptop … just for a second … to do a quick web search?”
“Um … maybe later, okay? Now, Gaetano is updating the web site. We are busy planning a big action—a solidarity march for Occupy London. They are evicted from St. Paul’s last night. But right now we are too few. We need more people to come. You will march with us, yes?”
“Um … sure.”
“You are American? Are you the visitor from Occupy Boston?”
“Um, no … I’ve actually never been to Boston.”
“Wall Street? Zuccotti Park?”
“Sorry, no. I’m actually from Florida.”
“Oh, interesting! I never met anyone from the southern Occupations.”
“Yeah, well. Neither have I.”
That last comment didn’t seem to register with her, thankfully. A girl wearing pink from head to toe got up from one of the laptops. A guy, also in pink, immediately took her place.
“Hey, would you mind if I had a crack at one of those? I would only need a minute.”
“Yes, but I am telling you, now is not a good time. Caterina and Bruno are trying to get the live feed working. But you could join our media committee. You would have more access this way.”
“Um … well …. “
“I am Angelica, by the way.”
“James.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not really. Not yet.”
She wrinkled her nose at me. “Where have you been sleeping?
“Last night? Kind of … on the street.”
“Tonight you will be in a tent. Yes? And I think you could use a bath. Come with me.” She took me by the hand and led me over to a guy with long gray hair, all scraggly and thinning on top. They spoke to each other in Italian. He gave me a once-over with this grave but kindly look in his eyes and handed her a key.
“Come. We have a place for you to wash. And some clothes we can give you from people who donate.”
She marched across the piazza with long strides for someone so petite. We passed a group of folks all dressed in black who were congregating against a wall. Some wore bike helmets and fingerless gloves. One woman was soaking kerchiefs in a plastic basin filled with wine vinegar. One man carried a hand-painted sign bearing slashed A for anarchy over a slogan in Italian.
“These guys. Are they with you … or against you?”
“Good question,” said Angelica. “They are Black Bloc. Sometimes they are helpful. But usually they just make trouble. But we will not turn them away. Tomorrow we will need everybody we can get.”
“What’s the sign say?”
“Police attack. We fight back. They come today, hoping for a mob so they can do some smashing.”
“So what do they like to … smash?”
“Banks, usually.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because the bank hurts the small people, stealing houses, giving bonus. I can sympathize but I don’t believe in the smashing. The public, they see only them and they turn against us.”
There was another guy in shades standing by himself, leaning against a scooter, watching everybody go by very carefully. I thought he might be a journalist or something, but he wasn’t taking any notes. He glanced at me, looked down at his phone and started following us. What the fuck?
Angelica led me down this very narrow alley and through a door that seemed much shorter and narrower than usual. It made me think of hobbits even though the door wasn’t round. 
A dim and narrow stairwell led up one floor to an even dimmer and narrower hallway lined with apartments. Cardboard boxes were stacked along the wall. A group of people stood chatting outside an open door.
“Ah! You see, I don’t even need the key. Somebody is here.”
“Where are we?”
“Vincenzo’s apartment. He is sharing with the movement. Storage. Headquarters. Showers. I think you need, yes?”
“Oh, cool! That’d be nice.”
“Your shirt. What size?”
“Um … medium … I guess.”
She fished around the boxes and pulled out a purple T-shirt with a giant 99% printed in white. 
“I am sorry, there are no pants. But we do have lots of these.” She handed me a couple pairs of white tube socks. “And here is a towel.”
She yelled into the apartment. Someone responded from the bathroom. The door burst open and a bearded guy bustled out, a towel wrapped around his waist.
“It is free for you. Go and wash and then, when you come back to the camp, we will find you something to eat, yes?”
“Gosh, thank you. This is awfully nice of you guys.”
“Now go and get clean! I am tired of people calling us the dirty hippies. Yes?”
***
The water pressure in that shower was a little lacking, but at least it was hot and there were all these bottles of herbal soap and shampoo to lather up with. All that fruity aromatic essence made me feel clean inside and out.
I washed my jeans next, scrubbing them with a brush, wringing them out and then putting them on and toweling them down. I was getting used to wearing damp clothes—literal wash and wear. My socks, underwear and old T-shirt were beyond salvaging. I stuff them all down a trash can. My hoodie was a little dusty, but not too bad, considering. 
I found a stick of deodorant in the medicine cabinet. I would have been disgusted if some stranger borrowed mine, but I was desperate. I smeared on twice as much as I normally used because who knew when I’d next get the chance to wash.
I pulled on my fresh, new socks and T-shirt, raked my fingers through my hair and opened the door to find a bunch of ‘smelly hippies’ queued up with their towels. A girl with a frizzy Afro smiled and took my place.
I glanced around the cluttered apartment. There were people cooking in the kitchenette, a couple snoozing on the sofa.
“Where’s … Angelica?” I said.
“She goes back to the camp,” said a guy mousing around a widescreen iMac.
He was doing something with Google maps and seemed so into it, I didn’t dare ask to borrow his computer. My eyes fixed on the thick, yellow book he was using as a mouse pad.
“Holy crap. Is that a telephone directory? Mind if I borrow it?”
“Sure. Go ahead,” said the guy, sliding it out from under his mouse.
My hands trembled as I opened it up to the ‘R’s.’
I found hundreds of Rossis and Russos. I flipped through the pages to Raffaeles, dreading what I would listed find under Raeth. Would there be dozens to sort through, or worse, maybe none? Rome was such a big city. When I ran my finger down the page, I had my answer.
Only three.
I had been such an idiot the night before, going door to door with only the vaguest idea of Karla’s whereabouts. Narrowed down to three addresses, finding her should be a cinch. I guess I should be glad she had a Germanic father.
I looked up the location of each address on the indexed, foldout maps in the back of the directory. The first one—Allesandro Raeth—I could rule one immediately. He lived way the heck out of town near this big, round lake called Lago di Bracciano. There was no way a person living there could stroll to the Vatican to attend a mass. It must have been a half an hour train ride at least.
On my second swing, I hit it the ball out of the park. 

Raeth, Edmund e Hanna
00192 Roma (RM)
Via Dei Gracchi,
1806 39738988

That place was practically on the doorstep of Vatican City and just a few streets beyond the neighborhoods I had checked out the night before. Maybe I wasn’t such a dummy after all.
It was maybe two blocks from the Vatican Museum, six or seven from St. Peter’s Square. I just sat there with my finger on the map, trying to keep my heart from galloping off without me.
I copied the address down on a piece of scrap paper I fished out of a waste basket and sketched a rough map. 
I went ahead and did my due diligence, checking out Raeth number three—some guy named Gunther. He lived near a place called Re di Roma, a neighborhood east of the city center and nowhere near the Vatican. He could be disregarded for now. 
There was a telephone mounted on the wall in the kitchen. “Anybody mind if I made a local call?” I said to no one in particular. 
“If it is in Roma, it is okay,” said the guy at the stove, who was boiling water in two giant pots while two young women cut homemade pasta on the kitchen table.
I dialed the number and a creaky old man answered. “Pronto?” 
“Um … hi. Is uh … Karla home?”
“Mi scusi?”
“Do you … speak English?”
“Non capisco. Mi Diaspace.”
“Anybody in your house speak English?”
“Ask them ‘Quelcuno parla inglese?’” suggested one of the pasta cutters.
“Hai chiamato il numero sbagliato!” said the old guy. The line clicked off before I could repeat what the others told me to say.
“He hung up,” I said.
“We can call back and speak for you,” said the cook. 
“That’s okay. I’m thinking maybe I should go there in person.” 
I looked around at all these nonchalant faces, everyone acting like there was nothing odd at all about some American kid who wasn’t even part of their protest making himself at home in their headquarters. This was such a different world. I couldn’t imagine this ever happening in Ft. Pierce.
I left the apartment, and trotted down the stairs out into the alley leading to the Piazza. The crowd around the encampment had grown even larger. There were more police as well. 
I looked around for Angelica. I just wanted to thank her before moving on. People were carrying around Styrofoam cups with some kind of thick soup with rice in it. Whatever it was, it smelled wonderful. I gravitated towards the queue where they were dishing it out.
Two muscular guys wearing sport coats over tight T-shirts came out of nowhere and grabbed my arms. They steered me away from the encampment, towards a narrow alley thick with trash cans.
“What the fuck? Let go of me!” 
One of the guys pulled the passport out of the inside pocket of my hoodie. 
“È lui.”
I snatched my passport back. “Who the fuck are you?” They pinned my arms behind my back and twisted, yanking me towards the alley.
One of the Black Bloc guys saw what was going on and sprang into action, ripping the banner from his pole. Wielding it like a bat, he came after my accosters, shouting: “Poliziotti in borghese!”
A whole gaggle of his buddies, men and women came swarming off a low wall where they had been loitering. They all wore black, some with bandannas and knit caps covering their faces, a couple with those ‘V for Vendetta’ masks. 
The guy with the pole ran down blocked the alley and the others swooped in and surrounded us. 
One of the guys who had me reached into his jacket. A tire iron came swinging around and smashed his wrist. He roared with pain and collapsed to his knees. A gun clattered against the cobbles. A girl shrieked and kicked it under a dumpster. A booted foot caught the gun man in the ear and knocked him flat. 
Strong, gloved hands helped peel me from the other guy’s grip. Red-faced and bug-eyed, he fought like a demon, spitting and clawing, letting loose a string of the raunchiest expletives Italy had to offer, I’m sure.
A crowd of police came charging over, pulling on their vests and riot helmets as they ran. The Black Bloc-ers shoved my attackers against some trash bins and formed up into a line, bracing themselves for the assault.
I squirmed away and sprinted across the Piazza, dodging through the confused crowd, some people fleeing, others coming to watch or join in the action. I caught a glimpse of Angelica emerging from a tent, craning her neck to see what the commotion was about.
“Thank you!” I shouted, though she was probably too far away to hear me.
***
With quick, long strides, I made my way towards the river like a soldier on a forced march, headed for victory. I kept peeking over my shoulder for those two assholes who had tried to nab me, but there was no sign of them. I couldn’t believe the lengths those jerks from Cleveland were going to make their point.
I followed the crude map I had drawn, tacking up one block and down the next until I spotted the metal street sign in black and white, tacked onto the corner of a brick building. The Via dei Gracchi was a narrow, tree-lined canyon of a street that ran through a bunch of seven story apartment buildings. Pizza shops, cafes and little boutiques inhabited the ground floor.
Number 18 was accessed through a pair of huge, brown doors, half again my height, with brass knobs oddly placed smack in their middle. This was no tenement building by any means, but a far cry from the upscale digs I had encountered closer to the river.
I needed no key to get into the glassed-in foyer where a bank of mailboxes lined one side and buzzers for every apartment filled a panel across the way. The floor was littered with adverts and old newspapers. It smelled like onions and old cigars inside.
The panel with the buzzers was a complete mess, with names missing, names scrawled out and new ones written in. Some of the handwriting was hard to decipher, but nothing looked anywhere close to ‘Raeth.’
I refused to be denied. I would find her even if I had to camp out on this stoop. I was certain this was the right place. The phone book couldn’t have been clearer and the location matched everything I knew about Karla, which admittedly, was very little.
And then I noticed that of the thirty-odd buzzers on the panel, only seven were unidentifiable. I had a fourteen percent chance of pressing the right one at random. 
So I gave it a go, starting with the second floor, pressing the only unmarked buzzer on that tier, giving it a good long push. Such an ugly sound it made—something between a chainsaw and a mosquito.
When nothing happened after a minutes, I pressed it again. When again there was no response, I moved on to the next.
This time there came a crackle followed by the voice of a young woman.
“Che cazzo vuoi? Chi sei?”
Even though the little speaker distorted her words, I could tell she wasn’t Karla. 
“Hi. My name is James. I’m looking for—”
“Ottenere scopata! Uscire di casa mia!”
The big brown doors creaked open behind me, letting in a blast of street noise and diesel exhaust. A harried-looking middle-aged woman slipped inside with a little white dog on a leash, and a cloth bag packed with produce from the market.
“What was that? Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Vai via o chiamerò la polizia!” 
The speaker clicked off.
“What is going on?” said the older woman, juggling her mail. “Why are you bothering Rosa? Are you one of her boyfriends?” 
“Not at all. I’m actually looking for this girl named Karla. Her last name is Raeth. Would you happen to know her.”
The woman’s eyes got all shifty. She set her jaw and grinded her teeth. “What do you want from her?”
The dog leapt up and planted its paws on my knees, panting. I rubbed its head behind the ears.
“Nothing. I’m ... just a friend.”
The woman put down her groceries and pulled a key from her purse to unlock her mailbox. 
“How interesting. Karla is not the sort I would expect would have male friends. Especially an American.”
“So, you know her. She does live here?”
The woman shrugged. “Well, she used to. The father, he took a new job. Out of the country. He is an engineer, I believe.”
My heart crashed. “Which … country?”
“Can’t say for sure. He is Austrian by birth, but I can only speculate.”
“Christ! I can’t believe it.” I thought I was going to faint with frustration. My reaction worried the dog, who went cringing behind its master. I wanted to melt away into nothingness.
“Perhaps its best for both of you that you do not find her,” said the woman.
“Why would you say that? Do you realize what I’ve gone through to get here?”
“This man, Edmund—the father—he is not a good man. He is dangerous. Not good to his daughters. Cruel. I am so relieved he is no longer my neighbor. But I feel so sad for those girls … having to deal with him.”
“What is he? An alcoholic or something?”
“Worse,” said the woman. “He is a fundamentalist—a Lefebvrite from the Society of St. Pius X. And not only that, even among them he is an extremist. I would not be surprised that he would start his own sect.”
“So Karla has a sister? What about her mom?”
“Hanna left the family years ago. It is a crime she couldn’t take the girls with her, but the state granted him custody. She was … damaged … psychologically.”
“You have no idea where they went?”
“Who knows? Germany? Argentina? The world is full of safe harbors for lunatics.”
I took a deep breath and tried to gather my composure, but there was nothing to gather. I was coming apart as surely as if I were made of unraveling thread. 
I muttered a thank you and stumbled out through the big, brown doors. My head reeled. I thought I was going to throw up. 
I paused halfway down the steps and stared into the traffic on the main street just around the corner. The light turned green and a phalanx trucks and trolleys raced ahead. It wouldn’t be hard to time it right and dash out there. That mass of metal would just sweep me a way like a bug under a broom. 
The woman stepped out onto the landing. “Are you okay?”
Her words yanked me back from a verge. “I’ll … be fine.”
“Listen, I take it back. I hope you do find her. You seem like you care deeply. But you be careful around that Mr. Raeth. Edmund can be a demon.”




Chapter 30: Lockdown

I wafted down the streets and sidewalks like a runaway balloon, with no direction or purpose, guided only by a fickle wind.
I crossed streets without looking, ignoring the screeching brakes and bleating horns and yet I flinched at every stranger who walked too close, at any jogger who veered in my direction. I didn’t care if something bad happened to me, but it did matter how. I didn’t want to give those jerks in Cleveland the pleasure of taking me down.
Somehow, I gravitated back towards the Vatican. I’m not sure why. Heathen that I was, I had no rational reason for going there, but I kind of, sort of knew the place now. And so it called to me. That wall and dome were my beacons and I was a pigeon flying home.
I passed between the encircling columns into St. Peter’s square and across the flagstone plaza to the central obelisk. But once I reached the center of the square, I was still not satisfied. An excruciating unease churned in me—very much like pain, but without the physical hurting—and it begged for relief.
I looked up at the great, studded dome of the basilica. That was where I needed to be, if nothing else, to have a quiet place to think.
I surged across the flagstones, shuffled through security and rushed into the basilica, looking neither left nor right at the masterpieces on display, making no signs of crosses, no gestures of humility or respect as I waited my turn at the cordon to penetrate the depths of the dome and reach those pews under the lonesome, alabaster dove. 
And there, despite myself, I prayed in the wishful way a little kid talks under his breath to a fallen star or to an array of smoldering birthday candles. And you know what I wished for. I had no hope it would be granted.
One would have thought if any place on earth was holy enough to keep me out of an infernal place like Root it would be here, but those roots came twining up out of the pew in full view, I assumed, of the tourists and pilgrims. Was it a miracle, I wondered, to be transported in public to Hell’s doorstep?
I was wide awake and fully aware of every inch of my journey down through the catacombs, my molecules gliding through dirt and stone like elementary particles, and then a twist and a turn through something not even made of this earth. 
A musty smell pervaded my senses, but was quickly replaced by notes of ginger and lemon. I found myself in a heap of pillows and rolled-up futons. An alabaster dove still loomed above me—only this one wasn’t Bernini’s, it was Karla’s.
***
“Karla?” I scrambled to my feet, all lightheaded and giddy. “You here?”
I was thrilled to have made my entrance directly into her dome, and not have to fight my way out of another pod out in the tunnels. I wasn’t sure what it meant, coming here instead of there, but in any case, it was progress.
“Karla?”
When she didn’t answer, I pawed gently through a pile of rumpled blankets to see if she might be snoozing beneath, but she wasn’t there. 
The dome was so quiet, surely I would have heard her breathing. But all I could hear was water dripping from a tap and the nearly inaudible gurgles of some distant Reaper.
The dome was a mess. Karla usually kept it so neat. Someone—Luther?—had ransacked the place. Her earring tree lay upended, its jewelry scattered everywhere, crunching and bending underfoot. 
More of Karla’s weavings seemed to be coming undone, and that included the dome itself. Walls that had been smooth were now corrugated with individual strands of pencil-thick roots. Some roots had broken free and hung dangling in coils throughout the room.
I rummaged through the debris on the floor—various tapestries and embroideries, some so finely rendered they looked just like watercolor paintings and photographs. Others, much cruder, had disintegrated into a mass of individual strands that wriggled like a bunch of maggots.
I was probably looking at a record of her progress as a Weaver, from her earliest, childish and least stable efforts to some truly masterful work on par with my glass giraffe. She had a box of miscellaneous tools that were indiscernible in heft and detail from the real thing. If these were Karla’s doing then she was a much better Weaver than she made herself out to be.
I studied the pictures and designs for insights. The old, maggoty stuff was mainly simple flags with crosses on fields of red, X’s on fields of blue—basic geometric designs on which she practiced her art.
Intermediate in skill were her landscapes. Rolling, denuded hills and long lakes or fjords seemed to be a common theme. They could have been depictions of the lake country in northern Italy or Scandinavia.
The most adept images seemed to revolve around a little girl in blondish pigtails who looked sort of like a younger Karla, especially around the eyes. I found another picture that showed her holding hands with an older girl whose face was smudged out. Could this be Karla and her little sister?
There were a few pictures of an older woman whom I took to be Hanna—Karla’s mother. The woman’s expression haunted me—so flat and empty. I could plainly see the wish for death in those eyes. There was nothing at all of her father Edmund, except perhaps some abstract but disturbing renderings of monsters that could have easily represented Reapers. 
One of the more advanced embroideries had an ‘I’ superimposed over an ‘H’ with a smaller ‘S’ swirling around the ‘I,’ like a snake on a caduceus. 
HIS?
As opposed to HERS?
ISH?
In rapper slang, that meant ‘shit.’
IHS?
Wasn’t that some kind of shorthand for Jesus?
There was nothing under the dome with any writing beyond those three letters, nothing that told me where Karla had come from or where she had gone.
I found my kilt and white shirt neatly folded on a stool, put them on and opened the hatch to the tunnel that led to Luthersburg, startled to find the tunnel all clogged with dangling, writhing roots. The walls had been shaggy before, but this was ridiculous. 
I brushed against some roots and they all sprung up and stiffened into spikes, all pointing toward me.
“What the heck?”
Gooey lobes like frogs’ tongues dribbled down between the spikes and adhered to my face and neck. I ripped them away in disgust and stumbled back. Crouching down, I could see the sitting room at the other end of the tunnel through a jungle of spikes. A machete would have come in handy, but in lieu of that, I dropped down on my hands and knees and crawled. 
Spikes jutted and jabbed at me as I picked my way slowly along. One shot out and got me good, puncturing my side and drawing blood. I lashed out and snapped it off. The broken end went limp and inched away. 
Knobs then began to form on the previously smooth floor and grew into spikes. I was crawling on a bed of nails! My fury peaked. 
“Bastards!” I screamed in frustration.
Every nob on that floor softened and collapsed under my gaze, surprising the heck out of me. But as soon as my attention wavered, the nobs regrouped and reformed. I scrambled ahead, diving and rolling into the sitting room when I reached the end of the tunnel.
When I reached the sitting room, I was shocked again. The door the square was still there but was now merged seamlessly with the wall. The window was now flush with the plaster and had gone all gray and opaque. 
The door still had a knob, and the window a latch, but when I tried opening them, but the changes proved no illusion. This was a solid wall now with only visual traces remaining of its former portals. Apart from the knob and latch, it could have passed for a painting of a room with no view.
Frustrated, I banged at the door and found it had no play in it whatsoever. Hitting it was like knocking on a brick wall. The window was pretty much the same. What the heck was going on?
I tried breaking through one of the side walls. The stuff looked like plaster or sheet rock, but felt like stone. The opposite wall proved no better. I paced like a captive animal. 
I felt this burning potency build in my chest. I don’t know where it came from, but my will had some real oomph behind it now, and I wasn’t going to waste it on glass giraffes.
“Goddamnit!” I smashed my fist into the door and this time it made a deep indentation, but the thing was, the dimpling began even before my fist ever hit, as if it were flinching in anticipation of being struck. I stood there and watched the tiny strands wriggle into the dent to reclaim it.
I let the hatred flare in me, letting my passions stoke it like pitch pine tossed on a camp fire. My hate rose up against all the nasty roots that dared thwart me. And as that feeling grew, I channeled it down the length of my arms.
The surface flaked away, curling out from the center like the pages of a book under a blow torch. Layer after layer peeled back until I had made a six inch deep pit in the wall. Frayed edges reverted back to roots and retreated, making the hole even wider.
Light began to filter through the paper thin layers remaining. I kept at it until I burned all the way through and I was peering through a hole the size of my fist.
I pressed my face close and looked out to the center of the square. The big tree was gone and the obelisk was back. Now that I knew St. Peter’s Square, I noticed its resemblance to the ‘Burg, but Luther’s creation was a crude echo of the Piazza San Pietro, embraced by arcs of quaint townhouses instead of Grecian columns.
The central platform looked vacant. I could see no sign of Luther. People clustered in small groups on the cobbles here and there. And I caught a glimpse of some animals—wolves?—running in formation. Wolves?
I went back to work on the hole, which was already trying to heal itself. I held my palms together like a Buddhist praying and extended them into the hole as if I intended to take a swan dive. I wanted these damned roots out of my way and let them know it. When I pulled my palms apart, the hole widened as if my hands were hot blades carving through butter. 
When I saw the roots surrounding the hole their integrity and sag, I thrust my head through the gap before they could rally, wriggled my shoulders through and dropped into the garden on the other side. 
This damned wall was probably the reason Karla wasn’t in her dome. She was probably stuck out here in the square with the others.
The pack of ‘wolves’ came running toward me. As they neared, I could see they were just German Shepherd dogs, but their strides and leaps were weirdly synchronized. They barked together in perfect unison. 
A woman trotting behind them let out a piercing whistle and they all pulled up, circled back together and formed a straight line facing me, like some kind of canine circus act, going from frenzied to calm in a flash as if a switch had flipped in their heads.
“James?”
The woman was Astrid and she was carrying this bulky tube-like contraption looked sort of like a gnarled bazooka. She gaped at the hole I had made in the door, the gap already partially filled as roots crept and swelled to plug the breach.
“How did you get through that wall? Luther made it … impenetrable.”
“Um … guess not.”
“But how?”
“I just did that … weaving … thing.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off those dogs. Their tails swished in unison. Whenever one moved its head, they all did, in time and exactly the same way. They reminded me of those street performers who danced with puppets lashed to frames that transferred every move.
Only one dog—the lead dog, I assumed—had its eyes fixed on me. The others had their heads angled the same way, but their parallel sight lines had them looking off into empty space. 
“What’d Luther do? Make them all share one brain?”
“They are his eyes and ears,” said Astrid. “They won’t hurt you, as long as you do what they say.”
“What they say? You mean they talk?”
“Intruder, identify yourself!” said the dogs in a chorus of flat, tinny voices. It was like they had cheap speakers implanted in their muzzles.
“Freaky!”
“They pass Luther’s messages, collect information and enforce his edicts. You’d better tell them who you are.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“James. This is serious. They can and will hurt you if they consider you a threat. I only have limited control.”
I shook my head. “German Shepherds, really? Luther’s so … lame.”
“James, please. Be respectful. Your words will be reported back to him verbatim.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Okay … um … hi … uh … doggies, and uh … Luther. I’m James Moody, but you already knew that.” I reached out my hand to what I took to be the alpha dog. They all lurched away in synch and growled at me.
“This is nuts. What’s going on? Why are all the doors sealed?”
“Luther has declared a maximum alert. An attack is imminent, he says.”
“From … what? Reapers?”
“Victoria.”
“Huh? Why would she attack? She has absolutely no interest in us.” 
Astrid shrugged. “I trust his judgment. Luther knows this world. He’s been here a long time. Why not give him the benefit of the doubt?”
I sighed and picked some stray bits of root off my shoulders and looked out over the square. “You seen Karla?”
“Not since you were last here.”
“Really?” My spirits sagged. “What about Lille? Bern?”
“They’re around … somewhere … out on the plaza with everyone else.”
“What’s going on over there? Looks like a fire drill.”
“We are no longer allowed beyond the walls. Every building has been placed off-limits … except for the chapel.”
“What about folks in the tunnels? How are they supposed to get in?” 
“They’re not,” said Astrid. “That’s the point. Luther says if you’re not already here or you don’t enter the ‘Burg directly, you don’t belong.”
“But what if folks are stuck outside?”
Astrid shrugged. “It’s … too bad. We’ve already lost dozens. But Luther says it makes us leaner and stronger. It’s like winnowing, he says. We are losing only the chaff.”
“Fucking hell! Karla could be out there. And she’s not chaff.” Bile welled up in my craw. “If she’s out there … he’s got no right! I set my gaze on the stone steeple from which Luther had come once strutting in his centaur/scorpion mode. “I need to talk to him.”
“If you want an audience, you need to request one through Harvald. You can’t just barge in on him.”
“The hell I can’t.” I strode off across the square.
“James. No! It’s against protocol. The dogs … and I … can’t allow it.”
She whistled and the dogs sprang into a blur. They sprinted past me, wheeled about and blocked my way, hackles ruffled, fangs bared, snarling. 
It annoyed the crap out of me. I wanted to turn them all into Yorkies, and the way I was feeling at that moment I probably could have, but I kept my composure.
“Call them off, Astrid.”
“I can’t.”
“Astrid, call them off! This is stupid. I just want to talk with him.”
Astrid took a long, deep breath. Her face had gotten all red and puffy. “Promise you won’t do anything … destructive.”
“I’m just gonna talk. One on one. That’s all.”
“Alright,” she said.  “But you’d better not mention how you got through the wall,” said Astrid. “Or that I saw you do it.”
“I promise.”
She let out a long, looping whistle and the dogs settled back down. “Stay!” she said. “Sit!” They all responded.
I hadn’t gone five paces when I heard claws clattering on stone. I turned to find the dogs trotting at my heels, tongues lolling, as if we were out for a walk in the park. They didn’t like me looking at them directly, but I caught enough glimpses to appreciate the craft involved in Luther’s creation.
They may have behaved like robots, but they looked quite real, down to the plaque on their teeth, the froth on their tongues and the crust in the corners of their beady eyes. Luther must have been intimate with a German Shepherd on the other side to have replicated them in such unflattering detail. They probably even had doggie breath.
I reached out to pat the closest one the head. Every dog whipped its head around and snapped in my direction. The one I tried to pat nearly took off my fingers.
People rose up on their feet and gawked as we passed the obelisk. Astrid kept her distance as if she didn’t want to be associated with me. She was probably embarrassed about shirking her duty. I hoped that what I was doing wouldn’t get her into trouble.
A whistle peeled out across the cobblestones, but it wasn’t Astrid and it wasn’t intended for the dogs. It was intended for me. I turned to see a brown bowler hat waving above the picket fence in front of Bern and Lille’s garden.
I changed course and ran over to the fence. “Bern!”
“Hey-hey! I told Lille you’d be here. You’re one of us now.”
“James?” Lille opened the garden gate, her face alit with delight. She came over and gave me a hug, with Bern close behind her.
“Come!” said Lille. “Have some tea.”
Their belongings were spread all over their garden in heaps and rows. I sat down with Lille at a little, round table. Bern served tea from a little brass kettle before taking a seat beside her.
The dogs arrayed themselves just outside the fence and were peering through the openings between the pickets. Astrid came over and stood behind them.
“Astrid! Don’t just stand there with those dogs,” said Lille. “Come sit with us.”
“I can’t,” said Astrid. “I’m on duty.” She looked down and blushed.
“It’s so good to see you, James,” said Bern. “I take it things are bad on the other side, eh?”
“You might say that.”
“Bern! You know better than to ask the boy such a thing.”
“Just small talk, dear. We all know life is hell and then you die. I mean, that’s why we’re here.”
“He made it through the wall,” said Astrid, through the fence. “He was outside, and he made it in … by himself. Weaving.”
“Really?” said Bern. “That’s quite the feat! Oh, I’d love to see Luther’s face when he finds out.”
“Bravo!” said Lille. “You know, I might ask you to try your little trick on our cottage door. We had so little time to evacuate, I left some things inside I would dearly love to have.”
“Luther’s coated the walls with something positively devilish that we can’t even scratch,” said Bern. “Not a wisp comes loose even with the two of us working together. And normally, when we pair up, we’re fairly formidable.”
“We want out of the ‘Burg, by the way,” Lille whispered, her eyes flicking over to the fence. “As soon as possible. Things are getting quite inhospitable in here. And those damned dogs aren’t the least of it.”
“But where would you go?”
Lille’s eyes flicked over to the fence. “I can’t exactly say. Those dogs have sharp ears, you know”
“Begins with a V,” whispered Bern. “And it’s not Vladivostok.”
“Bern! Shush!”
“We’ve tried to interest our friends in joining us, but they’re too frightened. They’ve seen what Luther can do to flesh.”
“Is he around?” I asked. “I need to see him.”
Bern shrugged. “I’m not sure. It’s been days since he’s been out and about.”
“He rarely leaves the chapel these days,” said Lille. “Ever since Victoria, he’s gone totally bonkers with his paranoia.”
“What about Karla?”
Bern and Lille looked at each other. “We haven’t seen her since the lockdown.” 
“Crap. Any chance she’s stuck outside these walls?”
“Oh, I would doubt that,” said Bern. “Karla’s a veteran. She enters the ‘Burg directly, just like us.”
“Unless … she’s backslid,” said Lille. “She was not herself after James last left.” 
“You mean she’s … depressed?”
“Quite the contrary,” said Lille, pursing her lips. “She was bouncing off the walls.”
“And that’s … a bad thing?”
“It is if you want to maintain a stable residency in the Liminality,” said Bern. “Hope will keep you out and it doesn’t take much. You just need to find life worth living. But a frail hope is worse than no hope at all. If you commit to life on the other side but things go badly and you end up here, you’ve lost control of your fate. You end up in the tunnels, easy pickings for the Reapers.”
“That’s a ‘backslide,’ in case you’re wondering,” said Lille.
“So basically, hope is a curse.”
“Not unless you can sustain it,” said Bern. “Most people on the other side seem to manage. It’s called ‘living.’ But Lille and I have nothing to worry about. We’re as hopeless a couple as there ever you’ll ever meet.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, because on the other side, well … Lille … she’s in a coma and me … eh … I’m in prison … for life.”
They shared a spell of giddy laughter that left me feeling like I’d missed a punch line.
I stared at them, at a loss for words the tea cup quivering in my grip. I got up and went to the door of their cottage. I tried the knob. It didn’t budge.
“It’s no use, James. Everything’s sealed up solid.”
I focused all my attention on the tip of my right index finger and touched it to the middle of the door. 
“Ooh!” said Lille, rising from her chair. “He’s going to show us how he does it!” 
“No!” said Astrid, at the fence. “You’ve already breached one wall. I can’t let you breach another.” She pointed her weapon at me. The dogs gave a startled bark.
“Oh, put that bloody thing down, Astrid,” said Bern. “Honestly!”
I ignored Asrid, keeping my gaze fixed on the door panels. Under my fingertips, colors swirled and blanched, a frost-like haze accumulated, but no dents or erosions appeared, no fibers revealed themselves. My arm began to tremble from the strain. I gasped and let it fall limp.
“Shit,” I said. 
“Try again, dear,” said Lille. “I could see something happening. It certainly would be lovely to get into the cottage. I left all of our quilts stacked on the bed.”
“Maybe three of us would be the charm,” said Bern, nodding to Lille. He and Lille stood on either side of me, one arm on my back, their outside arms extended, fingertips converging with mine. 
“Step away from the door,” said Astrid. “I can’t let you do this. I’m sorry.”
Again, we ignored her and the faded, frosted patch spread slightly wider, and lingered slightly longer than before, but that was all we could muster.
I staggered back. Bern caught me before I fell.
“Crap! This means we’re stuck. And Karla ….”
Queasiness morphed into sheer anger. 
“I need to talk to Luther right now.”




Chapter 31: Luther’s Lair

I marched out the garden gate, with Bern and Lille in tow. When Astrid saw that we were actually going through with my plan of confronting Luther, she and her German Shepherds made themselves scarce, sidling away into the plaza where the other guards were quelling some sort of commotion.
As we approached the church, a pack of huskies came bounding out of the vestibule. 
“Oh crap. Not more dogs.”
They wheeled around to face us, ears perked, snouts down, beady eyes watching us. When we came nearer, they stood up and formed a cordon on the steps.
“State your purpose,” they said in a tinny chorus.
Lille cleared her throat. “We’re visiting to the chapel to—”
“We’re going to see Luther,” I said, cutting her off.
The dogs howled. “Speaking the master’s name is forbidden!” 
“It’s just a name.”
“Is the master expecting you?” said the huskies.
“Yeah, sure. Why not? He should be.”
Lille stepped forward. “We have come to pray. To … to the master.”
This, apparently, was just what the dogs wanted to hear. They trotted off the stairs and let us pass.
“Hah!” said Bern. “Who knew that Luth… um, Mr. L. … fancies himself a god?”
“Pfft. For someone of his vanity, it was inevitable,” said Lille.
We passed through thick, oaken doors twice our height. It certainly smelled like a church inside, a Catholic one, at least—all incense and resins and molten wax. Racks of burning candles lined several niches where a few people knelt, praying.
The pews were arranged orthogonal to the entrance, with an altar to the far left and some sort of baptismal font to the right behind the back most pews. Two simple doors flanked a larger, more ornate one clad in swirls of wrought iron, and opening into the wall opposite the vestibule.
Something about the décor seemed off, and then I realized that there was not a single Christian symbol inside—no crosses, crucifixes, angels, saints or cherubs. Nothing. This was a secular place. Even the stained glass bore only geometric patterns suggestive of no particular faith. There were no graven images of Luther, either, but that would probably be remedied with time.
“Fascinating,” said Bern. “I’ve never been in here, before. It’s like a journey into Luther’s skull.”
“Hallo?” called Lille. “Anybody home?”
“Lille! Shush! People are praying.”
There was a creaking from the pews. A few heads turned our way.
“Oh my,” said Lille, touching her fingers to her cheeks.
“Let’s find a pew and sort this out,” said Bern.
We knelt together in the backmost row. On the altar was a large, throne-like chair of rough-hewn wood, like something someone would slap together at a hunting cabin in the middle of a forest.
“There goes Harvald,” said Lille as Luther’s lieutenant came lurching out of a dim room. He passed through the vestibule, with yet another pack of six Dobermans trotting at his heels.
“Jesus,” I said. “Just what we need. More dogs.”
“Do you think Luther’s even here?” said Lille.
“Harvald would know,” said Bern. “Shall I—?”
“I’ll go see,” I said bounding up. 
“No, James. You shouldn’t—”
Bern tried to restrain me but I slithered past him, heading for the room from which Harvald had emerged.
Luther had expended an enormous amount of effort in ornamenting his chapel. Nature and garden themes abounded in carvings, frescoes and statues lining every wall and niche. There were grape vine motifs twining everywhere, pine boughs with jays perched, leaves bearing ladybugs and dragonflies and scarabs.
The door to Harvald’s room was unlocked, a welcome change from all the solidified doors and immovable I had been encountering. At least I wouldn’t have to burrow through this one. 
I glanced back at Bern and Lille, they were still kneeling at the pew, arguing in whispers until Lille rose and came after me. Bern rolled his eyes and followed. 
I pushed the door open and found inside a good-sized room with simple furnishings: a wash basin, a table and an armchair looking over a mirror. The wall was decorated with blurry photographs of the same woman, various ages, with and without children. 
An assortment of chain mail hung from crude hooks on the wall, along with a leather greatcoat. Halberds and maces protruded from a barrel like some deadly iron bouquet. 
The room had a back door that opened into a cavernous chamber—a dome like Karla’s, but much larger. The wall encircling the immaculate marble floor was punctured by eleven other entryways spaced like the hours on a clock face. The floor was cluttered with heaps of contraptions and what looked like sculptures of animals and people.
Bern came up behind me, breathless. “James, you really shouldn’t be in here. If Luther finds you …. Oh, my God! What’s this?”
Lille squeezed around us for a better look. “That Luther may not have the best taste … but he sure knows how to hollow out a patch of roots.”
“It’s like a ballroom in here,” said Bern, forgetting his admonitions and entering.
“Luther has no sense of interior architecture,” said Lille. “Why would he tuck a ballroom behind his caretaker’s quarters? And why is it so cluttered?”
“It’s not a ballroom, it’s his work shop. James, Lille, come look, this is amazing,” said Bern, poking around through the heaps.
“Oh! His weavings,” said Lille. “How grotesque!” 
I came up behind her. There was an inert beagle lying on its side—not dead, because it wasn’t clear it had ever lived. It seemed to represent one of Luther’s earlier attempts at dog creation. Apart from the supernumerary canine teeth protruding from its jaw and unfinished paws that ended in a splay of roots like a witch’s broom, it was anatomically, quite perfect.
Elsewhere among the heaps were stacks of gold bullion and Euro notes, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a side-car and piles of oversized and disembodied wings—of dragonflies, iridescent hummingbirds and snowy white swans. 
“Oh! Bern, dear! Look! Bed sheets … and an actual down comforter. You don’t suppose Master Luther would mind if we borrowed some of his linens?”
Bern had his hands on his hips and was looking about the chamber, clearly discomfited. “Something’s not right here. The security’s awful lax. Don’t you think? I smell a trap.”
“Oh, calm down Bernard! Luther’s simply put his faith in his walls and his dogs. For a man of his talents, you know how he can be such a schlub sometimes.”
A pair of dachshunds came dashing across the floor, their yapping turning to happy wags as Lille crouched down to greet them with some high-pitched baby talk. 
“What lovely pups you are! Oh, yes! Such pretty babies!”
“I hope to hell these mutts don’t talk,” said Bern. “I don’t think I could handle it.”
I peeked into one of the dimly lit rooms ringing the main chamber. Rows of folding seats staggered in terraces to a curtained stage the size of a boardroom table. It was a tiny theater with seating for twenty or so.
“Ho ho ho! What do we have here?” said Bern, as he opened the door to the next room down the arc—at ten o’clock if Harvald’s room was high noon. Treacly, tinkling music spilled out under the dome.
“Oh, my Lord!” said Lille, joining him. I rushed over to see what had alarmed her.
Entering that room was like walking into a snow globe. Little, animatronic ice skaters glided over a frozen pond surrounded by fir trees, holly bushes and ranks of creepy-faced nutcrackers peering from nooks in the wall like fans in the stands of a hockey rink. Fluffy, white flakes fluttered down on the scene from the blacked-out ceiling while a model steam engine puffed around the periphery, boxcars bulging with candied treats.
“It’s like … an entire Bavarian Weihnachten exploded in here,” said Lille.
A perfect snowflake landed on my wrist, but didn’t melt. Another landed beside it and was an exact replica of the first. 
All that jingle, jangle overwhelmed me. I had to get out of there. Lille and Bern had already fled back to the main chamber.
“Yoo-hoo! Luther!” called Lille.
“I doubt he’s around,” I said. “He would have found us by now.”
“Can’t say I’m disappointed,” said Bern.
I ducked into the next room and cringed. It was a perfect replica of a hospital suite. It even smelled faintly of antiseptic and bedpans. Two bags of IV fluid hung from a chromed metal stand along yards of clear plastic tubing. I couldn’t help thinking of Mom’s last days.
The bed was empty, but a monitor nevertheless displayed an EKG graph frozen in time. Every item in the room was exquisitely detailed, down to the electrical specs and serial numbers on all the equipment.
A lunch tray rested on a fold-out table along with the hospital’s daily bulletin containing news of the day and a menu. The logo in top corner depicted a ladybug on a mulberry leaf and was labeled:

‘EMS La Coccinelle SA.’ 

I picked it up and tried to read the blurb underneath, but it was all in French. Only one in ten words was decipherable to me: 

‘Un havre de paix depuis 1958 pour 44 résidants. Un lieu de bien-être et de vie agreeable. Notre Fondatrice et Directrice Martin Devereaux avec son équipe dévouée vous accueille avec professionnalisme et chaleur humaine dans une ambiance familial.’ 

I went to the window and looked out at a diorama backed by a matte painting. The scene depicted sloping fields and a long, narrow lake in the distance, with the rooftops of a city immediately below. It reminded me of the landscapes in some of Karla’s tapestries. A chill spread down my back.
Bern rushed to the door. “Quick! Someone’s coming!”
***
I stuffed the hospital newsletter into my shirt and dashed out. Lille stood in the doorway of the little theatre, dachshunds at her side, waving for us to hurry. Drawers slammed. Someone hummed a ditty in Harvald’s anteroom.
Bern grabbed my wrist and pulled me along pulled me along down the stairs, onto the stage and behind the curtain. The dachshunds remained at the door, yapping and growling as the curtain swooshed and swung.
“Those little turncoats!” said Lille. “As if we had never made their acquaintance.”
The humming ceased. Footsteps echoed under the dome. Harvald appeared at the door, looking wary. I held my breath. He lingered for a time, peering into the dimness before moving away, taking the dachshunds with him.
“There’s another door behind us,” whispered Bern.
He squeaked it open, revealing a narrow passageway illuminated by dim footlights. We scurried out into a long, curving corridor that seemed to follow the outermost edge of the dome. 
“Chapel’s this way,” said Bern, heading towards a rectangle of light. 
“Who’s there?” Harvald’s voice boomed. His silhouette filled the rectangle at the end of the corridor.
We pressed ourselves into a shallow niche in the outer wall. Harvald clopped into the passage with his heavy, plodding gait. We squeezed in tight, flattening ourselves against the wall.
“No one move,” said Bern.
That feeling was welling up in me again—righteous anger mingled with impatience and annoyance. I found a patch of wall to take out my frustrations on and went to work.
Harvald touched his hand to the stone and a diffuse glow spread out from his fingers and sped down the corridor. 
The soft glow was enough to cast our three shadows against the inner wall. 
“Bloody hell!” said Bern.
“Show yourselves!” Harvard shouted, his command echoing around the arc.
“It’s no use,” said Lille. “He knows we’re here.”
We stepped out into the corridor. 
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, um … hello Harvald,” said Bern. “Lille and I were praying in the chapel and—“
“You two? Pray?”
“Well, yes. Why not? But we got turned around and I thought this might be an alternative exit and … well it’s all my fault we ended up here. I’m so sorry.”
“This corridor is forbidden. You have sinned. Now you must pay.”
He whistled and there came the sound of claws clambering for purchase on the slick stone. An army of dogs came charging into the chapel, baying in unison.
“Oh my,” said Lille. “Those ones don’t sound like dachshunds.”
“Shall we … flee?” said Bern.
“It’s no use,” said Lille. “I can’t outrun a Shepherd dog.”
“Doesn’t mean you need to stay put, James. You’ve got young legs. Go!”
But I kept my attention homed in on that one patch of wall. Flakes began to curl and peel. Strands unwound and frayed. 
“Lille, the boy’s onto something here!” Bern said, with a warble of excitement. 
But then a numbness started to spread down my fingers. I glanced at my hand. My fingers had no tips. Streaks of translucency crept up my arm. “Crap! I’m fading.”
“Oh! Well, look at that, I suppose you are. Lucky chap. Leads us into trouble and leaves us in the lurch.”
“Don’t begrudge the boy, Bern,” said Lille. “Just bless his good luck.”
I scrambled to give that hospital newsletter one more glance before I disappeared. There was an address block in the top corner, but I was too flustered to make sense of all the French verbiage. I couldn’t even tell which words corresponded to a city or country. I couldn’t even know for sure if it came from France. It could just as well be from Belgium or Quebec.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, as my fibers and particles became sparser and sparser.
“No worries, lad. What’s the worst they could do to us?” said Bern.
“Turn us into mince meat,” said Lille, wincing, as the hounds turned the corner and bounded down the corridor in lockstep.
Bern took her into his arms as my head spun with the sensation of being sucked up the core of a tornado.




Chapter 32: Marching

“Sursum corda!” chanted the priest and the people all around me chanted right back.
My consciousness rejoined my earthly form in the middle of a Latin mass, during the breaking of the bread thing—the Eucharist—I guess. Mom tried to teach me some religion, but her heart wasn’t into it, so it never took hold. Sounds like I’m blaming her, but I’m not. Whatever faith she could have imparted would have been torn to shreds by what I had witnessed in Root. 
Had I seen evidence of a higher power?
Probably.
Was this higher power worthy of worship?
Fear? Respect? Certainly. Worship? Not from what I had seen.
And I’m not talking about Luther. His soul was just a pawn like the rest of our souls. I’m talking about the raw material of Root itself, the Reapers and whoever made them. Evil could be the only word that described them.
My first reaction at being back in the pews of St. Peter’s was sheer horror. Lille’s screams still reverberated in my ears. One more minute working on that wall and I could have helped Bern and Lille make a clean get away from those dogs. Luthersburg had gone from quaint and curious to Nazi nightmare in the span of three visits. I couldn’t blame them for wanting out. Luther might not be Hitler, but he was a fool and a dangerous one at that.
I got up and left my pew during the breaking of the bread. I don’t know if people thought I was jumping the gun for Communion or what but I drew plenty of stares and mutterings. 
I was in a foul mood and let these servile wankers know it with my glare. They were wasting their time on a silly charade. No amount of praying would save them from what was to come. I turned my back to the altar without as much as a genuflect or a nod and headed for the exit.
I paused on the steps of the Basilica and took in the scene outside. The day was crisp and bright but I didn’t feel worthy of breathing this air. This was not my world anymore. 
I had no idea why I kept getting kicked back here. Hope was the drug that supposedly fueled this shared hallucination, but I had to wonder where this hope was hiding in me. It sure didn’t feel like I had a shred of it left.
As I gazed out over St. Peter’s Square, this place and Luthersburg began to blur together in my head. I saw no distinction anymore. Root and Earth were just different facets of the same existence. I suspected there might be other facets I had yet to witness, some I’d better hope I never saw.
Hope. There was that word again. Amazing how closely it was linked with despair, because I was infected with both and it was getting harder and harder to tell the two apart.
All these other people though, the couples hand in hand, the lonely old spinsters maneuvering with their walkers—where did they find their hope? Did those with good lives hope things stayed good a little longer if not forever? Did those with crap lives hope things got better even a little bit, or at least that things didn’t get much worse?
Couldn’t they see the futility of it all? On a geologic scale, their lives had the significance of a gnat. They would be over in a blink and they would have nothing to show for it but a photo album and a headstone. Why did they bother? By what miracle did they not crowd the tunnels of Root?
I searched in my heart for the cursed seed of hope that had separated me from my friends in their time of need. I bet it was that damned sheet of hospital stationery I had found in Luther’s hospital play room. It had made me believe that I could track down Luther in the flesh, and possibly that would lead me to Karla, though a few pictures of a longish lake were a pretty feeble connection if you asked me. I guess it didn’t take much hope at all to get a guy like me kicked out of Root.
I hoped that wouldn’t be the last I would see of Lille and Bern. Harvald might be brutish but he didn’t seem evil. Surely he would have called off the dogs after giving them a good scare. Wouldn’t he? 
For now, my destination seemed clear. A broad avenue spilled down to the Tiber from the split in the edifices that bracketed the Square. I started walking.
***
The Piazza di Spagna was mobbed. Thousands of people had gathered, many bearing banners and home-made signs, waiting for a march to begin.
The little Occupy encampment remained in place, but the police had been pushed back into the side streets, except for one anxious group in riot gear guarding the smashed façade of a bank. Alarms pealed. An overturned car smoldered in front of an apothecary.
I pushed my way to the tents where large trays of pasta al forno were being doled out to all comers. The Occupiers in the media center still pecked away at their laptops. Smart phone cameras linked to tablets captured video of the whole affair and broadcast it live over the web.
Taken aback by all the hubbub, I just stood around and gawked at everyone. Angelica came bustling by and did a double take when she spotted me.
“James! You are back. Are you still waiting for a computer? What patience you have, like a saint. I promised you, yes? And then you will march with us?”
“Sure … but … if this isn’t a convenient time….”
She tapped a bearded guy on the shoulder. “Hey Ubaldo. Do your tweeting later, okay? I promise James one minute to make something on the 3G.”
The bearded guy shrugged and got up from the chair. I couldn’t believe it, but I sat down, brought up Google and typed ‘La Coccinnelle’ in the search box. It came back with all these links to nature pictures, garden suppliers and descriptions of beetle ecology. 
I added ‘hospital’ to the terms and that was the ticket. The top link was ‘EMS La Coccinelle SA’ and a click revealed the same logo I had seen on Luther’s stationery—a lone ladybug on a mulberry leaf.
I cut and pasted some of the French text into Google Translate and learned that EMS La Coccinelle was a long-term care facility—basically, an old folks home with medical capabilities—and an upscale one at that. They supported only 42 residents with various levels of needs from physical therapy and assisted living to total life support.
So on this side, Luther was an old fart or a cripple, and a wealthy one at that. Wouldn’t he be surprised to have me show up at his door?
I checked the address on Google maps. Turned out the place wasn’t in France or Canada or Belgium at all. It was in a town called Chêne-Bourg, a suburb of Geneva, Switzerland. I had no idea people spoke French there. I thought they spoke—Swiss.”
What was more, the map showed a big, long lake that curved like a fat crescent through the countryside to the north, not unlike the bodies of water that kept turning up in Karla’s tapestries. Was I onto something here?
Hope, that un-killable zombie emotion, picked itself off the ground. If I went to Switzerland, not only would I have the chance to confront Luther on much more equitable terms, but there was a chance I might find Karla there. How she might be connected to Luther, I had no idea, but I couldn’t discount the possibility, and that was enough to send another dose of thrill zinging through my heart.
Angelica came up behind me. “The march, it is leaving. Are you ready to go?”
“Hey, how do you get to Switzerland from here?”
She seemed taken aback. “Switzerland?” She shrugged. “You can fly. You can go by train. However you want.”
“Is it far?”
“Nine, ten hours by fast train. You must change in Milano.”
“The train would be cheaper, right?”
“Not necessarily. There is EasyJet. But I am so sad to have you leave so soon. We have hardly got to know you.”
She looked genuinely disappointed. It kind of startled me.
“I was just passing through, anyhow.” I got up from the table. “But first … we march.”
***
People from all walks of life marched with us: white collar and blue collar, teenagers and elderly, farmers and city folk, families and neighbors, hippies and bikers, cliques and loners. You name it, they were there. I couldn’t understand any of their chants or read any of their signs, but I couldn’t help being impressed by their enthusiasm. 
If I ever settled down, I decided I would work hard to make myself fluent in another language. I just wanted there to be some place other than America that I could hobnob with the locals without feeling like such a dumbass. It didn’t matter where that turned out to be, but Italy would do. I already kind of liked this place.
I found myself gravitating towards the little knots of Black Bloc folks who kept to the fringes of the march. Angelica saw me with them and frowned, but I didn’t care. These guys had swagger and verve. So what if they liked to smash things for fun. I felt safe among them. I knew they would protect me.
As we marched, I kept scanning the faces of bystanders, looking for people fitting the profile of the flunkies and mercenaries that the Cleveland cartel had commissioned to find and teach me a lesson, probably with the promise of a bounty.
I must have passed at least a dozen likely suspects, glaring back at anyone whose gaze lingered too long. Most were probably just ordinary folk who thought I was some cocky punk. My attitude probably hardened their distaste for the Occupy movement’s politics, but really I was just trying to provoke any goons who might be in the crowd.
I overheard one of the Black Bloc-ers chatting with someone in English.
“Hey, I was just curious but … who are you guys?”
He scrunched his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“The Black Bloc. What’s it all about? How does one like … join up?”
“Simple. Wear black. Fight back. Black Bloc is not a political party. It is just a tactic. It is not like we are all anarchists, like some people think.”
“Huh?”
“It is just a way of dealing with authorities. When we wear black we blend together. The police cannot target one so easily. They have to deal with all of us.”
“But you guys seem … uh …. different … from the regular Occupy folks.”
“Okay, so maybe we are less afraid of the violence, yes. But we have the same goals.”
“Like what?”
“Fairness.”
A guy squeezed by us wearing a Guy Fawkes ‘V for Vendetta’ mask perched on his head like a hat. He wore no black. I had seen a smattering of these mask wearers in the crowd and had no idea what group or ideology they represented and how they meshed with everyone else. Maybe it was just a fashion statement?
This Occupy stuff was turning out to be a lot more complicated and fascinating than what the media made it out to be. Those talking heads on the news made it sound like this was just a bunch of unwashed hippies protesting rich people. 
The march stalled. A wave of people staggered back. I pushed ahead to see what was happening. A can of spray paint rolled against a curb. Fresh graffiti dribbled down the side of an ATM. A ring of people shouted and chanted around a bunch of cops who had some girl restrained on the ground. Some were yelling at the cops, some yelled at the girl, others just yelled at each other. Meanwhile, blood trickled down the girl’s forehead.
The police tried to get people to move back but the crowd was getting more and more agitated and started shoving, and there weren’t even any Black Bloc-ers around. The mob surged forward, carrying me with them, head on into a line of police wearing face masks and bearing riot shields.
I braced myself and threw my shoulder into a shield. Batons flew. Noses crunched. People screamed and came at the cops even harder. They broke through the line. The cops turned and ran, some of them losing their helmets in the process.
People cheered and helped the girl with the bloody forehead to her feet. Someone freed her from her plastic cuffs with a pair of garden clippers.
One group had broken free from the march and was actually chasing the cops farther down the alley where they had gone to regroup. An old man at a sidewalk café sipped his cappuccino and casually watched the whole affair unfold as if it were some street performance staged for his amusement.
As for me, my heart was going a million thumps a minute. I had never been part of anything so invigorating.
I rejoined the march, which had become a great river of people flowing uphill. We came to a circle with a big fountain and I saw a sign for ‘Termini’. 
I tapped a woman on the shoulder. “Termini … that’s the bus station, right?” Again, such an ugly American I was, just assuming she would understand and speak English, but she did—perfectly.
“It is a transportation hub,” she said. “For the bus … the train … the metro … everything.”
“Train?”
A police car came squealing around a corner and knocked into a group of people, sending them flying. Some people screamed in pain, some in outrage. A mob swarmed the little car and started banging on it and rocking it. The windshield shattered. The cops were hauled out onto the hood. The car was flipped over and set aflame.
All hell broke loose. A squad of motorcycle cops zoomed down a side street and nudged the people back. All kinds of stuff came flying their way—rocks, shoes, water bottles. Someone threw a hammer into a bank window. A series of loud, concussive pops brought billowing clouds of tear gas. Alarms and ambulances wailed.
I slipped away, jogging through a park full of bus stops and vendors selling kick-knacks to tourists, making my way to the squat and massive Termini building. I hated to leave in the middle of all the action, but I had a train to catch.




Chapter 33: Termini

Walking into the Termini station was like switching channels into a different world. Though my eyes and nostrils still stung from tear gas, tourists and locals went about their business as usual, totally oblivious to the presence of a massive and violent protest march only a half a block away. 
But they weren’t completely unaffected and insulated. Some people fretted over the ‘mysterious’ bus delays even though folks with protest signs ran through the station, late to the march, trying to catch up. My hoodie alone emitted enough traces of CS gas to draw the occasional wince or cough from those I passed.
It took a few minutes of wandering in a daze before my heart calmed down and I got myself oriented. I quickly found the main train platform and the big mechanical screen displaying track numbers and destinations, but it took me a while to figure out that I would have to go upstairs to buy tickets.
I waited in this long queue only to learn it was for the wrong set of trains. The second time was the charm, though, and a kind and patient man behind the counter was able to sell me a second class ticket on the slow Intercity train to Milan, with a late night connection with the Cisalpino to Geneva, Switzerland.
“A hundred eighty Euros!” The price threw me for a loop. And this was for the slowest, cheapest possible routing.
“But that is an excellent price for two legs,” said the man. “They are off-peak.”
I waffled a bit. I considered taking Angelica’s advice, going to the airport and trying EasyJet, but I was already here, I could see trains pulling in and pulling out. Why dilly dally? Why expose myself to more chances of being discovered by those druggies?
I had been stingy with my cash up till now but when I shelled out for that ticket it was like the flood gates opened up. I went on a spending spree in the sprawling mall that surrounded the station. I bought two new T-shirts, a hooded sweatshirt lined with fleece, cargo shorts, painter’s jeans, undies and a daypack to stuff it all in. I chose all of it in black in honor of my new buds in the Black Bloc, not to mention, it wouldn’t show the dirt as much.
As I was heading back to the platform to wait for my train I passed a little gift shop with a big window display of German pocket knives. I realized that I was staring at another advantage of traveling by train—no security checks. I could actually carry a weapon with me.
So I bought this inexpensive blade with a spring release. It looked relatively innocuous, maybe one step beyond a Swiss Army Knife, but nothing designed for serious hand-to-hand combat. More like something you would buy to carve ducks from blocks of wood.
And I wasn’t done yet. I still had an hour before the train left so I went and got my hair chopped off—all of it. I had never shaved my head before and it felt glorious. Not only would it change my look, but it would be easier to maintain if I was going to be sleeping on the streets. 
My splurge had put a massive dent in my cash reserves, but I had needed clothes. And if I didn’t find Karla soon, I wasn’t going to have a need for money much longer. Like they say, you can’t take it with you when you go.
But I had a feeling something big was going to happen in Geneva. Luther was going to help me find Karla in one world or the other, whether he wanted to or not. On this side of Root, I had the upper hand. I even had my own stinger now. 
***
The train was delayed a little bit, so I bought a limonata and a panini with tomato and mozzarella to bring along for dinner. When the train finally rolled up, I scrambled onboard and got myself a window seat. 
That turned out to be a most excellent move. The scenery we passed outside of Rome was way more epic than I had imagined Italy could be. It felt like I was in a movie. It didn’t seem possible that this could be real. 
How could there be real people living among those picture perfect hills and fields and precious little villages? Oh, sure we passed some trashy architecture and nasty industrial complexes from time to time, but the contrast only made the other landscapes look that much more awesome.
I kept thinking back to that march and the Occupy folks and the Black Bloc. I had gotten a sense of camaraderie and belonging with them that I had never experienced anywhere else. It was almost like a drug, this feeling. It almost didn’t matter what they were protesting, just being there with them was enough. 
How strange it was to have to come all this way to feel at home, a place so far from the land of my birth. I could say the same thing for Root, though. Bern and Lille were family now. They certainly treated me that way, much more so than Uncle Ed ever did. I didn’t know what lay in store for me in the days ahead, but I could tell you one thing, I wasn’t going back to Florida any time soon. 
***
I had half an hour in Milan to change trains. As I meandered through the station, I kept noticing these solitary guys leaning against posts and walls who would scan the crowd and occasionally glance my way. It was crazy to even think any of them would be connected with Cleveland. How many lookouts could those guys possibly hire? I wasn’t that important.
So who were all these other loners I kept seeing? Were they gays looking for pickups? Straights wondering the same about me? Had these lost-looking young men always been around and I was only noticing them now because I was paranoid about bounty hunters? 
Maybe they were just stray wanderers like myself, caught in adventures and tribulations even stranger than mine. Perhaps, like me, they oscillated between worlds. I didn’t dare ask any of them. I didn’t think I could handle the truth.
I hopped on the next train—the Cisalpino—as soon as it was ready to board, anxious to get underway again. This train was a mite newer and spiffier than the first, but just as slow. 
After maneuvering through miles of factory yards the landscape opened up and we commenced to follow a tortuous route up into the mountains. I never thought it would be possible, but the scenery was even more mind-blowing than the countryside outside of Rome—castles perched on gorge walls, waterfalls, real fairy tale villages. I kept my face glued to that window for hours.
When nightfall robbed me of my entertainment, I took to wandering the aisles to quell my restlessness. I was startled to discover that one of the cars had an actual sit-down restaurant. And I peeked through the glass of the first class compartment just to see how the other half lived. It didn’t look all that special for the price.
Back in my seat, there wasn’t much to see but the wash of moon glow over fields or the outlines of some burly peaks silhouetted by stars. We soon reached a section where the absence of daylight didn’t matter because we spent most of the time shuttling through tunnels that did nasty things to the air pressure in my ear drums. 
All that rattling over the rails eventually rocked me off to sleep, and I dreamt. Oh, man, did I dream!—of this enormous mass of humanity marching through Luthersburg, Black Bloc and all, intimidating the dogs, smashing through Luther’s walls and sending the Reapers squealing for their burrows. 
I especially liked the part where Karla came to my side and took my hand. I asked her where she had gone. “Nowhere,” she had said. “I’ve always been right here.”
A glint of sunlight off a window startled my eyes open. I awakened to meadows and vineyards sloping down to the shore of a big, green lake flanked by jagged snow-capped peaks. 
This had to be Switzerland.




Chapter 34: La Coccinelle

The Cornavin train station in Geneva was a grim, urban monstrosity, much like any other train station, I suppose. It harbored the usual array of newsstands, watch stores and snack shops. It smelled of coffee, diesel and urine.
Its nether spaces were populated with skate punks and neo-Goths who looked and acted just like the few we had in Ft. Pierce. I smiled and nodded at them as I walked past. One of them gawped at me like I had a third eye and showed me his middle finger. I laughed.
I took a walk to get my bearings, finding the lake front just a couple blocks away. The most bizarre promenade lined the shore. Rows of alien-looking trees with knobby branches reminded me of the whomping willows in Harry Potter. My eyes were further startled by a grid of topiary evergreens tapered into blunt cones like Mercury space capsules. I stood a while, mesmerized by a hundred foot fountain shooting up into the air out in the middle of the water.
I crossed a bridge over this really large river that gushed out of the lake. I wondered what kept the thing from draining completely, unless there an equally massive river pouring into it somewhere else. 
Across the river I found a corner where a lot of buses seemed to stop and studied the maps and schedules until I discovered the best way to get to Chêne-Bourg. I exchanged some cash at a Bureau de Change and waited for the 31 bus to come. They used something here called a Swiss Franc. Who knew? I thought all Europeans used Euros these days.
When the bus finally came, my nerves kicked in. I was counting on the element of surprise to boost my leverage. Just knowing Luther would not be able to pull any fancy weaving encouraged me, but I couldn’t help being intimidated by his mystique.
I had a lot questions for Luther, demands as well, but not a whole lot of confidence that they would be answered. Coming up here had sounded like a good idea in Rome, but I had to admit now that that I hadn’t thought this one out. 
Luther might have had nothing or everything to do with Karla’s disappearance from the ‘Burg, but he was totally to blame for Lille and Bern’s troubles. Maybe that should be my tact—ask him to call off the dogs, open the walls.
Finding Karla here was a shot in the dark. I supposed it was possible she was here in Geneva or Chêne-Bourg, but I was far less certain of that prospect than I had been of finding her in Rome. A picture of a lake in a tapestry was not much to go on. As far as I knew, she might be living on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The lakes depicted in her art might not even have anything to do with where she lived these days. I couldn’t even be sure that she was still alive, in any sense of the word.
All in all, I had little hope that I would accomplish anything here. But what else was I going to do? 
When signs for Chêne-Bourg began popping up with some regularity, I got off the bus at this street called the Rue de Gèneve. It was a wide boulevard lined with modern apartment buildings. I studied a map posted on the side of the bus shelter and was happy to see that I was just a short walk from my destination.
I cinched up my daypack and went traipsing off around a corner down the Avenue de Thônex. I passed more of those knobby-branched whomping willows. They seemed to be everywhere around here. 
I passed some more generic-looking apartment buildings, and then the neighborhood kind of opened up with old-style, single family homes, some of them so cute they looked like they could be made of ginger bread, with yards that looked like wild alpine meadows.
I rounded a hedge near this little traffic circle and there it was—a sign displaying a ladybug on a leaf—the EMS La Coccinelle. A trellised walk led up to a stucco building with a boxy roof and long balconies extending down either side of the upper floors. It was older and less fancier than I had imagined. 
I circled around a bit to get a feel for the place. The neighborhood was a mix of old and new residences interspersed with remnants of its farming past—greenhouses, fruit trees and grape vines. 
The residents of La Coccinelle had access to a canopy out back and some simple tables and chairs. It was nothing ritzy. At ground level, they didn’t even have a view of Lake Geneva, but maybe it was visible from the third floor balconies.
Palms sweating, heart going like a kick drum, I went down the walk and walked into the lobby. There was a counter there very much like the front desk in a hotel. There was no one behind it, but there was a bell to ring, so I rang it.
A young woman with frizzy, blonde hair came out of a back room. She had the milkiest complexion I had ever seen, and an open, curious face.
“Bonjour,” she said, followed by a string of verbiage that slipped right past my ears.
“Do you speak English?” I said, hopefully.
“But of course. How may I help you?”
“Yeah … um … my name is James … and I was visiting Geneva and my parents told me I should come by and visit an old friend of theirs … a man by the name of Luther.”
“Your parents know Luther?” Her head cocked to one side. Her eyebrows tilted.
“Um … yeah. Don’t ask me how. They just wanted me to come by and say hi.”
“Well, I am not sure if Luther is around today, but I can certainly page him.”
“Page him? Isn’t he a patient here?”
“Oh no,” she said, smiling. “Luther Strunk is a licensed physical therapist. Some of our short-term residents come here for rehabilitation after surgery. You are looking for Luther Strunk, yes? 
“I … I guess so. Are there any other Luthers?”
“He is the only one we know at La Coccinelle.” She dialed a number and looked up at me. “Have a seat. He should call back soon.”
Her phone rang back almost immediately. She spoke with a man, in what sounded like German this time. She looked over at me. “Okay. He is out back with a patient,” she said. “Feel free to go see him.”
I passed through the lobby and into a U-shaped courtyard that opened into an orchard backed by greenhouses. The walks were wide here and smoothly paved. I spotted a frail old man with a cane being aided by a long-haired blonde guy who looked like a super buff surfer dude. This … was Luther?
The blonde guy guided the old man to a bench under a linden tree. The patient looked like he had been in a car wreck. A brace stabilized his neck. Bruises and scabs discolored his face. 
The therapist—Luther?—threaded a pair of thick rubber straps around the bench and had his patient reach forward with a loop hooked over each thumb. The old man grimaced each time he attempted to comply.
I hovered behind a tree, taken aback. This version of Luther was thirtyish, tanned and built like a wrestler. Blonde hair billowed down over his shoulders. He looked like he had walked off the cover of a romance novel—pure beefcake.
Seeing this young and virile Luther withered my confidence. I expected to find someone older and weaker, stripped of the woven flesh that augmented his physique in Root. It turned out that the morph I had deemed too perfect to be human was actually the real thing. Here it was, standing right in front of me.
I gathered my courage and walked up. Luther turned and looked at me, displaying his blue eyes and rugged chin.
“Excusez moi, Arthur,” he said to the old man, in a voice pitched higher than I expected, before turning to me. “Are you the American who’s looking for me?” His English influenced more by London than New York.
“I’m … James.” I braced myself for his reaction, but he didn’t even blink. There was not the faintest glimmer of recognition in his eyes. He thrust his hand out for a shake.
“Luther Strunk. How can I help you?”
I stared at him awkwardly, and studied his face for some kind of validation that this was the man I sought. But there was nothing in those eyes or the way he carried himself that suggested that this was the Lord and Master of Luthersburg. Superficially, maybe, he resembled one of Luther’s many morphs, but I was no evidence of Luther’s soul behind that visage. 
He returned my handshake with a firm but well-lotioned grip. These were not the hands of a manual laborer. The old man stared at us and glared at me in a creepy, quaking silence.
“How can I help you?” I stared into his greenish-blue eyes and still saw no sign that he recognized me. 
“I … um … I … don’t know. I think I might have made a mistake.”
He sighed. “You’re not another stalker are you?”
“Stalker?”
“Maybe that’s too harsh a word. How about … fan boy?”
“I don’t get you.”
He shrugged. “You see, I’m a singer. In Lausanne, I have quite the following in the LGBT community. Even Arthur here is a fan of mine. Isn’t that right Arthur?” The old man leered from the bench. “Some of them get a bit carried away sometimes.”
“Pardon my asking, but have you ever been to Root?”
He squinted at me. Even the crows’ feet in the corners of his eyes were perfect.
“What is that? Some kind of club? In Geneva?”
“You really don’t know?”
His phone went off. The ring tone—Sinatra’s ‘Love is Just Around the Corner.’ He engaged in a brisk and argumentative exchange in French. “Excuse me,” he said. “I have an issue to work out with one of my other patients. Arthur, are you fine sitting here with this young man?”
The old man nodded, a perpetual smirk engraved in his face. He may have been aged, but there was mischief in those eyes. We watched Luther trundle off, muscles rippling beneath scrubs a mite too tight for a man of his considerable physique.
I sighed and thought about heading back downtown, but then what? This entire excursion had been a waste. And now I had no place to turn. 
The tide began to turn on my mood, In the back of my mind I realized the implications, but I tried to keep the idea of returning back to Root as vague and formless as I could because wanting to be there would prevent my going. I think this was what Karla meant by ‘surfing.’ Nevertheless, I girded myself for the dogs, or the Reapers or whatever I would face this time around.
“Hello James,” said the old man, his smirk more pronounced.
I looked at him, startled, and saw the childish depravity in his eyes, obscured by wrinkles and rheuminess, but unmistakable. This old man was the true Lord and Master of Luthersburg.
***
He was a shriveled old thing, with thinning hair plastered to his scalp and bifocals dangling from a strap around his neck. He wore gray slacks and a dark blue cardigan under a suit coat. The only color on his person came from a pair of mismatched turquoise and coral socks. 
“I never would have taken you for a skinhead,” he said. “But I suppose it makes sense now.”
“Skinhead? You mean my haircut? I just did this to make it easy to wash up on the road.”
“Are you sure? Weiss und stoltz does not mean anything to you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His expression softened. “You honestly don’t know? You’ll have to forgive me. It was some skinhead types who put me into this hospital, and other hospitals before.”
“But … why?”
“Because of my ways. My differences.”
“I don’t get you.”
“My goodness are you dense. I like boys, James. Not little boys. Big boys … like Luther.”
“So … who are you, really?”
“I am Arthur Knebel, or rather, what is left of him. I owned a gallery in Geneva for many years. And I used to sculpt. Abstract nudes mostly. Luther owns my heart, but five children he has now. For ten years he has been my physio-therapist. I have broken my body for him and will do so again, if it is the only way to be near him.”
“Whoa dude. You’re in love?”
He nodded sadly. “He is my hopeless hope, my ticket to Root. It is why I weave flesh. He is sometimes my avatar. Anytime I wish, I can become him. It’s not as good as the real thing, course. But it suffices.”
“You seem so different here. You’re not nearly as weird. You’re like … human.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s all an act, that other persona. Root is my stage; the ‘Burg, my perpetual show. I direct the action because I can. I may have been a failure as a sculptor, but as a weaver I am unsurpassed. Of course I choose to exert my powers to amuse myself. Wouldn’t you?”
“Luther … er … Arthur. The ‘Burg’s all fucked up because of what you did. No one’s getting in or out. I bet people are getting Reaped because of it. Karla—” 
“Well, that’s just too bad. The move was necessary to protect my investment.”
“Protect it from who?”
His eyes narrowed. “You know who. You were there. You saw what she did.”
“Victoria? But she’s not going to bother with you. Why should she? You’re no threat to her.”
“And how can you possibly know this? You’ve only been in Root … sum total … a few days. Me, I’ve been going over a decade now, three days out of four, returning only to replenish this shell of a body and see my precious Luther. I’ve seen powerful souls come and go and I know an existential threat when I see it. The attitude of that woman. You could almost smell her disdain for me.”
“But your walls can’t keep her out. Even I managed to cut through. They’re just keeping souls out of the ‘Burg and making the others miserable.”
“Impossible. You could never pass through those walls. ”
“But I did. I went right through it. Like butter.”
Luther/Arthur gripped his cane and wielded it defensively. His chin trembled. “You! You’re one of hers aren’t you? She sent you here.”
“Calm down. I’m just some kid who wandered in. Okay? Honest. I know nothing of Victoria. I just want my friends to be safe. Open the walls and I promise nothing bad will happen.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Not until I am certain the threat has passed.”
“But you’re losing souls left and right. Those who fade don’t come back. You’ll have nobody left at this rate.”
“We are improving the stock,” he said. “Distilling the loyalty. Keeping the best of the best. We’ll still recruit, but with more stringent requirements going forth. No more riff-raff. I am afraid, though, that you have disqualified yourself with your presence here today. You can bet we’ll be taking special measures to keep the likes of you out.”
“What about Karla? Does she qualify?”
“Karla has nothing to worry about,” said Luther.
“Then where is she? Why hasn’t she been seen in the ‘Burg?”
He smirked. “Did you never suppose your little crush had anything to do with it? That little thing called hope? If she’s not there … she’s been driven out of Root. She’s probably … here.”
“Here? In Geneva?”
“No, you idiot. With her father. In Inverness.”




Chapter 35: Relations

A wisp of a woman in a flowing shift hobbled out onto a balcony and leaned over the rail, studying me intensely as if I were some sort of rare squirrel that had ventured onto the property.
“Inverness? Is that in Switzerland?”
The old man rolled his eyes. “Scotland, you fool. You must be the dimmest heap of flesh ever to weave.”
His insult slid right past me. My heart was already on a train to Britain. But then it was like the vultures swooped down and plucked away my hope. What if this turned out to be another wild goose chase? What if I got there and found out Karla was actually in Newfoundland or Labrador?
“You know this for sure? That she’s in Inverness.”
“Look at you.” The old man’s gaze drilled into me. “She’s all you care about, isn’t she?”
I couldn’t deny that.
“Let me tell you something, then, that you may not like to hear. I am ten years ‘out of the closet,’ as they say. But back in the day, men like me took great pains to disguise our sexual proclivities. Some of us married women. Our wives bore children. I have a daughter. An only child named Hanna. She’s forty-six now and she once was married to a terrible man named Edmund.”
“Oh my God! You’re Karla’s grandfather?”
“But I’ve little contact with the family ever since Hanna left him. I don’t even hear from Hanna anymore. She’s not been right in the head, but who can blame her after being with Edmund. You can imagine how an extremist like him felt about a man of my predilections. I must be the devil personified in that household, and Hanna certainly suffered by association.”
“Does Karla know … in Root … who you are?”
“Of course she knows. I actually participated in their family life when she was small. I used to travel to Rome for holidays and they even came to Geneva once. That, of course, was before I came out.”
Luther, the physio-therapist, came striding out of the building.
“You two having a nice chat? Listen, Arthur. I am needed down at the main hospital. They have no one to work with the burn cases today. So we’ll have to reschedule our session. I know much you are heartbroken. How much you love this shoulder torture.” He winked. “Good to meet you James. Au revoir!”
He wheeled about and crossed the patio to the street. I gazed up at the crown of a willow, its leaves exposing their silvery undersides in the changeable wind 
“Inverness,” I said. “It sounds so far away.”
“Why would you ever want to go there, boy? What good would it do Karla? One glimpse of you and Edmund would beat her raw simply for attracting the attentions of a male.”
“Jeez! I don’t get why she doesn’t just leave.”
“She has a younger sister. Isobel. If Karla left, there would be no one to protect the little one.”
“Protect her from … Edmund?”
“And not just the beating. That’s not the worst of it. No one will say for sure, but I suspect there was molestation as well. It was a crime that Hanna was unable to gain custody of those girls.”
“You know this and you just let it happen? Why don’t you report him?”
“To whom? Who would listen? He is a leader in his church. He is calm and chaste in the court room, polite to the judges, and exceptionally well-groomed.”
“So letting them live with that monster, that’s better?”
The old man shrugged. “Karla is a weaver. She has Root to help her cope with hardships. It’s good enough for me. Why not her?”
“You’ve had the power to help her all this time and you did nothing? That girl’s surfing on the edge of suicide. How long can she keep that up?”
“Hmm … perhaps indefinitely. There is an art to persisting. Comes a point every weaver must decide where to stake their claim on existence. But anyone who finds himself in Root is already an earthly failure. Weaving offers a second chance at something indistinguishable from immortality.”
“But not if you die … here.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. It is rumored there is a way to sever all earthly connections … to die, so to speak … and keep one’s soul in Root. That is my quest … my Holy Grail. So far, I have come to believe it requires complete commitment to Root, with no earthly distractions. Alas, my dear Luther may prove my ball and chain, unless….”
“Why would you ever give up on life on earth? There’s nothing in Root that compares. Everything in your ‘Burg is just a cheap replica. Why not hang on to the real thing, for as long as you can?”
“Famous last words of the Reaped. You’ll get nowhere in Root with that attitude, boy. My advice? If you want to find Karla, don’t waste your time in Inverness. Find your way back to Root. Wait for her to come to you.”
“But you’ve sealed off the ‘Burg. What if she’s stuck in a tunnel somewhere?”
He shrugged. “Oh well. I make no exceptions for relations. She’s going to have to earn her way in.”
“And if she’s Reaped in the meantime?”
The old man pursed his lips. “Then it wasn’t meant to be. So sad, but … my Luthersburg only has room for the strong and the clever.”
A fire stoked in my belly. “She’s your granddaughter!”
“She’s … Edmund’s daughter.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“She’s … a mess, that one. Her head has never been and may never get right. Her soul, I fear, is atrophied.”
“What are you talking about? She’s fine.”
The old man’s smirk sharpened. “You haven’t met her on this side, have you boy?”
An urgent fire rose up and consumed me. “No, but you’re gonna tell me how to find her. You’re gonna tell me exactly where she lives.”
“I … don’t like your tone.”
“And … you’re gonna open up your walls.”
“Oh I am, am I?” His smirk deepened even more. “Sorry. Not possible.”
I looked around the complex, hearing voices, but at the moment no staff or residents were in view. I slipped the knife from the pocket of my hoodie and snapped open the blade. I had never pulled a knife on anyone before.
He laughed, weakly. “Oh, don’t be foolish, boy. Put that thing away.”
My hand shook. “You’re gonna open those walls or I’m going to take them down for you.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Oh? What would happen to all your fancy weavings if you weren’t around to tend them? They would all fall apart, wouldn’t they? Everything you’ve ever created, all of the ‘Burg would revert back to roots. Am I right?”
The old man’s smirk vanished. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.” I rolled the handle of the blade in my palm. “What do I have to lose? What better place to surf those waves of depression than in prison?”
He stared at the knife and studied my eyes. I probably looked feeling pretty crazed. I was hyperventilating. My eyes were pegged wide open. That blade felt potent in my hand. And suffice it to say, I didn’t have the warmest feelings for this man. The bastard had a hand in screwing up both sides of Karla’s existence. 
“Where would your soul go, I wonder, if it didn’t have Root?”
Arthur slumped back on the bench, closed his eyes and let out a long and raspy exhale.
“You don’t even know, do you? You have no idea if it would be better or worse.”
His eyes flickered open. “Alright. What do you want from me?”
“Open your walls,” I said. “Let anyone who wants to go, go. Let anybody in who wants in.”
“That could be arranged … in time … but only for a short time. There are threats.”
“And one other thing….” He looked at me and sighed. Only the ghost of his smirk remained. His eyes rolled up to the empty balconies. “I want that address in Inverness.”




Chapter 36: Detour

At Cornavin, I bought an almond croissant and the cheapest train ticket to Paris. Once we got underway, we were basically a hop, skip and a jump from the border with France. Now I knew why everybody in Geneva spoke French.
My future was inscribed on a precious scrap of paper in my hip pocket:
#6 Ardconnel Terrace, Inverness, Scotland
I treated it like a holy relic, taking it out now and then, smoothing it, staring at it, feeling my adrenalin kick in, revving my heart until I was forced to put it away.
Luther/Arthur was unable to give me a phone number but that was fine. I had what I needed. And this way my arrival would be a complete surprise. Our first contact would be face to face, with no room for evasion.
The old man promised that things would be different in the ‘Burg the next time I visited, but he wouldn’t promise how long it would last. He was deathly afraid of Victoria, even though if anyone could lead him closer to his ‘Holy Grail’, it was someone like her—a weaver of superior skills. It seemed to me, a few more manners and a little more tolerance would have given her a far better impression of Luthersburg and brought the old man a heck of a lot closer to his ‘Holy Grail.’
When we passed the border into France, the train picked up speed. Thanks to a little thing called sunlight, there was a lot more to look at out the window than during my traverse of the Alps. Who knew that France had so many farms? Before coming, I guess I had this idea that Europe, aside from a few parks, was basically paved end to end. 
I gathered that all this space had something to do with the towns and villages being all clustered together. That opened up the landscape big-time. There was none of that sprawl I was used to in Florida. 
When you thought about it, it made sense, this kind of living. You got to know your neighbors well, and when you wanted to get away from them, a short walk in any direction would take you somewhere peaceful. 
So this cracker boy was a European at heart. Go figure.
***
It was still light out when I got to Paris. A nice lady helped get me pointed in the right direction. I was at a station called the Gare de Lyon and I needed to get to the Gare du Nord. She insisted I needed to take the bus or Metro, and I nodded politely but it didn’t look that far on the map and I was itching for a good walk, so I hoofed it.
Man, was that a mistake. Paris was enormous. I went down block after block after block without ever seeing anything I remembered from the tour guides—no Eiffel tower, no Notre Dame, no Arc de Triomphe. Just masses and masses of prettified apartment buildings, crêperies and boutiques.
Night fell. I had to check every bus shelter map to keep myself moving in the right direction, but there was no missing the Gare du Nord. I crossed this narrow street about a block away and there it was— a cathedral of rail with an ornate and monumental façade that told you it had been in the business of people moving and for ages. 
I went inside, and with more help from some kind and helpful people—who ever said that Parisians were rude?—I booked a Chunnel train to London leaving early the next morning. The idea of going under the English Channel made me a little nervous for some reason. One would think I would be used to tunnels by now. 
My dinner that night was a hotdog from a push cart. But this was no ordinary hotdog. The dang thing was crunchy and a foot long and tucked into what seemed like half a loaf of crusty bread. With some spicy mustard, it really hit the spot.
There was no way I could afford a hotel here, so I washed up in a washroom, changed my shirt and went back out and roamed around to scout for a likely place to rest without getting hassled. 
I made my bed in a heap of flattened and bundled boxes behind an electronics shop. That cardboard made a decent mattress, a little firm but not too bad. I stuffed a paper sack full of packing peanuts to make a pillow. Newspapers were my blanket. It turned out to be one of the coziest nights I had since leaving Florida.
Luckily, nobody tried to recycle me during the night. The only close call came when a back door squealed open and someone tossed another batch of bundled boxes onto the pile. I kept as still as a corpse while they had a leisurely smoke, until they went back in and latched the door.
I got up at first light, a few hours before I had to catch the train. I wandered a bit, looking for a bakery, finding one in an area full of shops selling fiddles and sheet music. I bought a couple of berry-studded rolls, stepped outside and almost dropped them in the gutter, stunned by what I saw down the boulevard.
A white dome gleamed on a wooded hill. It seemed to hover above the rest of the city and there was this glowing mist floating about it that made it seem even more magical, ethereal, heavenly—pick an adjective describing something that didn’t belong in this world. I couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Excuse me,” I said to a young man passing by. “What is that?”
“That is the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur at the Montmartre.” He said, smiling. “You like it?”
“Yeah.”
He hurried off on his way, while I stood there all agog, stepping out into the street for a better view, almost getting run down by a girl on a bike. I wanted to walk there, but didn’t have enough time. Who knows, seeing the place up close might have only ruined its mystique. I would have discovered the warts—the inevitable Starbucks or McDonalds. Nothing could do justice to the view from afar on a misty morning.
So that was my only glimpse of Paris’ potential beyond the mundane. I didn’t need any Louvre or Notre Dame or La Tour Eiffel. I went back into the train station, and almost missed the train because I didn’t realize I had to go through customs first to reach a special, secured platform. I was switching countries again. If this is Tuesday it must be England.
It was a bit startling how quickly I got to London on that Chunnel train. I ended up at some station named after a digestive organ. Saint Spleen or Gall Bladder or something like that, bought a ticket to Inverness and found myself at THE King’s Cross Station. Like any tourist, I couldn’t help looking around the platform for evidence of young witches and wizards.
I didn’t see any Harrys or Hermiones but there were some more of those solitary young men I had been noticing everywhere. I imagined them belonging to some secret fellowship of the miserable. I was probably a member myself.
I went outside the station for a bit to get some air. From what I could see of London, it lacked the pizzazz of Rome and Paris, but the street seemed pleasant enough. Lots of brick, but enough greenery to make it feel livable.
This clean-cut looking guy in black sweats and an Arsenal jersey saw me looking around and he sidled over, sizing me up. 
“You … eh … looking to buy, mate?”
“Buy what?”
“Guess not.” He started to walk away, but he did a double take and paused.
“What’s your name?”
“My name? What’s it to you?”
“Just curious.”
I turned and walked away.
“It’s not James Moody, is it?”
A jolt shimmied through me. “What the fuck?”
I freaked and ran. How could some random stranger in London possibly know my name?
It seemed impossible that those guys in Cleveland had a long enough reach to track me here, but who knows how vast their network was and how far they had spread my image. Maybe they had some kind of cooperative enforcement pact against runaway mules. Maybe there was a bounty on my head.
I ran straight through King’s Cross back to the other station—St. Pancras, winding in and out of the crowds until there was no way anyone could track me. I went into a book shop and lingered in back, peering over the magazine rack, counting down the minutes until my train left. I had to avoid the train platform as long as I could.
They couldn’t possibly know I was headed to Scotland. The best they could figure was that I had arrived in London. I just needed to get to onto that train unnoticed. 
Five minutes before departure, I pulled up my hood and left the store. I stormed through St. Pancras, out the door, across a drive and into King’s Cross. The tight quarters in a construction area made me nervous. I didn’t dare look up. I thought for sure I’d be waylaid. 
I checked my watch. My train was due to leave in one minute. I hoped my watch wasn’t running slow. I ran around a barrier, but it was the wrong platform—a train headed to Manchester. I had to double back. 
There were two guys down the far end, looking in all the windows of the train. They spotted me and started running my way. I sprinted past a Cornish pasty stand to the proper platform.
The conductors on the Inverness train were already signaling the engineer that all were aboard. I found my car and risked a peek back into the station before stepping onto the train.
The two guys turned the corner. I ducked inside the train just as the doors shut. We began to pull out. I made my way back and took a seat by the window, my senses at eleven on a scale of one to ten. I stared blankly out the window as we picked up speed. 
And then there they were, sprinting alongside the train. One of them spotted me and pointed. I glanced away, looked back and they were waving to me, laughing and taunting. I gave them the finger and slumped down into my seat.
***
It took a good hour to get my heart to wind down. I was too close to my goal to have a pair of cut-rate bounty hunters take me down. 
I wondered if they might call ahead and have someone waiting for me in Inverness. It would be dark when I arrived. I ran schemes through my head to evade any unwanted welcoming parties. Maybe I could leave the train before it reached the platform and disappear into the night. 
I took inventory of my dwindled reserve of cash. I had just under three hundred bucks left—enough for a few meals and a night or two in a fleabag hotel. After that I would be down to pocket change. Karla had better be in Inverness. This was my last train ride. 
Once we were out of London, I tried to get my head into the moment and not dwelling so much on challenges waiting at my destination. I counted sheep to pass the time—literally. There were pretty pastures and paddocks everywhere. Butterfly bushes grew like weeds in every vacant lot and right of way.
York was the last station stop I remembered seeing before my eyelids clamped shut. I had the usual nightmare, except instead of the mall, I was running naked through a culvert. I awoke in a cold sweat in the middle of a bustling train station. 
Some man in tweed was shaking me by the shoulder, his brogue so thick it was unintelligible. Did he just call me ‘bro?’
Not fully awake, I grabbed my day pack and stumbled out of the train. Could this be Inverness already? Had I slept through all of Scotland?
And then I remembered too late those guys in London, and my daring escape plan. But the tracks here were all enclosed, there was nowhere to run. I slipped behind a support column to gather my wits.
I took a peek and indeed, far down the other end at the head of the train, a young guy in a pleather jacket stood alone on the concourse watching the passengers gather their luggage. 
He looked like yet another one of those ubiquitous young loners. Was he some dutiful grandson meeting his grandmother or a bounty hunter with a contract from Cleveland? How could one tell?
I waited behind the column, sneaking a glance every once in a while, until he had gone away and the train had pulled back out of the station. I hurried down the platform, hood pulled over my head, hung a quick right up a long flight of stairs that dumped me out into the most astonishing cityscape. The place looked ancient, quarried straight out of the sandstone bedrock.
A taxi pulled up to the curb and dropped off a lady with a cello. I rapped on his window just as he flicked off his top light. The window came down.
“Sorry lad, that was my last fare. I’m going off shift.”
“Quick question for you … do you know where can I find Ardconnel Terrace?”
“Ardconnel? Never heard of it.”
“I have this address. Number six Ardconnel Terrace.”
“I tell you, I know this town well. And there’s no such place in Edinburgh.”
“Edinburgh?”
“Where do you think you were? This is Waverley Station, Old Town Edinburgh.”
“Oh my God. I bought a ticket for Inverness!”
“Look again, lad.” He pointed to a road sign, chuckling. “What happened? Get snockered on the train?”
“I … fell asleep.” I started back towards the stairs, but then I remembered that train was gone, not to mention that guy might still be down there. The full horror of what I had done began to sink its teeth. I could have been in Inverness tonight.
“No worries, lad. The trains run pretty regular … although … that might have been the last one bound for Inverness today. Just hop one in the morning. I’d make the best of it. Enjoy Edinburgh. It’s a great town … especially for a young man like yourself.”
What did he think I was going to do? Party? I was in no mood to enjoy anything. The idea of interrupting my journey so close to its destination galled me. I was anxious to keep moving. Morning was a long time from now.
“Tomorrow … do you think I can re-use the same ticket? I mean, it was an honest mistake.”
“I doubt that. Train tickets are only valid on the day of travel. There’s nothing to be done but purchase a new one. But it’s probably only ten quid for the cheap seats.”
“How far … is Inverness?”
“Too far to walk, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“What about hitchhiking? Do folks still do that here?”
“Well, sure, in the countryside. But what’s the hurry, lad? Why not have yourself a good night’s rest?”
“I don’t have a whole of cash on me.”
Something shifted in the cabbie’s expression, as the local gravity had just been amped up a notch.
“Hop in, lad. I’m coming off shift, but I can take you as far as Falkirk. That’s a fairly major crossroads. Make friends in the pub and you’re bound to find someone going on to Inverness … or who’ll put you up for the night.”
***
The cabbie drove back to his dispatch lot to pick up his personal vehicle. On the way over, I got to appreciate how startling Edinburgh could be. We would be riding down a street, a gash would open up in the land and there would be this other cityscape a hundred feet beneath us. The sheer verticality and layering of the place stunned me.
Transitions could be abrupt, too. One minute we’d be driving through these dense and tangled warrens of cobbled alleys and the next we’re staring at a craggy hillside devoid of human habitation.
So the cabbie—George was his name—brought me home to his family and fed me some stew. They offered me a spare bed in the attic but I declined politely. 
So he dropped me off at a local pub which he said was as good a place as any from which to arrange a ride to Inverness. Folks down to Glasgow or Edinburgh for the day would be heading back to the highlands after dinner.
George wasn’t kidding. I quickly made the acquaintance of a middle-aged auto mechanic named Craig who was heading north after his pint and could take me part of the way. The drinking age was eighteen, believe it or not, but I made do with a Pepsi.
So things were going well. We were bounding along in his panel truck when, less than an hour later, we stopped for petrol in a place called Perth.
“There’s a pub with beds around the corner,” said Craig. “If you want to give it a shot.”
What he said confused me. Was he kicking me out of his truck? Had I offended him somehow?”
“But I thought you were going further north?”
“Aye, but the road forks here. I’m leavin’ the A9 and goin’ on to Braemar.”
“Is Braemar any closer to Inverness than Perth?”
“Well, technically yes, but then you’ve got the Cairn Gorms in between.”
His brogue was a little thicker than George’s so I had no idea what he had just said. What the heck was a ‘Cairn Gorm’?
“Can I go on with you … to Braemar?”
“Sure, but you can’t easily get to—“
“Please? I really don’t want to spend the night here. I want to keep on moving.”
Craig sighed. “Suit yourself.”
***
It was half past eleven when we reached Braemar. Craig dropped me off at an inn with a restaurant that was still open for business.
“Now I know it’s tourist season, but you might get lucky, seeing that it’s midweek. Jilly might have a room vacant.”
Jilly had no rooms, but she did make me a mug of hot cocoa. She suggested I try a bed and breakfast down the road and offered to call ahead, but I was still in no mood to settle in for the night. I had to keep moving. I had slept enough on that damned train. I was too close to Inverness to stop now. 
So I headed down the road and prayed that some late-returning tourists might be heading to Inverness. Whether they would be crazy to stop at this hour and pick up a hitcher as bedraggled as me was another question, but I was beyond all rationality by that point. 
I moseyed around the town a bit, which seemed to cater mostly to tourists and hikers. The information center had a bin with free maps of the Highlands. I unfolded one against a mischievous breeze and saw at a glance what Craig was trying to warn me about. 
Braemar looked a good distance further north than Perth and a good deal closer to Inverness, but it had taken me off the main road and plopped a good sized mountain range—the Cairn Gorms—in my way. 
There was a road just past Braemar, a long and winding way called the A939—‘The Old Military Road’—that cut across the range. But there was another route, a foot path, that slashed directly towards Inverness, hitting the A9 at a town called Aviemore. 
This alternative route was called the Lairig Ghru, which was an old cattle droving route, according to a blurb on the tourist map. I looked around for a scale but couldn’t find one. 
Aviemore didn’t look so far on the map and the mountains in the pictures didn’t look so tall. I figured, if a cow could hike it, why couldn’t I? So I found the trailhead at the edge of a parking lot. The night was clear, the stars sharp and the path was broad and obvious, lit by a hefty slice of moon. I felt strong and alert. I saw no reason why I couldn’t walk all night. 
A vision of Karla’s doorstep drew me up that path, into the darkness and the Cairn Gorms.




Chapter 37: Hypothermia

All those stars blew me away. I never imagined you could see so many at one time with the naked eye. Coastal Florida had this ever-present fuzzy orange glow that reached up every horizon from the thousands of street lights and strip malls and obliterated almost everything celestial except for the moon and Venus.
But here, there was even a swath of smudged light that could only be the Milky Way. A name that had been abstract and cartoonish suddenly made sense. It really was milky-looking and it looked like a path through the sky. Strange, how the ancients were probably more in touch with the universe than most of us in this so-called ‘space age.’
I even thought at one point that I saw a meteor, but it seemed too bright to be real and was gone too quickly to etch an impression on my senses.
I plunged headlong up a wide, graveled lane. The moonlight made the pale stone and dirt glow, contrasting nicely with the darker vegetation flanking it, almost as if my way forward was lit by faerie footlights.
Even when the occasional patch of forest snuffed the glow, the path was so straight and the way so obvious, I could have almost walked it with my eyes closed. 
I could easily imagine a herd of cattle being led this way. The grade was easy, the footing firm and well-drained. I had hiked a lot worse paths. 
I had probably gone a couple miles before it began to narrow. But I maintained a brisk and steady pace, even as the path began to steepen.
I could hear a decent-sized creek gurgling in a gully to my left. The sound soothed me. Since I was a kid, I had always been drawn to water. I still loved messing around in streams. I wish I could have seen it in daylight. From the sheer sound of them, those cascades had to be gorgeous.
Every twenty minutes I chewed up a mile. The path diverged from the stream for a time, but plunged into a little valley after topping a rise and then veered right, following the flank of another stream. 
My private light show was slowly curtailed by the hills rearing up before me and a slant of blackness creeping in slowly like a stage curtain from the west.
In the darker areas under tree I blundered off the trail a couple of times, but the shrubs acted like bumpers in guiding back to the main path. If it stayed like this the rest of the way, I had it made. I wondered if the lights of Inverness might be visible from the top of the pass. That possibility excited me and pulled me onward.
Karla. Not the prettiest name.
I couldn’t even remember exactly what she looked like anymore. It had been so long and our contacts had been so few and brief. But as I climbed that trail, flashes of remembrance came to me through the darkness. 
Asymmetric bangs shielding intense eyes, one scarred but that one flaw in their beauty rendering them all the more spectacular. The pixie-like and otherworldly proportions of her cheeks and chin.
Could it be that face never existed on this side of life? Might she sport a different visage in Inverness? People did weave flesh in Root, did they not? Bern and Lille had both altered their looks and Luther/Arthur’s face was in a perpetual state of flux. But if Karla had modified her face, why would she have retained those scars?
I paused to unzip my pack, grateful now for the biscuits and plums that George’s wife Iona had made me take along, as well as a bottle of sweet well water filled from their tap.
It was dead silent out here except for the wind. For the first time, perhaps in my life, I heard not a single internal combustion engine.
I looked behind me at the lights of Braemar, surprised by how far I had come already, how high I had climbed. My progress encouraged me, but I also couldn’t help wondering if it would have been smarter to take George’s advice and spend the night in town, even if it had to be in another nest of cardboard. It was terribly lonely up here.
The wind came in squalls that whipped across stands of stunted firs, whipping the bejeezus out of them. I zipped up my hoodie all the way. Despite my exertions, that air was nippy.
That wedge of cloud coming out of the west had consumed a good quarter of the sky. It and the moon were on a collision course. I stepped up my pace. It would suck to have the moonlight disappear. The only light source I carried with me was my Timex Indiglo watch and that wasn’t going to be much help.
Hour after hour I climbed, expecting to have reached the top of something every time a surmounted a height, only to find the trail climbing ever onward. The land rose in giant steps, steepening and then leveling and then brought to the base of the steepest pitch yet. 
As I hauled myself this rockier stretch, all trace of forest disappeared other than a few groves tucked into the hollows like islands. The rest of the land was carpeted in heather and stone. With no more trees to intervene, the wind was free to molest me.
I topped a ridge to be greeted by a blast of hurricane force wind and hunkered down a boulder to catch my breath. The path, much narrower now, descended. It remained an obvious strip worn through the heather, but I was getting nervous about the proximity of that cloud bank to the moon. I had a ridge between me and Braemar now and not a hint of civilization apart from a distant pair of headlights across the moor.
The trail relaxed again and began to rise and I could see the first inklings of the pass that would take me over the height of the land. It was a massive notch between two mountains, their shoulder forming a perfect parabolic curve, like a giant thumb pressed into clay.
The way ahead was clear now. I simply had to follow the path of least resistance, the lowest lay of this land through the pass. The slope now was severe and unrelenting. The only way forward was up.
So far I had come and yet I had the sense that I had much farther to go. Somehow, it didn’t feel like I was getting any closer to Karla. I had this vague sense that coming up this path had only led me farther away. Only topping that rise would ease the anxiety eating at me. 
I found a plodding pace I could maintain without having to stop every ten steps. And then, like a dimmer switch the glow washing the landscape faded as the moon dove under the cloud front. The clouds, not satisfied with this sacrifice, consumed the stars one by one. Darkness socked me in and my pace slowed as I took care with each step, feeling the uneven footing for a solid purchase.
I stopped for a drink at a spring, guided to it by its trickling. There could have been ice cubes in that water it was so numbingly cold. A light mist began to fall—just enough to bead up and dampen the surface of my hoodie. The chill penetrated whenever I lingered too long. I had to keep moving to stay warm.
Far above I was heartened to see a faint light that I hadn’t noticed before. It flickered like a fire. It meant there were people about, but it was just a far off pinpoint. Nevertheless, it rallied my spirits and gave me something to home in on in my climb. Maybe I’d find some amiable backpackers sipping hot broth around a campfire.
The mists had just been a prelude to a steady drizzle punctuated with bouts of harder rain. My hoodie absorbed it like a sponge. Shivers shuddered through me. I could not reach the source of that light soon enough, and yet as I climbed, it did not seem to be getting any closer. Were it not for that light, I might have given up and turned back to Braemar in defeat. But that light gave me just enough hope to continue on.
The squalls came on and off. The clouds above ripped open long enough to send the occasional moon and starlight to show me how far I had drifted off the trail. I came to hulking, multi-armed mass of blackness at one point, freaked out by its shape only to find it was a sign post at a branching in the trails. I traced the engraved letters with my fingers to discover words that meant nothing to me. 
The first set of names—it was hard to read—something something Bothy—meant nothing to me. But the second—Lairig Gru—was the drover’s path indicated on that tourist map. So that was the way I went.
The path rose immediately and would not stop rising. For the first time since I started, I couldn’t maintain a continuous pace but had to stop every hundred strides or so to catch my breath and ease the burn in my legs. But whenever I stopped for very long, a shivering kicked in that could only be eased by continued exertion. But as the rain came down harder, I began to shiver even as I climbed. I knew that was a bad sign, but I kept on keeping on.
Somehow, that light I had spotted didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Only my position relative to it seemed to change. I was swinging around it and rising above it. And then it began to recede behind me. Apparently, the light was tucked in some valley I was climbing above.
I wasn’t about to climb back down and cede all the high ground I had gained. Maybe that was stupid and stubborn, but I didn’t care. I wanted to get to Aviemore as soon as possible and I knew that the Lairig Ghru would get me there. I probably wasn’t thinking straight by that point.
I started getting sleepy. Weird, how those patches of scrub in the lee of the boulders suddenly looked so comfortable. They might as well have been memory foam mattresses.
My thoughts took their sweet time forming up and translating into actions. Every step took focus and effort. It was like being on high-powered sedatives. Some little piece of rationality trapped under all that fog started to panic. I had matches somewhere deep in my pack. It seemed prudent to try and build a fire out of the wind. But what would burn in all this slop? I kept slogging ahead.
Between the squalls, the clouds sometimes parted and the starlight betrayed the shape of the land around me. I was in the bottom of a sloping bowl. There was really no choice of path anymore. The way forward became obvious and inevitable. I had to pass through that U-shaped valley. There was little sign yet that it would level off. For all I knew it would keep rising into the heavens.
The clouds always moved back in and sealed up the rifts, squelching all light. They resumed spitting their sleet at me, as if I had insulted them by daring to walk to Aviemore. What did they have against me? I was just passing through. I meant no disrespect.
And then the shivering kicked in big time. I’m not talking about a little shudder you could send away by zipping up your jacket a little tighter. I’m talking about a full body tremor that rippled like an earthquake of the flesh. Heat-robbing moisture had passed through every seam and layer of my clothing.
That was when the little piece of rationality sealed deep in my brain realized the magnitude of the mistake I had made. I was never going to make it to Aviemore, never mind Inverness. I was going to die on this mountain tonight and it scared me. I had never felt loneliness so deep. With such a death, what would become of my soul?




Chapter 38: Faeries and Ogres

My feet stopped obeying me. I wanted them to rise and swing and plant but they refused. I just stood there, sleet slapping at my cheeks, until there was nothing else to be done but sit down and make myself comfortable.
I settled into a patch of soggy grass, and I as I sat there, the chill transformed itself into a mild burning, as if I had rubbed Ben-Gay all over my body. I told myself that the rain splatting my face had turned warm although frozen specks continued to sting my cheek.
My panic had subsided. I was sure everything was going to be okay. I just had to wait out the storm till morning. I suppose I should have pulled one of the plastic bags out of my pack and fashioned a poncho, but I let the precipitation have its way with me.
I slid off the stone I had been perched on and hunched into a ball, unable to sustain any posture. As I stared into the darkness, a yellowish glow suffused the landscape, and it seemed to come from nowhere in particular. It was if my eyes had spontaneously acquired the ability to pick up light intrinsic to the stone and heather.
And then down the trail, a string of lights came around a rise and made its way towards me, bobbing and swaying as if borne by legged creatures. Hikers with head lamps? But the lights were dim and they flickered like flames.
I smiled, cozy in my newfound warmth and looked forward to the parade. As they threaded through the boulders I could see I was way in my estimates of scale. The things approaching were Barbie-sized, their lights not much brighter than burning matchsticks. Little people, on foot or riding in carts pulled by goats. A faerie caravan.
Those in the vanguard wore armor of tree bark and nut shells. Jagged crystals gleamed at the end of hollow reed pikes twice their height. Glowing orbs dangled from twists of vine. Grim-faced, they lowered their pikes as they passed me, worried I might attack. But I just smiled and waved as they went by. 
Families rode in wagons made of gourds and wicker. Elders and cute, little faces huddled under blankets against the sleet, marveling at my gigantic form. Haggard parents walked alongside the goats in blinders and saddles, leading them by tethers or guiding their reins from benches. 
Something clattered in the dark of the boulder fields behind me. A band of squat and shaggy bipeds hopped between boulders, converging on the faerie’s path. One of them, some kind of imp I would guess, saw me look. It came over to investigate, its face bearded like a Yorkie dog’s but bearing a monkey’s inquisitive eyes. It carried a club fashioned from a knotted branch and studded with blackberry thorns.
It studied me from behind a cairn, pressing gnarled fingers to its lips as if telling me to keep silent. I never intended to heed its warning, but I couldn’t move and I couldn’t. I just lay there, paralyzed, unable to do more than watch.
The imp came up to me and grinned.
“On the way out, are you?” it said, in a raspy whisper.
I struggled to respond, barely able to manipulate my lips and tongue, and somehow managed to find and form words. “Out? What do you mean?”
“Die in peace,” it told me. “And mind your own business.” It hopped off into the darkness, rejoining the rest of its band.
My arms flailed and my legs kicked out. I rose to my feet, teetering, and called out to the faeries.
“Imps! It’s an ambush! Watch out!”
Something stung the back of my knee. It felt like sharp, little teeth clamping down. I swatted but found nothing there.
The faeries whirled into action, taking refuge behind their wagons, the children protecting the goats with pikes, while the adults male and female sending off flights of pencil-long arrows from bows half again their height.
The caravan crept along past me, taking with it its glow and the imps retreated back into the darkness. I collapsed back into the heather.
What was this? An illusion? A hypothermic hallucination? Or was it a window into yet another ante-afterworld visible only to those humans who skirted the fringes of death, like Root but having no connection to suicide?
Did these domains go serve more than merely the suicidal and hypothermic? Did the drowned, the gut-shot and cancer-ridden own their own custom portals to death?
I sank against the rocks, my mind going fuzzy again, unable to rationalize what I had witnessed any more than I already had. What the imp had told me was true. I was never going to see Karla again. Ever. I was never going to leave this mountainside alive.
And with that realization, the stubby branches of heather dropped their leaves and blooms and transformed themselves into wiry roots that twisted around my wrists and ankles and dragged me deep beneath the boulders.




Chapter 39: Rescue

I found myself in that shaggy tunnel between Karla’s dome and the sitting room. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to leave my body behind on those slopes in such dire straits, but at least my soul was warm and dry in here. 
What a stupid thing to have done, heading off into some strange, Scottish mountains at night with no camping gear. I deserved what ever happened to me, whether it was hypothermia or murder by imp.
I suppose I should have been excited to be so close to Karla’s abode, but I had no reason to believe that she had returned. Her dome looked crushed and vacant. But the merest possibility she might be there was enough to get me moving.
I tore my way through the ever denser shrouds of root to the remnants of Karla’s chamber. It was obvious that no one had been through here recently. The reversion was well underway. The dome had collapsed on itself like a half-deflated soccer ball. One side was ripped open wide and its contents strewn across the matrix. From the scale of the damage, it must have been the work of Reapers.
“Karla?” I said, tentatively, though I knew better than to expect a response. I poked around the wreckage, half-wondering and worrying that I might find her corpse, or some sign—bloodstains, clumps of hair—that she had been taken by Reapers. I was relieved to find nothing of that note.
Karla’s weavings had deteriorated badly since my last visit. The furniture was looking quite furry and surfaces that had been slick now exposed their mesh. For the most, part, however, her creations retained their shape. Was this a good sign, I wondered? Did it mean she was still alive, her soul not yet completely abandoned? Or did it simply take time for all weaving to revert completely back to roots?
I couldn’t find my old kilt anywhere, so I took a pair of Karla-sized gym shorts, widened, lengthened and de-shagged them and then pulled them on. I turned and headed bare-chested and shoeless back down the corridor from which I had come and into the sitting room.
I tried the door. To my surprise, it opened freely on its hinges. I stepped out into the mostly vacant square, hemmed in above by a close and gray sky. The obelisk was gone, along with the gargoyles. Apparently, they had been converted back into that big, old oak tree.
The place looked abandoned. There were no groups of people anywhere, and the dogs were gone. But it wasn’t entirely devoid of life. Across the way I saw I man emerge from a door and make his way to another townhouse.
I strolled cautiously to the center of the plaza, where I heard some sort of plinking and tinkling going on. There was a skinny guy with a monk’s fringe sitting with his back against the tree, trying to play a mandolin, but botching it badly. 
I walked up to him. From the way he jumped, I must have taken him entirely by surprise.
“Where’s Arthur?” I said.
“Who?”
“Luther.”
He did not respond. He hopped to his feet and ran off towards the church, leaving the mandolin propped among the roots at the base of the tree. I picked up and strummed a chord. The guy didn’t even have the thing tuned right. I plucked harmonics, tuning it by ear. 
I used to own my own mandolin—a cheap, little Rogue A-style—but it hadn’t survived the move to the storage bay. The neck had snapped when one of the movers stepped on it accidentally. It hadn’t bothered me at the time, but now I kind of missed it. 
“Well, what do you know … it’s Lord James.”
Bern. But where was his voice coming from? I looked up. He and Lille were dangling from a bough about ten feet above my head. Their torsos were completely encased in wood, like those boulders you see studding the boles of trees that had grown up abutting them for decades. 
“Are you guys okay?”
“Healing,” said Lille. “But I suppose we have a ways to go.” The remnants of her skirt hung in shreds. Blood stained the cuffs of Bern’s trousers.
“What on Earth did you do to poor Luther?” said Bern. “He speaks of you like you’re the devil incarnate.”
“Nothing … I mean … I just visited—” 
An elaborate trumpet flourish sounded, accompanied by drums. A procession exited the church, led by Harvald in full chain mail. Two ranks of Luthers—the blonde physiotherapist version, armored in leather and steel and bearing spears—followed down the steps, four of them bearing an open palanquin, on which was seated what seemed to be a giant bird clothed in pure, white plumage.
Windows opened. People emerged onto their balconies to watch, although no one dared come out onto the square.
“What happened to the dogs?” I said.
“You’re looking at them,” said Bern.
“You’re kidding.” I couldn’t help but grin.
“Any luck finding Karla on the other side?” said Lille.
I shook my head, keeping my eyes trained on the approaching parade.
“Hence, why so pensive,” she said. “And why you’re back.”
“Has she been here?”
“Obviously not, or we would have told you,” said Bern. “And believe me, we would have seen her had she come onto this plaza. Not as if we have anything better to do than watch all day from these dratted boughs.”
“Now Bern … watch your tone. The boy is just making certain.”
“What are you doing up there, anyhow?” I said.
Bern rolled his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. Admiring the view. I have to admit the place kind of grows on you.”
“Bern!”
“Luther did this to you?”
“For trespassing,” said Lille, nodding. 
“But I told him not to—”
The trumpets sounded again, even though I saw nothing that looked like a trumpet anywhere. The procession halted a good fifty meters away and a rank of guard-Luthers formed up between us and the palanquin.
Harvald helped Arthur down the steps and onto the paving stones. Arthur spread his wings and smoothed the white plumage framing his face, which now sported a beak in place of his nose and upper lip. They came forward cautiously, flanked by an honor guard of beefed-up Luthers.
“As you can see, I have given you your wish,” said Arthur. “The ‘Burg is open, and will remain so, one more day. And you were wrong. There was no mass exodus. My citizens remain, ensconced in their homes. There can be no better proof of my benignity.”
“Except that two of the folks who want to leave seem to have a tree attached to them.”
Arthur’s eyes snapped up to the bough and back. “They must serve out their sentence and then they will be free to go where they please. In truth, I’ll be happy to be rid of them. They have done nothing but undermine this community.”
“I told you to make sure they suffered no consequences. It was my fault they trespassed. I want you to set them free now.”
“In time. They must serve as an example to the others.”
“I said NOW!” My temper flared and blew the lid off my kettle. My arm shot up and I pointed at the knotty bough that entrapped Bern and Lille. 
The bark began to writhe like a tangle of worms in a bait bucket. The limb twisted, pitching Bern and Lille forward. Startled, Lille flung out her arms as if bracing for a fall. Bern’s hat fall, scattering a group of Luther’s as if it were a bomb.
“No!” said Arthur, raising his wings, extending both palms to the bough, bringing his weaving to bear. The limb twisted back into place, its component roots tightening just as Bern managed to extricate one foot. 
I summoned my anger with all the intensity I could muster and halted the process of restoration, unwinding the branch yet again. Arthur stopped my momentum. The limb quivered, caught between our powers.
I felt like I was arm-wrestling an equally matched opponent. It pissed me off. I could feel the heat rising in my face. He had promised not to harm them.
“Let them go!” I shouted. The bough exploded into splinters and shreds of root and bark that went flying everywhere, littering and ruffling Arthur’s magnificent plumage. The ranks of Luther’s ducked and shielded their faces in unison. Some of them barked, betraying their previous creation. 
Bern and Lille thudded down awkwardly onto the cobbles, collapsing together in a pile.
Arthur blanched behind his already pale feathers, as Harvald brushed off bits of root and smoothed him. The Luthers rose up and advanced on me with their spears. Arthur raised his hands against me. I felt my skin pucker and wrinkle. I looked down at my hand. It had become gnarled and arthritic and covered with oozing scabs.
“No!” I shouted. “You can’t!” With a crackle, my fingers re-plumped and shed their deformities. I was tired of this asshole messing with me. A fury rose from the pit of my soul. I could feel it come surging through my core and branch into my extremities. It flowed out of my fingertips and straight into Arthur. 
He took the full brunt. His body shuddered as every feather shortened, darkened and thickened into hard, glossy scales like some Amazonian armored fish. His beak softened into a floppy, whiskered snout.
“Gah! What have you done to me? It’s pure ugliness. You’ve made me ugly! Turn me back!”
The Luthers stood trembling, their spears directed at me, but no longer advancing. Bern and Lille and picked themselves off the ground and were still gathering themselves.
“Well done, boy,” said Bern, who wobbled and favored one leg severely. Even with Lille’s assistance, he had trouble standing.
“Are you guys okay?” I said. They both looked bruised and tattered.
“Nothing that can’t be mended with a little weaving,” said Lille, fetching Bern’s cane and bowler.
“I’ll be fine,” said Bern. “As if the damage weren’t enough, my bloody leg’s fallen asleep.”
“How did you do this to me?” said Arthur. “How could you? Reverse it, now. I … I hate fish.”
“Afraid I can’t,” I said. “I don’t know how.” I lent Bern my shoulder for support to free up Lille. 
“We’d better go lad,” whispered Bern. “Before he decides to retaliate.”
Arthur ran his hands over his scales but nothing changed. “I can’t believe it. It’s irreversible! How did you do this?” He plucked at his scales in a panic, tossing them to the pavement where they lengthened and curled into bits of root that crawled off into the cracks. 
Lille made a bee-line for the cottage, while Bern and I hobbled along behind. His stride smoothed out with each pace they put behind them.
Lille tossed a glance over her shoulder and I followed her gaze. The Luthers milled about their master, confused, while Harvald helped Arthur pick off scales as if they were ticks.
We passed through the garden gate, by rose bushes gone weedy and brown and into the cottage with its kitchenette at one end and a four-posted bed at the other. 
Lille scooped a stack of linens off the bed and stuffed them into a large basket along with a pair of pillows and some mismatched tea cups and silverware. 
Bern took a handgun off the wall that I had assumed was just for decoration. He swaddled it in a towel along with a spare magazine. 
“Bern … please … not that. It probably doesn’t even work here.”
“We don’t know that,” said Bern, ignoring her. “If nothing else, it might prove a useful deterrent.”
“Did you make that?” I said.
“Found,” he said, tucking it into the basket. “Let’s hope its true owner misses it a little longer. You know what happens to things forgotten.
“Yeah,” I said. “They don’t stay in Root.” I wished that rule applied to people. Karla certainly qualified as lost, and I sure as hell hadn’t forgotten her. I wished now that I had been satisfied with seeing her in Root. I feared that my insistence on going after her on the other side had only driven her farther away, while putting my soul in peril on the mountainside. I missed her with a pang as strong as a week without eating.
Lille peered behind the curtain. “Let’s leave out the back,” she said. “The Luthers seem to be getting themselves organized.
Bern flung open the back door and staggered out into a tunnel every bit as shaggy as the one behind Karla’s collapsed dome. 
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Bern. “So long as it’s far, far away from this damned ‘Burg.”
***
Bern and Lille slithered through the roots with a confidence bred from many prior passages. We passed through the loose matrix between the tunnels, making light where it was need, parting any walls that blocked our way. We ducked out into one of the broader tunnels well below the junction. I recognized it as that darker place where I got stuck in my pod after that backslide and had to watch that poor girl get Reaped.
Lille found a seam in the tunnel wall and sliced through. We went in a good hundred yards before reaching a low-ceilinged cavern in the roots. Little yellow specks like fireflies illuminated the outlines of a boxy structure that looked like a crude, windowless garden shed.
“I apologize for the appearance,” said Lille. “We just threw this together as a temporary haven. It’s a camp, really.”
“I think of it as a cabin,” said Bern. “Few of us have Luther’s knack for creating perfect domes.”
“And we haven’t been around much of late to maintain it,” said Lille. “For obvious reasons. 
“Stop apologizing,” I said. “It’s fine.”
“Come inside,” said Lille. “I’ll see if I can whip us up a pot of tea. I’ll make sure it tastes good, but don’t be surprised if it’s clear. I’m not up for making it look authentic.”
The interior of the cabin was smaller and cruder than their cottage, although the layout was quite similar—a single room with a sleeping mat at one end and a little table and cupboard at the other. Roots dangled from every corner of the ceiling.
Lille ripped a mass of roots from the inside of her teapot. 
“So what brings you this time?” she asked.
“What brings me?” I took a seat on a rickety chair and looked at her blankly.
“Surely there must be some bad news?” she said. “No one ever comes here for pleasure.”
“I guess … I’m not a happy camper.”
“Go on,” said Bern, taking a seat beside me. Lille had somehow conjured water in her little pot and caused it to steam, though I saw no spigots in the room and no source of heat.
“I went looking for Karla … in Scotland. And now … I think I’m dying on the side of a mountain.”
“Oh my!” said Lille, pouring my cup. 
“Why on Earth are you looking for her on a mountain?” said Bern. “Is she—?”
“It was a shortcut,” I said. “Or so I thought.”
“What did you mean by … ‘dying?’” said Lille.
“The weather turned bad,” I said. “I’m not wearing the warmest clothes. I’m soaked and chilled. And I think I’m hallucinating.”
“Not about us, I hope,” said Bern. “I hope you don’t think that this—“
“No, not you,” I said. “Imps and faeries.”
“Oh my,” said Lille.
“I’m cold. Very cold. So cold, I’m starting to feel warm.”
“I see,” said Lille. “So you’re here because you’re sad that you will die without ever finding Karla?”
What Lille said hit so close to my true feelings that a wave of tears overcame me. Until now, I hadn’t thought it was possible to cry in Root.
“I’ll never see her now. I blew it. I’m gonna die of hypothermia and that will be it … forever.”
“Oh my,” said Lille.
“Get yourself someplace warm, lad,” said Bern. “Hop to it … as soon as you’re drawn back. There’s obviously hope. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t still alive and somewhat rational.”
“I can’t … I can’t walk,” I said. “I can’t get my muscles to do what I want. And … I’m hallucinating. I saw faeries … and imps.”
Bern and Lille looked at each other.
“Those … may not have been hallucinations, dear.”
“Huh?”
“Well, there could be … other states of mind … that could act as portals to other worlds beyond Root. Lille and I … we haven’t experienced such ourselves, but we’ve heard about—“
“Faeries?”
“Well, no,” said Bern, shrugging. “Not exactly. We’ve heard of some pretty strange things from those on the brink of death. Bright lights. Ancestor’s voices. But … faeries? That’s a new one on us, I’m afraid. Regardless, you need to summon your strength and get yourself off that mountain. That’s an imperative, lad. We can’t afford to lose you.”
I sighed and sipped my tea, which was bitter and strong. “At this point … I don’t think I have much choice in the matter.” A fear began to grow in me. “What … what happens if I die on that mountain? Can I … would I stay here in Root? And like … never go back?”
Bern and Lille gave each other that look again. 
“One fades, son,” said Bern. “And one doesn’t come back. But we don’t know… no one knows where you go.”
A panic rocked me. “Is it possible … that’s why Karla hasn’t come back? She might be dead?”
Bern hemmed and shrugged and turned up his palms. Lille slugged him. 
“Don’t say that. Don’t even think such a thought. She’s a healthy young girl. The odds that she has passed are … infinitesimal.”
“What about … suicide?”
“But that would mean she would have to be taken by Reapers,” said Bern. “Our girl would never let that happen. Would she, Lille?”
“Fat chance,” said Lille. “That one’s a fighter, she is. She—“
Lille gasped and her jaw dropped. Bern’s eyes widened.
“W-what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Before they could answer, a swarm of prickles spreading across my skin told me I was about to fade.




Chapter 40: Bothy

I awoke to flames crackling and dancing before my face. Smoke stung my nostrils. Hushed and worried voices speculated and disagreed. I lay on a pair of spongy pads, wrapped like a mummy in poly towels under two layers of down sleeping bag.
A young man in a rain jacket with a bandanna tied over his head swore into his phone. 
“What’s wrong? Can’t you reach them?” A girl with a rope of braided red hair that dangled nearly to her waist looked on with concern.
“No bloody signal whatsoever. Should have went with Vodaphone.”
“Aye, this could’ve been us, you know. Climbing that face. What if we had had an accident?”
I tried to speak, but only grunted. I wasn’t entirely back just yet.
“Sean! He’s conscious!” said the girl, her freckled face leaning close to mine.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in a bothy,” said the girl. “We found you face down on the path and brought you back. You’re lucky we made an early start for Ben Macdui.”
“Ben who?” I said, rising.
“Lay back down. You shouldn’t be moving.”
“Hypothermics are susceptible to heart arrhythmias when jostled,” said the guy. “Says it right here in my book.”
“Here, have some of this.” The girl handed me a plastic mug filled with steaming broth. 
“We saw you lying there, your body all dark with your hood up. Thought you might be the Greyman, sleeping.”
“It’s true,” said the girl. “I was afraid. I felt this aura. It was so strange. I wanted to run.”
“Greyman?”
“The Am Fear Liath Mòr. Guardian of passes and portals. Folk tale, but I know of some who have felt his presence here. Imagine how relieved we were to roll you over and find you were just another ill-prepared American tourist.”
“Tourist? Hey, listen. I ain’t no tourist. I’m anything but that.”
“Whatever. You need medical help, regardless. Sean’s going to hike to the road in Braemar. I’ll stay with you, in case you run into any problems. I’m CPR certified.”
“But I’m going in the other direction. To Aviemore.”
“Not today, you aren’t.”
My head pounded. I sat up and shrugged off both sleeping bags. I had one microfiber towel wrapped around my waist, another draped over my shoulders like a shawl. I only retained my skivvies. “Where are my clothes?”
The girl nodded to a clothesline set up over the hearth. 
“They’re soaked. Might take all day to dry them, clammy as it is.”
“Listen, I need to get to Aviemore.”
“In time,” said Sean. “First thing’s first.”
“No. I need to leave now. I feel fine. I’m not hypothermic anymore. I’m warm.” I didn’t tell them about the pulsing headache that made it feel like my brains were squeezing between the plates of my skull.
“You can’t. You’ve got no dry clothes. If I can only get a signal we could have a mountain rescue team up here to help you. Perhaps a helicopter.”
“Helicopter? Christ! No way can I afford that.”
“It’s okay, this is Britain,” said Sean. “You don’t have to worry about paying. If you need a rescue, you get a rescue. There’s no bill.”
“You don’t understand, I can’t afford to dilly-dally. Someone might die if I don’t get to Aviemore, soon. And I don’t mean me. I wish I could explain, but ….”
The couple looked at each other.
“Maybe he could borrow your extra set of clothes, Sean?”
“This is a bad idea, Sharon.”
“Sean … listen to him. He’s desperate.”
***
They turned me loose and I went back up the trail in my own damp but smoky sneakers but wearing layers of microfiber slacks, a poly flannel shirt, fleece and a parka shell—all of it a size or two too large and rolled up at the cuffs and sleeves.
Sean had been a hard sell, and had almost made me sign a waiver, which made no sense at all. Why would I sue him? Was he a lawyer or something? Sharon, sensing my urgency, dissuaded him, and they let me go, watching me from the door of the bothy.
I felt like crap, but well enough to walk. I kept a murderous pace up for the first mile just to show them how strong I was, before disappearing into the fog in the heights of the Lairig Ghru.
There was sun up there somewhere trying to burn through, glowing through the thin spots. I was well past whatever point I had collapsed the night before. The place was devoid of greenery beyond the ubiquitous lichens. The boulders were larger, the footing less even. I couldn’t imagine a cow passing through here without breaking its leg.
Rime ice, created and broken by the wind, tinkled off the boulders. The sum total made for quite the concert, like some glockenspiel concerto. 
At the cusp of the pass, where the land leveled off and began to descend, I began to hear footsteps—or were they hoofsteps?—behind me. For every three steps I took, I heard one clomp behind me. When I stopped, it stopped. 
I didn’t stop at all after that. At the risk of fracturing my ankle, I careened between boulders, hopping and darting down the narrow valley aiming for the dark blotch of trees and the ribbon of grey that I hope was the A9, that I could see far below. I had never been so frightened without a tangible reason—just some story passed on in a shelter.
Patches of forest huddled like herds of beleaguered wildebeest amongst the boulder fields and meadows. Another mile and the trail would pierce the first rampart of the greater forest. 
The sun was out by the time I reached those trees. I paused by a trailside spring and quenched my thirst. My head still pounded and I had a knot in my gut that Sean and Sharon’s granola bars could not remedy. I pined for the full Scottish breakfast, whatever that was, I saw advertised on a restaurant window in Edinburgh.
The trees were a bit sketchy looking at first—all stunted and twisted in the trunk, and encrusted with scabby lichen, but they soon lengthened into ordinary looking firs and pines. The boulders sank beneath topsoil, making for easy going on the wide trail. 
I passed groups of hikers going the other way. I just nodded and smiled, torn whether to warn them of the fell creatures and weird doings that lay in wait for them on the heights. They probably would just think I was crazy. I didn’t look so trustworthy in my scraggly beard and baggy clothes.
I breathed easy now and the miles whizzed by over packed sand and gravel. I passed miraculous tarns and fairytale estates without much more than a glance. I could hear the traffic now on a highway that could be nothing other than the A9, according to my map. My heart bonged in anticipation of reaching the main road to Inverness.
I passed by some park buildings, went straight into a village I was relieved to discover was Aviemore, and took a table at the first restaurant I found.
“Coffee … and a full Scottish Breakfast, please,” I said to the waitress.
***
It was filling, to say the least. It came with two eggs, fried mushrooms, a black thing that looked like a hockey puck and tasted like liver, some kind of fried mashed potato concoction, a sausage, a hunk of smoked pork and a soggy tomato. Not quite what I expected, but it hit the spot and corrected any calorie or protein deficiency I might have acquired since Rome.
I made some friends, too. Most importantly, with a grizzled old guy with fly-away sideburns who happened to be driving a weather-beaten truck loaded with splits of apple wood. He was headed for Inverness, and was happy to give me a ride, and I didn’t even have to help unload as the folks on the other end would take care of that.
The bumper sagged and almost dragged over the bumps. I winced when the scraped, imagining the sparks that were flying, and fully expecting the exhaust to go clanking off. Even in the lowest gear, we were lucky to hit 10 mph up the steeper grades. We were lucky to keep rolling.
“Trekker, are ye?” he finally asked after a good half hour of talking about himself and the weather.
“Yep.”
“I’ve done some trekking in my time. Marrakesh. Mauritania. Even Katmandu, though that was with a gal who left me in the lurch. I’d rather not think about that one. Did Burma and Bhutan by motorcycle with a couple of chums. That was a memorable one. I was in my twenties. Hard to believe, is it? I was once young like you?”
“I believe it.”
“Life is a flash in the pan. Blink and a whole decade goes by, I’m telling you. Keep those eyes open. See as much as you can, while you can. Go wherever you can, as soon as you can. Trekking is the only way to avoid being cheated by life. It’s a shame … most of the folk around here never been out of Scotland, if you can believe it.”
“I believe it. It’s the same way in Florida.”
“Florida, huh? Where else have you been, boy?”
“Well … I’ve been mainly doing Europe,” I said. “Mainly.”
“I’ve been some places no northerner ever gets to go. Some places you wouldn’t recognize the name.”
“Same here,” I said. “I’ve been places hardly anyone ever gets to see, northerner or not.”
“Like where?”
I looked him in the eye. “Have you ever wanted to kill yourself?” I asked because I wanted to see if we had Root in common or not, but he took it the wrong way.
“What? Why would you say such a thing? What’s wrong with you?”
I thought he might pull over and kick me out of his cab, but he kept rolling along, it’s just that the conversation stopped, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I appreciated the spell of peace and quiet.
We topped a rise. A city became visible in the distance. “Is that … Inverness?”
That got him started again. “Certainly is … and that moor you see on your right? That’s Culloden field where the Jacobites met their downfall. You’ve heard of the Jacobites, haven’t you? Bonnie Prince Charlie?”
So I let him tell me all about it, although my eyes and heart were focused on that city by the fjord that was beginning to reveal itself in bits and snatches in the near distance.
We picked up speed going downhill. That meek little bird called hope began to call again from its cage.




Chapter 41: No. 6 Ardconnel Terrace

His name was Cullen or Colin or something like that, and he was a biker. He proved hard to ditch, expressing extreme reluctance to just drop me off on the curb without any arrangements for further contact. I had no phone number to satisfy him, so I promised to meet him in a pub for dinner later that day, though I had no intentions of following through. Maybe that was cold of me. He was just some lonely guy in full mid-life crisis who thought he had found a sympathetic ear, but my own obsessions and priorities called louder.
Through a series of bus maps and passersby I located Ardconnel Terrace on the fringes of the town center, where the residential neighborhoods began to blend with the industrial zone. A zig and a zag, a dash across a busy street and I was there. 
It turned out to be a narrow, curving lane, packed cheek by jowl with townhouses, scarcely an alley between them. The other side was bounded by a pit of a fenced and gated private garden that descended down the side of a wooded gully.
Each home was poorly marked, as if the post men had every unit and number consigned to memory. I deduced fairly quickly which home was number six and took a position between a black-painted shed and a row of dumpsters across the street.
I studied the continuous wall of stone and brick, trying to deduce something about the status of their residents. They seemed well kept—nothing crumbling, no peeling paint. Those who lived here were not exactly poor but I couldn’t call them well to do. Toys left on the little stoops and nooks suggested that a fair number of young families lived here. This was not the monstrous lair I had imagined for Edmund and his brood.
Not much happened over the first hour. A few passersby made their way down the walk, but I heard nothing and saw no action from the dwellings themselves. Not surprising, it was a work day after all, and these were working class abodes.
I tried summoning the courage to go up to the door and knock, but I couldn’t get myself to budge. I suppose it made sense to be patient. Karla had a reason for not wanting to be found and I needed to know more about why that was before barging into her life. I hadn’t come all this way to toss away what might be my only opportunity.
My dirty face, greasy, scraggly hair and clown clothes would not make the best impression, to say the least, on whoever it was who opened that door, particularly not the kind of dad who associated cleanliness with godliness.
A police car surprised me when I wasn’t paying attention to the road. I thought for sure the gig was up; that someone had phoned in a report of some lurker, but I lucked out. It kept on motoring down the lane.
And then the door opened. I hunkered down behind a dumpster with an open lid, peeking through the gap between the hinges. A man in a grey tweed suit stepped out. He had piercing eyes and a full and blocky beard with a white skunk strip running down the middle of his chin. There was this hawk-like and feral nineteenth century look about him that reminded me of a PBS show about the abolitionist John Brown, the guy who had tried to lead a slave rebellion before the Civil War.
He dropped a letter in his mail slot and turned to look up and down the street, almost as if he could smell my presence. Even from across the street I could the web of red blotching spreading from his nose, and the weepy, inflamed eyes that were sure signs of an alcoholic.
Instead of going back in, he came down the stoop and strolled up the walk to the bigger street around the corner. He had a weird, lurching gait, more a hitch than a limp, and his hands trembled when he paused. He looked my way more than once. I thought for sure he had spotted me, but he kept on walking, out of sight.
I was huffing like a demon by that point, tingles spreading down my arms, my heart barely contained. Edmund was gone. There was nothing between me and Karla now but a knock on the door. 
I scurried out from behind the dumpster, as wary as a rat, trotted up the landing and rapped my knuckles on the red-painted wood. My synapses buzzed with nervous energy as I waited, my head swiveling every which way.
But no one answered. I tried again, and when again there was no response, I retreated off the stoop and started down the walk in the opposite direction that Karla’s dad had taken. There was nothing to be done but maybe getting a cup of coffee and trying again later. I wondered if there was a pub nearby where someone might be able to tell me a little about the Raeths.
I had to keep tugging up my pants as I walked because I didn’t have a belt. I must have looked pretty ridiculous. My own clothes were stuffed in the bottom of my pack, sopping wet. I turned the corner at the end of the lane and looked around for a laundromat. It sure would be nice to have my own clothes clean and dry.
A young woman came my way down the sidewalk, clutching a bag of groceries in both arms. Her clothes were so quaint and conservative, like some villager from Eastern Europe. A plain, dark dress stretched all the way down to her scuffed brown flats. She wore a flowered blouse, buttoned up tight to the hollow of her neck, cuffs fringed with simple lace, baggy sweater that flowed and swung with each step. 
I stopped and waited for her to approach, gripped by a paralysis of fascination. A large kerchief restrained shoulder-length hair, wavy and black as coal. A loop of hair swung, screening her face. She stared at the ground, not glancing up, not acknowledging my presence any more than she would a trash bin.
After all my disappointments, this moment seemed impossible. Could it really be?
“K-karla?” I said, her name catching in my throat.




Chapter 42: Rejection

Her eyes went wide as hen’s eggs and she almost dropped her bag of groceries all over the pavement. That scar. That chin. This was Karla, alright. Except for the smarter outfits and perkier hairdos, the version I knew in Root was unadulterated from the truth. If I had grinned any wider, I would have lost my jaw.
“No!” she said, as if she were hissing a curse at me.
“What? No hug? You’re not even gonna say hi? What’s wrong?”
Her eyes narrowed back down into slits as narrow as coin slots. “You shouldn’t have come here! I told you not to.” She glanced behind and flinched as if she expected to be whipped. “How did you find me?”
“I had a little help from your Grandpa.”
“Grandp—Luther?”
“His real name’s Arthur, actually. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Her chest heaved. Her face twisted in anguish. 
“Are you … okay?”
“No, I am not okay! I cannot be seen talking to you. Go! Go away!”
“How about later? Can we meet … later?”
“No, we cannot. We can never meet. Never again. Not ever.”
I felt things collapsing inside me. “I don’t understand.”
“You are a curse, James. You have trapped me here. I could not go back to Root.” Tears gushed down her cheeks. “And now you have only made it worse … by coming … letting me see you here. You should never have come!”
“Karla, please! I don’t understand. Why are you acting this way?”
“Get it through your skull!” she shouted. “I cannot be seen with you. My father … he has friends in the Order who live nearby. Now go! Go away! Before someone sees us.”
“Now, wait a minute. I didn’t come all this way just to turn around. Please … can we just talk … just for a minute?”
Her eyes flitted in every direction. Her anguish had turned to frustration. If this had been Root her glare would have turned me into cinders. She fished in her purse for a key. “Come,” she said. “Follow me. We can talk. But only for a minute. Then you promise you will go.”
***
Karla led me back around the corner to Ardconnel Terrace, to the gate of the private garden. She unlatched the hasp and stepped aside to let me pass. For a moment I thought she might lock me inside and run away, but she followed me in, pulling the gate closed behind her. 
We went down three flights of stairs to the bottom of the ravine where a path of faux concrete flagstone led us to a little glade in the back corner, hemmed in by beech trees and ferns. She took a seat on a little bench. I sat down next to her, barely restraining my urge to take her into my arms.
“I’m going to tell you this once, James and that is all,” she said, in a calmer voice. “You are to go away and never return here. Do you understand?”
“No. I don’t get it. And no way can I promise such a thing.”
“But you must! I cannot be allowed the tiniest shred of hope that I will ever see you again. Why can’t you understand?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t,” I said, my eyes starting to sting, my nose getting all stuffy. “How could I? I came all this way to see you. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
She sighed with aggravation.
“It is my little sister … Isobel. She is having a very hard time with my father … now that she is almost twelve. I suspected … before I met you … that she was on the brink of being visited by Root. But now I am certain. The little she talks to me, she tells me of her dreams. But I cannot help her. I cannot save her, because I am stuck here … because of you.”
“Because of me?”
“You gave me hope, James. Even a little is too much. I will lose Isobel. And she is all I have. My sister. I am frightened, James. I don’t know what to do.”
“Have you considered … counseling?”
She picked up a pine cone and threw it at me, hard. 
“Counseling? Is this a joke?”
“I don’t know. They say it helps. I’m just—”
“You really are a stupid boy. Coming here. For what? You think I would run off with you?”
“Well, yeah … that was the idea.”
“Not without Isobel. And she is not ready. She doesn’t know how to deal with Root when it comes. And she won’t listen to me about it … not yet. I am afraid … when Root comes … and it will come, I can feel it … she will be Reaped.” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
“I … I don’t know what to say.” I never felt so empty. “Why can’t your sis come with us? We can just pack up and go. Your dad … he’s not home. I saw him leave.”
Her posture stiffened, and her face went blank. “You saw my father?”
“Well, yeah. I was watching the house and—” 
“How long have you been stalking me?”
“Stalking? I’m not stalking. I just got here this morning.”
“Do not go near my father! He keeps a gun by the door. A shotgun. Loaded. Did he see you?”
“Um …no.”
“You don’t understand what kind of trouble it will bring if he finds out a boy is looking for me. He will blame me.”
“Blame you for what?”
“For luring you. Attracting boys. For being un-chaste. I am given to God … for life.”
“What do you mean? Is that … what you want?”
“It does not matter what I want.”
“Of course it matters.”
“No. I am to be with no other man … forever … but God … and my father.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Please! Don’t make me explain everything!” her face distorted in pain.
“Jesus, Karla. You guys don’t need to put up with this. You need to grab your sister and come with me.”
“Oh yes? And where would we go?”
“I don’t know … anywhere … away from here. Maybe there’s an Occupy in London. In Rome they gave me free food, a place to sleep.”
“Occupy? Are you insane?”
“Just as a start. We could find jobs. Get an apartment.”
“I can’t leave my sister.”
“I keep telling you, you don’t have to. Bring her with us.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “It is not possible. She does not … she will not go willingly. She is deeply depressed, Unresponsive. You, of all people, should know what that feels like. She has no control over her entry to Root. I fear the worst. I was nearly Reaped my first time. If it wasn’t for Bern and Lille….”
“But why even mess with Root if we don’t have to? We can fix things here … make things right … and the first step is getting you and Isobel away from that monster.”
A sadness crept into her gaze. “Oh? And how will that work? First of all … Isobel would not cooperate. She does not listen to me. And if we force her to come, she is a minor. The government would come looking. She would give us up. You would be arrested for kidnapping. Deported. Prison. And that is if you are lucky and Papa did not find you first. Only bad things would come of this. And that is why you must go.”
My head spun. “Your dad … he’s the one that needs to go to jail. If he did that did that to your eye. Those other things … why didn’t you report him?”
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“He is too well connected. Too well respected in the Order. No one would believe me or Isobel. They are loyal.”
“Fuck that! I’ll report him … just tell me—”
“Stop it! That is just foolish talk!”
“What do you mean? He’s a criminal. Grab your sister and we’ll go. We’ll work it out. It’ll all work out.”
Karla shot to her feet. “Did you not hear anything I told you?” Her voice cracked.
I took her hand. She yanked it back. 
“Where is she? Your sis? She home?”
“She’s at school. But it doesn’t matter, we are not going with you. Not now, not ever. And you … you should go back where you came from … to Florida. I don’t want you here. You had already ruined everything and now you have made it worse. You must go away and promise never to contact me again. Only that will break the curse.”
“No way! Karla, I—”
“Go!” she shrieked. “Go and never come back! Promise me this. Promise me!” Her face blushed purple. Her lips trembled. “You are my curse.”
I clammed up. Her eyes tracked mine with a glare as glassy as a tarn and colder than the Cairn Gorms in a sleet storm. The depth of the void behind them stunned me.
“Karla?”
“Promise me!”
“I can’t … I … I don’t want … I … love you.” Tears distorted my view of her face, as if I were peering through a wavy lens. They made it seem as if the world was melting before me. I wanted her to take it all back, to change her mind, to reach out and hold me, comfort me, tell me everything would work out all right. But she did none of those things. She just stood there and glared, arms folded. She could have passed for a bronze statue.
I wheeled abruptly and started up the garden stairs. I didn’t look back and didn’t even say goodbye as my heart imploded into the blackest of holes.




Chapter 43: Careening

I wandered like a drunk, careening from street to street, bumping into people and brick walls, and neglected to notice or excuse myself to either. I took little to no care crossing streets, but through some curse of luck, suffered no ‘accidents.’ A bridge tempted me with the tumultuous current boiling below it. What I really wanted was for Root to come to me. So I bided my time and ‘surfed,’ but never had the pain of waiting pressed so deep.
I spotted a sign for the train station and tried to follow, only to find myself caught in a tangle of alleys bounded by walls of brick and concrete stone that mixed and matched building materials in a slap-dash fashion, as if the city had been assembled a little piece at a time with whatever was lying around at the moment. 
A row of small cars were parked perpendicular to the street here, crammed into every possible space. I passed a TJ Maxx that made me wonder for a moment whether I really was in Scotland.
I found the tracks and followed them to a hangar-like structure overarching the main station. It had vaulted, windowed ceilings to help remind travelers of the bad weather outside. 
The ticketing and waiting area reminded me of a hospital with its white tile floors and barebones furnishing. On second thought, if a provincial portal to Heaven had a train station, it would probably look something like Inverness—humble, unpretentious but gleaming with the promise of better destinations.
A cheery train with a yellow nose and pulling red-striped cars chugged away from the platform just as I wandered in. I gathered from the board that it was headed for Edinburgh. Just as well. I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave just yet, because if I left Inverness now, it would be for good.
There were seats available here and there in the waiting area but I had no desire to be around people, so I crumpled myself into a ball behind a water fountain in the far corner of the station, and tried to sort out the storm raging in my brain.
So Karla didn’t want me in her life. That was clear and that was that. I had no Plan B. So what was I supposed to do now? I didn’t have enough money to get back to Florida, not that I had any reason to go back there in the first place.
I guess I could find some menial under-the-table job, landscaping maybe, where my immigration status didn’t matter. That would enable me to scratch out an existence somewhere here in the UK, where I could at least speak the language. But to what end? What kind of life would that be?
Back to Rome, perhaps? I had never felt more alive than when I had been in Rome. But that was when I still believed finding Karla would be its own award. I never fathomed it would lead to a flat-out rejection. 
So in short, I was in Limbo. I could do nothing but coast on the fumes of my existence. If fate was merciful, it would snuff me out without my having to lift a finger.
I sank against the tiled wall, begging for the roots to come and claim me. I hoped for a pod in the deepest, darkest lair of the meanest, hungriest Reaper. 
I waited and waited, but not the slightest inkling of Root came to me. Were they toying with me? Would they not be satisfied until I had been driven to the lowest of possible lows. But why? Were they simply evil?
Maybe they would not come because I was still too close to my dreams. Karla and Ardconnel Terrace were only a few blocks away. Did they sense that I harbored some slight and unconscious hope that she would reconsider and come looking for me? Or that she would respond differently the next time I appeared at her door? Was I cursing myself with some subtle and subliminal optimism?
Maybe I had to get as far away from her as possible to really make my depression sink its teeth. Root was my only recourse other than death, and I was beginning to question which might be the better option.
A security guard came by and rousted me from my corner. He was good-natured about it. He just didn’t want me mucking about on the floor. I had to show him my cash to have him let me remain in the station. Otherwise he would have booted me out the door like some bum.
I orbited around the ticket booth for a while, while I clung to the desperate notion of going back for another try at convincing Karla. Either that, or leaping onto the tracks in front of the 4:55 from Aberdeen. Ticket or leap, it would be same end result. Both would take me farther from Karla, so I did nothing for the moment but pace and wander.
Of course, there would be another one of those lone, young men hanging out by the coffee stand. There was one in every station in Europe, after all. He was in his mid 20s, with short hair. He looked bored, but his gaze seemed to wander dutifully to every face that wandered past. But never mind him, I wondered what people wondered about me.
I found a spot on a bench vacated by an older woman who had gotten up to greet someone stepping off the Aberdeen train. The security guard kept looking my way. Had he noticed that I had yet to buy a ticket? I hoped he wasn’t going to hassle me until I had the proof in my hand to show him.
I sighed and thought again of Karla, coming to the realization that there was no way in hell I would be leaving Inverness as long as she remained here. Wherever she was, that was where I wanted to be. 
I drew solace from knowing that at least she was alive and healthy on this side of life. Things could be worse. Though her home life might be terrifying, her will remained strong. At least she managed to get out of the house now and then. She got to feel raindrops, smell lilacs and eat fresh-baked bread.
The more positives I defined for her, the sadder I became, for the paltry life she led compared to what it could be with me. And yet I was powerless to change it. 
That guy at the coffee stand, he was looking at me now and he had taken out his phone. He tried not to stare, but I could tell that I was a person of considerable interest to him. Looking at him out of the corner of my eye, I realized that I had seen him before on the platform at Edinburgh when I had gotten off the train by mistake.
I was struck with the urge to flee, but before I could rise, I sank into that oaken bench and became one with the wood. Its grain became the grain of my flesh as I plummeted into Root. 




Chapter 44: Searching

I emerged into Root not swaddled in a tightly-wrapped pod on the threshold of a Reaper’s lair as I had wished, but laying free and naked in the cleft harboring Bern and Lille’s cabin. I lay there panting, stunned as usual by the transition. I knew that where one ended up in Root had a lot to do with the state of one’s mind, but the logic of these re-entries continued to elude me.
Bits of root twinkled overhead like stars while a subtle glow built on one edge of the cavern. It was a nice touch. I bet that was Lille’s doing.
The lone window of the cabin was dark. I crawled my way to their doorstep, hauled myself up and rapped on their door.
A light flicked on inside and spilled out the window. The door opened. Bern stood there in a pair of satiny pajamas, not at all fazed by the bare-butted kid staring back at him. “Well … well! Look who’s back.”
“Oh dear,” said Lille, sitting up in bed across the room. “This is not good news.”
I barged in, sat down heavily at their little, rickety table, and put my head down atop my folded arms. It looked like they had been hard at work tidying up their little cabin. The walls looked brighter and smoother. Even the little hollow outside the window was deeper and wider and had been trimmed of stray roots.
Bern reached over to a heap of clothes and shook out a pair of grey woolen trousers way too short and too big in the waist. “Here, have some pants.” He handed them over. “So tell us, what’s up, boy? Did you found your way off the mountain? Yes, I suppose you have, or else you wouldn’t be here. So what new tragedy has befallen you?”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t even want to be here. The belly of a Reaper was beginning to sound more appealing than rattling off my travails to these two. I had not a smidgeon of hope left inside me, especially not if those bounty hunters had me pegged at Inverness Station.
“Cat got your tongue?” said Bern.
“Look at that long face,” said Lille, sliding off the bed. “And he’s so pale. James, tell us what’s wrong?”
“I found Karla.”
“Excellent! And…? Is she well?”
“She’s fine.”
“Wonderful!” said Bern.
“James, that’s brilliant news! But then … what are you doing here?”
“She ditched me,” I said. “Told me to go away and never come back. She wants nothing to do with me. Ever. Forever.”
Lille crinkled her eyes and smirked. “You didn’t actually believe her, did you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, just because she said it, doesn’t mean she actually meant it.”
“She sounded pretty serious to me.”
Lille’s eyes flitted around the room. “Well, I wouldn’t dwell. There’s more to play out, I’m sure.”
“Say what?”
“There are things one must do on the other side to persist here in Root. It’s complicated, James. And sometimes requires great skills of persuasion. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, even if the particulars elude you.”
I had no idea what to make of what she had said. I refused to find any hope in it. Hope would only got me into trouble.
“I’m ready for death,” I said, quietly. “Ready to blink out … like a candle.”
“Pfft! Aren’t we all?” said Bern. “That’s not exactly a new sentiment around these parts.”
“It’s just an expression, I’m sure,” said Lille. “Let the boy express his emotions. It’s healthy for him.”
I slapped my fist down on the table, rattling the teacups. “No. You don’t understand. It’s really going to happen this time. But it’s okay. I’ve got bounty hunters closing in on me. There’s nothing to be done. They followed me to Pittsburgh, and then to DC. They had people in Rome, London and Scotland after me.”
“Bounty hunters?” said Lille.
“If it’s not hypothermia it’s assassins with this one,” said Bern. “Who needs suicide?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Did you run afoul of the law, son?”
“Bern, don’t pry. What happens on the other side, stays on the other side.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “They’re drug traffickers. I ran off with their shipment … and uh … tried to sell it.”
“Oh my,” said Lille.
“And now they want to … I don’t know … teach me a lesson? Make me an example? Kill me? Something like that.”
“Oh my, oh my.”
“And now there’s a guy … I think he’s one of them … in the train station with me in Inverness. He’s making a call to someone, but he’s watching me closely. I’m just sitting on a bench. It’s only a matter of time before he confirms who  Iam and comes after me.”
“Are you sure about this?” said Lille. “You’re not just being paranoid?”
“Next time you fade, boy … you run! Leave the station. Hop a train. Go somewhere, anywhere, just make yourself scarce. Dying at the hands of these thugs is no way to pass out of the world, I assure you.”
“I don’t really care anymore.”
Lille stared at me a little too intensely for comfort.
“I don’t think that’s entirely true,” she said. “I detect a mite of hope left in you. The fact that you’re lucid … that you’re even bothering to speak to us … that tells me you haven’t given up entirely. Believe me, we’ve seen plenty of hopeless cases in these tunnels. We know what hopeless looks like … and you’re not it.”
“Not to mention … he lands at our doorstep. It’s quite flattering actually. I didn’t know you thought that way about us.” Bern’s eyes grew red and moist.
I shrugged. “Believe what you want, but I feel nothing. Zippo. Nada.”
“Because Karla dumped you … supposedly,” said Lille.
“Well … yeah.”
“Hmm. I didn’t realize you two were an item,” said Bern.
“Bern, really? Are you that dense?”
Bern squinted at me and looked back at Lille. He picked his hat off a peg on the wall and rolled his fingers around the brim.
“What do you think Lille? Do you detect some scheming here from Miss Karla? She’s always been quite the accomplished surfer, that one. Emotional multitasking and such.”
“If she believes he’s acceded to her request, why not?”
“What the heck are you guys talking about?”
“Miss Karla. She’s a schemer,” said Bern. “Methinks we haven’t heard the last from her.”
I shook my head. “She sounded pretty serious to me. She blamed me for not being able to help her sister.”
“Oh?”
“Said I was the one keeping her out of Root. Her sister … Isobel … she’s almost twelve and uh … having a hard time of it … well, I don’t know all the details. I’m not sure I want to know, but Karla’s freaking out that she’s gonna end up here and she won’t be able to help her.”
“Twelve, is she?” said Bern. “Coming of age. Those first few times in Root are always the most vulnerable and dangerous. As you can attest.”
“So you see. It’s not about you,” said Lille. “Once she eases her sister’s transition. There’ll be room for you in her life again.”
“But she says I kept her out of Root by saying I’d go find her on the other side.”
“Yes, but I’m sure it’s nothing personal,” said Lille. “That girl’s not one to hold a grudge.”
“Ah … I think I see now,” said Bern. “You disturbed her equilibrium. Gave her a bit of the old hope thing that she wasn’t ready for.”
Lille rolled her eyes. “You’ll have to pardon my partner. He’s a bit slow on the uptake.” Lille stood up and slipped her feet into a pair of wooly slippers. “So, I have an idea, until Karla finds her way here, why don’t we go out and do the job for her? Do you happen to know what this Isobel looks like?”
“We’ve … never met.”
“Can’t be that difficult,” said Bern. “We just go pod to pod freeing girls who look like younger versions of Karla.”
“Not quite that simple, but … I’m game,” said Lille, stretching. “I could use some fresh air … if that’s what you call the miasma in those tunnels.” 
“At least there’s a breeze,” said Bern. “It’s not all stagnant like here.”
“I suppose a foul breeze is better than none at all,” said Lille, fetching a dress and a fresh slip from a rack behind the bed. “James, dear. Would you mind stepping out while I change? Not that I’m prudish, I just don’t want to frighten you.”
***
After patrolling the few tunnels I already knew quite well and finding them devoid of souls, we moved out into fresh territory, working our way outward and upward. The passages were the quietest I had ever known them. Barely a rumble disturbed the silence. It felt like the calm before a storm.
Bern and Lille might have only been after Isobel, but I couldn’t help worry about Karla too. Despite all her supposed toughness and scheming and skillful surfing, I could how she might still get overwhelmed by stuff beyond her control. 
Even the best of surfers got wiped out now and then by a rogue wave. I mean, it had happened to me when I had backslid, not that I’m saying I’m much of a surfer. But why couldn’t it happen to her? I couldn’t imagine the storm going on in her brain with all those competing tensions. I understood Isobel taking priority. Was it vain, though, thinking Karla might care for me as much as I cared about her?
The image of Karla trapped and helpless in a pod disturbed me immensely, even though I had sought that fate for myself. It got me churning down those tunnels. Bern and Lille could barely keep up.
“Remember,” said Lille, calling out to me. “In case we get separated. Never go left going down.”
“I thought you said never go right.”
“That’s going up. Down is different.”
“So what if I did go left? What would I find?”
“Forget about it. You don’t want to know. It’s too horrible.”
We finally came across our first pod—a singlet in a line of freshly chewed off stalks. I couldn’t tell if it was newly appeared or simply passed over by a Reaper who had had its fill and was saving it for later. 
I stood beneath it and tried to make out the shape of its occupant through the mesh, but the gaps were too tight.
“Isobel? Karla?”
There was no response.
As Bern and Lille hurried to catch up with me, I extended my arm and pictured a can of night crawlers being dumped on the ground. That image did the trick and then some. The pod exploded, and its individual strands wriggled off in all directions. The occupant, a bearded young man, landed hard on the tunnel floor.
“Oh my,” said Lille.
“That’s the ticket, boy. Think like a root.”
The young man lay there, trembling, his eyes fearful.
“Are you alright?”
He said nothing. He picked himself up, turned away from us and strode off down the tunnel towards the far off grumbling of the Reapers.
“No! You don’t want to go that way.”
He threw a quick glance back at me and picked up his pace, disappeared around a bend in the tunnel.
“Then again, maybe he does,” said Bern.
“Let him go,” said Lille. “Some souls … are simply beyond charity. It’s a sad truth.”
We doubled back to a connector that attached to a parallel tunnel system. The next passage was empty, devoid even of nubs, but a foul smell and a trail of loose, whitish ooze like snake feces was smeared along the walls. A Reaper had come through recently.
I pried my fingers into a seam in the wall and pushed through the matrix, hoping to locate a more fruitful tunnel. The matrix was thicker and broader than any I had crossed before.
Bern pinched his fingers around a root and made it glow a bright salmon pink. “Be sure and mark your trail son. Every tunnel you cross. Make sure you can find your way back to us.”
As I pushed through the next wall, I could see that I had hit the jackpot.
We had reached the Times Square of tunnels: broad and garishly lit, with lights like stock tickers shuttling down its length. Pods packed the ceiling, making it difficult to walk through without bumping one’s head. 
Even Bern and Lille were impressed once they caught up with me. 
“Oh my Lord,” said Lille.
“Son … we can’t possibly open every pod. It’s a needle in a haystack proposition. Not to mention, it will drive the Reapers into a frenzy to have so many souls wandering free.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “These people deserve a chance … to reconsider their choices, at least. 
Bern leaned heavily on his cane, his face pained. “I’m afraid I can’t go much further in my condition. The aches in my legs … they’re simply too much to bear.”
Lille looked at him, worry creasing her brow. “I’m sorry, James. But I’d better get him back to the cabin. We’ve got more mending to do.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I can handle this on my own.”
“Well, don’t stray too far afield,” she said. 
“And remember to mark your trails,” said Bern as Lille helped him back into the seam. “We’re expecting you for dinner, if not tea time.”
I touched a strand and made it glow the angry orange-red of an iron rod in a smithy’s forge, ready to be hammered into a sword.
“I’m not stopping till I find them,” I whispered to myself.
***
I must have opened a dozen pods of uniformly ungrateful souls before I realized it was not worth the trouble. I found that most souls who make it to Root are strongly committed to their fate. Those who wavered, who could swayed to explore other possibilities—Weavers—were an even rarer breed than I had thought.
So many of them looked drugged—all blank-faced and devoid of will. Some simply curled up in fetal balls beneath their busted open pods and refused to move. One man, all calm, sat in a lotus position, turned his palms up and hummed a kōan.
“A monk asked Ummon: `What is Buddha?' Ummon answered him: `Dried dung.’”
“What the fuck?”
He smiled and winked at me.
“Do you realize what’s going to happen to you if you just sit there?”
“It’s all good,” said the guy. “Lightning flashes. Sparks shower. In one blink of your eyes, you have missed seeing.”
“Good luck fool,” I said, moving on.
I altered my tactic after that, just opening windows into pods, just wide enough to see who was inside. I released only those who showed any semblance of spunk or initiative, any distress or curiosity about what lay beyond their pods. Souls like these turned out to be very scarce, indeed. Who knew? Maybe some of them would go on to be Weavers.
Most of the windows I opened revealed only husks of humanity, long stripped of any life force they might have once had. Even for these lost causes I left behind an opportunity for redemption—a patch of loosened strands that they could readily escape through if the notion inspired them. Not that any did, while I was there. But even the most hopeless deserved a second chance.
I stubbed my toe on something hard, reached down and picked up a hammer. There was so much junk in these tunnels, not trash per se, but useful things, things people might actually miss Things like mismatched socks, sunglasses, car keys, passports, you name it. I got a cell phone to power up, but wouldn’t you know it—no bars. It would have really been something if I picked up a signal, except who would I call?
I wondered if there was any way any of this stuff could be brought back to the other side. I kept my eyes peeled for a side arm. That would sure come back in Inverness Station when I faded, not to mention here, against the Reapers. But who would ever lose track of a handgun? That’s the kind of thing that you remember where you put it.
When I tired of all the ingrates in the pods, I went behind the walls and opened up a little niche in the roots, kind of like the beds that deer tamp down for themselves in the tall weeds. I laid back and wondered how long I had left in this existence and what, if anything, would come next.
After marking my little encampment with some red strands, I pushed through the roots over to the next tunnel system. I broke out into soft purple glow in a dusty and bristly tunnel. The pod stalks here were all shriveled and desiccated. It looked like no Reapers had been through this one in years.
The purple led me, though, to a crossing that was another story altogether. The walls were slick with slime. It was a Reaper superhighway that led to a complex branching that was like the central nexus of an umbrella. 
On a whim, I walked away from the branching, even though it rose to the right. Lille and Bern had told me never to do such a thing, but the tunnels were quiet, and I felt like I had to do my due diligence.
The tunnel was wide and dull here, and thick with the smell of Reapers. I tore off a root and turned it into a glow stick to light my way. There were no pods anywhere, not even traces, but I continued on, drawn by the queer buzzing I could hear emanating down the other end. 
The buzzing resolved into a cacophony of snuffling and rasping as I got closer to an opening into what seemed to be a cavern of mammoth proportions. I landed my footfalls as softly as I could. As I came to the opening, sound grew louder and the vastness of the space consumed what little light my glow stick could produce.
So I made it glow brighter, only to gasp at what I had gotten myself into. The floor of the chamber was undulant with mounds, each wave a slumbering Reaper, which apparently formed themselves into perfect globules of blubber in their relaxed state. They were like lumps of yeasty dough, deformed only by gravity, devoid of all appendages and armor. An orifice, like a blow hole of a whale, opened at the top of every mound, and they sneezed out puffs of spray with every snorting breath. 
Man, if I had a blade or a grenade about now, what carnage I could reap. But to what end? They were part of the circle of life, no? My charity towards them might be limited though, if I knew for sure my friends were on their lunch menu.
I just stood there with my glow stick all helpless and mesmerized, watching their bodies heave in delayed synchrony, originating at the center and spreading to the fringes where the smaller of the Reapers had been delegated. Some of the largest even had babies snuggled up to them. I shuddered to think of how they were fed. 
There was a ring of openings all around the periphery, and when I looked up, I could not find a ceiling. The blackness just seemed to go up and up forever. 
The smell was starting to get to me. I started to back away when I spotted something move in one of the other tunnel openings across the way. It hung back cautiously in the shadows before stepping out onto the rim.
I amped up my glow stick. Another soul stood there, staring back at me, lithe and lean, clothed in leggings and a loose shift. Shocks of jet, black hair frizzed out in all directions, with one flap combed low over her left eye.
Karla.




Chapter 45: Awakening

Karla stood at the brink of the pit, her eyes wide with alarm. She tried to signal me with this quick, waving motion, but I was caught up in the thrill of seeing her and couldn’t understand what she was trying to convey. She pointed at me, mouthed a no, and slashed her finger across her throat.
I raised my palms. “What are you saying?” I said, in a half shout, half whisper.
She waved me off and shook her head, before ducking into a tunnel, out of sight.
“No! Karla! Don’t leave!” My heart did a loop de loop.
I retreated from the brink of the pit and hurled myself into the tunnel wall, ripping into the matrix, practically swimming through the roots. They fought with me, almost as if they sensed my desperation and it inspired them to thwart me. They hooked around my neck and coiled around my arm. 
My frustration exploded. I obliterated all that touched me with a shrug that made them droop and melt like candle wax. 
I pressed forward, bursting out into the next tunnel, crossing it in a single bound and knifing into the opposite wall. 
The matrix of roots, was denser here, and again I found my path resisted. Across this jungle, through the gaps I could see whole sheaths and towers of root cleaving and falling. I caught a glimpse of Karla, struggling to get through. When she spotted me, I feared she would reverse her course and slip away. 
She diverted her path. But she didn’t flee. She came straight to me.
I just stood there, agape, as she slammed into me, her body melting into mine. She dug her chin into my chest, and draped her arms around my back. I held her close to me, kneading my fingers in her hair. 
The moment felt so surreal. It seemed impossible. I shuddered and started to quake. What was happening? My tears broke out in big, heaving sobs. 
Karla stayed calm, sinking deeper into me, the two of us congealing into one.
“Karla … I don’t understand … in Inverness, you said—”
“It was the only way,” she said. “The only way for us to be together.”
“You … planned this? You knew you would find me here?”
She looked down. “I did not know for sure, but I had a hope ... and I dashed its brains out. It was the only way … that we could be … together.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that was what you were doing?”
She scrunched her nose. “Then it wouldn’t have worked. Only accepting the worst, possible case makes it work. I told you. That is what we call the surfing. Riding the storm. You need a strong mind to stay free in Root. To escape the bad things … not just here, but on the other side.”
She tilted her head and looked up at me. “You still don’t get it, do you?” She sighed deeply and patted my shoulder. “But maybe you are learning, because I see at least you are not in a pod.”
Something very large coughed and rustled in the pit. It sounded very close, despite the tunnel walls and layers of root that separated us. 
“Did you hear that? That one is restless. What were you thinking, shouting to me? And that light you carried. It was far too bright. You were standing by a nest of Reapers. What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. I saw you and … I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to lose you … again.”
“Lose me? What you think, I would run away?”
“Well … yeah. I—”
“Stupid boy. You don’t know anything. And you learn so slow.” 
She pulled free of my embrace, her eyes grim and determined. She had yet to shed a single tear, and yet I was a total gloppy mess. “Come. We need to find Isobel. She is here. I am sure of it.”
***
We waited for the Reapers to settle back into their snuffling slumber. Karla grabbed my hand and yanked me back towards the ragged hole she had ripped in the tunnel wall. Free roots waved across the tear like the antennae of wary cockroaches, knitting together when they touched. She ripped through them again with a slash of her hand and we passed into the lumen.
“How do you know she’s here … Isobel?” 
Karla studied the pattern of nubs on the roof of the tunnel. 
“You think by now I don’t know the look of someone who is destined for Root? Believe me, I know this when I see it. The total surrender. The dark happiness of giving up. You should know, too, the wall that goes up between the mind and the senses.”
She turned and laid her hands on the opposite wall, working her fingers between the tightly packed roots.
“And besides … I find the pills she has collected … under her mattress. And I saw that she takes some. Not enough, I don’t think, thank God she doesn’t know yet how much it takes to die.”
I tried to imagine what it was like for Karla to have a sister going through this crap. I never had a sibling, so I didn’t know what that whole deal was like, but I would never wish Root on anyone. It was a refuge only for the most desperate of souls. At least Isobel had someone looking out for her here. Unless, it was already too late.
We crossed the interspaces to the next tunnel, whose surfaces were slick and bare and just as devoid of pods as the others this close to the Reapers’ lair.
“Maybe we’re better off up-tunnel?” I said.
“We check here, first,” said Karla. “We must, just in case. Pods will be made even this close to the Reaper’s nest, but they do not last very long. We would have less time to save Isobel if she came to this place.”
We wrestled our way through to yet another tunnel. The roots in this particularly matrix were extra ornery. Weird, how each patch seemed to have its own disposition and personality. Maybe the proximity of the Reapers was making this batch cocky. I missed dealing with the more passive, compliant roots we knew from the ‘Burg.
Again, the tunnel was stripped of pods.
“Karla. I think they’re all gonna be this way down here.”
“We do not know this for sure.”
“It’s pretty clear to me. Every single one so far—“
“We will check them all!” she snapped. “This is my sister we are talking about.”
I hushed up, and went through the motions with her as we worked our way farther and farther around the ring of tunnels. Karla would not be satisfied until we had made the complete circuit.
She took my hand and squeezed it when I wasn’t expecting. That little act sent chills down my back. She looked at me funny.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just … thank you,” she said. “I am so glad that you are here ... with me. That I do not have to do this alone.”
Ripples roiled my stomach. “Um … there’s something I should have told you. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but … I got issues on the other side.”
She looked at me perplexed. “Issues? What you mean, issues?”
“Remember those drug dealers I got messed up with? I think they tracked me down at Inverness Station and I ... uh … I think there’s a bounty on my head.”
“Bounty?”
“Yeah. You know, money for bringing me in? So I’m just saying … don’t be surprised if I blink out.”
“Blink out? You mean … die?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying.”
“You go to a train station to come to Root? Are you crazy? It should be for private.”
“I didn’t know I was gonna come here. I was just trying to get out of Inverness. And I saw him, but I wasn’t sure that’s who he was. I’m still not sure. Just … don’t be surprised if something happens to me.”
“What do you think they will do to you?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “But I guarantee they’re not happy.”
“Why didn’t you run?”
“I was going under just as I realized what was going on. I couldn’t get away.”
She sighed and glanced away, her brow all crinkly. She wouldn’t let go of my hand.
“I’m sorry, Karla.”
She shrugged. “We will work something out.”
“Like … what?”
“Something! I don’t know. I can’t think about it right now.”
We stood there, starting across the pit, listening to the wheezing of the Reapers. Karla’s fingernails dug into my palm, but I didn’t mind the pain.
“This nest … are these the only Reapers we have to worry about?”
“For this set of tunnels … I believe so,” said Karla. “I hear no others. Do you?”
“Um. I guess not. But aren’t there other nests?”
“Yes, but Isobel would be in these tunnels with me. These tunnels are ours. She is my blood. Half-sister, so half-blood, but still she would be here. It is my father’s side that brings the wounded minds. So she will be here.”
A raspy sound started up in the Reapers’ nest, like suction cups giving away, blubber sticking and unsticking. Karla pulled her hand free. 
“Extinguish your light!”
I made my root torch go dim. She tiptoed to the end of the tunnel and craned her neck over the rim of the pit. I came up behind her and put my hand on her shoulder to brace her.
“Hey … uh … not so close,” I whispered.
A faint, green glow emanated from the pit. I was startled to realize that it was the Reapers’ bodies that were glowing. 
A slender pillar of flesh rose slowly from one of the larger blobs in the center of the pit. Its tip bent towards us like a snorkel and inhaled with a long snort. There was a pause, and then its body began to extend. Knobs and bumps formed along its length. 
Karla leapt back, nearly bowling me over. “It smells us!” she hissed. “Run!”




Chapter 46: One Ring

We ran back up-tunnel to the first branching. The Reapers were awakening, first the one then two more and then a bunch in a chain reaction. They roared, bellowed and shrieked like a herd of elephants being murdered by poachers. They did not appreciate being woken up early.
The tunnel walls shuddered as the first of them hauled itself out of the pit. 
“We’d better keep running,” I said.
Karla stood with her hand cupping her ear and listened. “It is not coming. Not yet.” She glanced up at a row of occupied pods.
“These pods,” said Karla. “They have holes.”
“Yeah that was me,” I said. “I was looking for you and Isobel before.”
“Really?” she said. “You were looking for Isobel … and me?”
“Yeah. I checked all these out. She’s not here.”
She kept her eyes glued to the pods as we moved beneath them.
“You realize that Isobel does not look much like me?”
“Oh?”
“She has … a different mother. She is blonde.”
“Good to know,” I said. “But she’s definitely not here. It was older people mostly, not much interested in getting away from Reapers.”
Another thud shook the tunnels, indicating that another Reaper had emerged from the pit. A long moan echoed down the tunnel.
“Have you been back to the ‘Burg?” she asked. 
“Nah,” I said. “Not since I broke out Lille and Bern.”
“What do you mean ‘break them out?’”
“That’s right, you weren’t here. Luther closed off the ‘Burg. Wouldn’t let anyone out. He was punishing them because he caught us trespassing. By the way, why didn’t you tell me he was your grandfather?”
Karla looked down at the tunnel floor. “It was nothing to be proud of. Arthur is a nasty man.” She glanced up at me. “Where are they now? Bern and Lille?”
“They have this little cabin in a cave. Bern wasn’t doing so hot. Harvald kind of busted him up.”
“Take me there. They can help us. The more souls we have looking, the better.”
***
The glow marks that Bern had me blaze my trail with made it pretty easy to find our way back to the cabin. I blinked each one out as we passed to keep anything unfriendly from tracking us.
Bern and Lille had their ceiling aglow in simulation of the midday sun when we entered their cavern. Bern was laid on a blanket outside the cabin while Lille worked on his leg with what looked like a pair of crochet hooks. His skin was flayed open and his calf muscle peeled back, exposing the bone. 
I cringed at the sight, but Bern acted like someone like he was just getting a massage. There was little blood, and he gave no indication that he was in pain. 
“Oh my goodness!” said Lille. “You found her!” She dropped her tools and rose, slapping her palm over her heart as we approached.
“Um … we kind of found each other,” I said, hanging back, leery of Bern’s exposure.
“Lille … for Heaven’s sake … close me up first. Don’t leave my flesh hanging out in front of our friends.”
Lille knelt back down and flopped Bern’s calf muscle back in place. She sealed up his wound with a pinching motion. Her fingers were smeared with blood, but not nearly as much as one would expect.
I looked on, both amazed and repulsed.
“Can you believe it?” said Lille. “The poor man was hobbling around on a fracture all that time?”
“You do … surgery?”
“I don’t pretend to be a doctor,” she said. “But here, it’s more like knitting, actually. One just needs to take care not to breach any major vessels. Some capillaries will tear, there’s not much to be done about that. But one nice thing we discovered, is that there are no bacteria here to worry about. Nothing harmful, anyway. So there’s no risk of infection.”
Bern rose to his feet and winced. “Still aches like a bugger. Stable, though. Doesn’t feel like it’s about to snap with every step.”
“The darn nerve endings can be hard to calm down,” said Lille. “Oh well, what are you going to do? He-heh! They have a mind of their own.”
She rushed over to Karla and hugged her tight. Bern strode over and joined the scrum.
“Any word on your sister?”
“Not yet,” said Karla. “I suppose it is possible she has not yet entered Root. But I cannot know this for sure. I worry … I have a feeling … that she is already here. Somewhere.”
There came a distant roar, followed by rumbles much like thunder, but spaced more regularly, like a drum corps for a slow funeral dirge, as the Reapers dispersed from their lair en masse. The sound of them reverberated through the walls of the cavern. 
“Sort of early for Reapers, don’t you think?” said Bern.
“I can’t stay!” said Karla. “They are coming!” She sprinted down the length of the cavern, disappearing into the darkest recesses. I took off after her.
“Hang on,” said Lille, grabbing her shoulder bag. “We’re coming with you.”
***
We stayed together, keeping one step ahead of the Reapers, working down one tunnel, through the matrix and up the next. The tunnel system was so massive, I knew there was no way we could reach every pod before the Reapers did, no matter how quickly we worked. Karla probably realized this, but she didn’t let the futility of the task dissuade her.
We had no choice but to cede one tunnel to a disgusting, belching monster, hanging back in the interspaces and let it do its thing while we hunkered down and kept silent. 
The walls shuddered. Roots twisted and swayed like a forest in a hurricane as the thing slurped and crunched its way along the passage like some grisly street sweeper. 
It was a terrible thing, listening to the shrieks and whimpers from those in the pods, but we were helpless to intervene. 
When the beast had moved on, we poked our heads into the reeking tunnel. It had harvested every pod that had hung there.
Karla’s face blanched. Nobody said a word. We resumed the hunt for Isobel, fully realizing that it might already be too late to save her.
It took a while to find a tunnel that actually had pods, but when we did we didn’t dilly-dally. We got together and combined our weaving skills to bust them open without permission or warning from the occupants, rudely dumping them onto the tunnel floor whether they wanted to be free or not.
Most souls were apathetic or resentful, but one guy was just ecstatic to see us. That made it all worthwhile. 
He was in his thirties and balding, but he had these big, spooky, child-like eyes. He had been struggling to get out of his pod even before we showed up, his knuckles raw from tussling with the roots.
“And thus, another Weaver is born,” whispered Bern, who still limped badly and leaned heavily on his cane, though he complained not one bit.
“What’s your name?” asked Lille.
“Jeffrey.”
“Keep close, Jeff. You’re a very lucky man to have found us, though you may not realize it just yet.”
“Oh, I realize it,” he said. “I’ve dreams about this place … nightmares, actually. I know what lurks in these tunnels.”
“Oh?” said Lille. “Did we happen to appear in any of those dreams?”
“Actually … him.” Jeff pointed at me. “He was in one of my dreams.”
“Me?” 
I didn’t ask to hear the details. This place was weird and complicated enough as it was.
We crossed through the wall to seek another tunnel and found another cavern on the way. This one did not seem to have a maker. It was natural, so to speak, if anything could be considered natural in a place like Root.
A soft blue glow illuminated a pool of water at its center, its bottom bedded in a pale grit that looked like beach sand. I scooped up a handful and rubbed it between my fingers. There was no way the stuff could be made of roots. I could see the individual grains. Bits of mica made it sparkle.
“It’s … real,” I said. “Real sand.”
“Yes,” said Bern. “We run into places like this now and then. Nice to know that roots aren’t necessarily the be all and end all of everything here, eh? That there’s room for actual sand and water in this world.”
“I’ve seen stone before,” said Lille. “Actual bedrock. No idea how it got here, or how far it pervades.”
Water dripped from a sheath of dangling roots.
“Drink up. It’s sweet,” said Lille, catching the drips in her cupped palm.
Something shiny glittered in the depths of the pool. I plunged my hand into the cool water and retrieved it. It turned out to be a gold wedding band, engraved with a flowery script that I couldn’t decipher.
“What’s this?” said Bern. “One ring to rule them all?”
“My precious!” said Lille, contorting her face and voice, her fingers contorted into a claw.
I handed the ring to Karla. “It’s not an earring … but whatever.”
“Thanks,” she said, her expression flat and grim. She slid it onto her finger without as much as a smile. We could hear a Reaper lumber into the tunnel we had just left, feasting on the souls we had left strewn below their shredded pods. Jeff went pale. “Please, we need to keep looking,” said Karla.
We crossed to the other side of the pool, snipping off the sheets of root that blocked our way. Karla reached the tunnel wall first and pressed her ear against it. Satisfied, she sliced through and poked her head out into the lumen.
“There are pods here!” she said, excited, before sliding through.
This next tunnel was brighter than most, blotched with mostly static patterns of light, that shifted color when you touched them, much like a mood ring.
Karla wasted no time, ripping through the first pod before anyone could come alongside to help her. A soul crashed down, bringing half of the pod with him.
“There’s magic here…” said Jeffrey. “… in this world.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it magic,” said Bern.
“Oh, let him believe,” said Lille, patting his arm. “What’s the harm?”
An older man looked up at them from a tangle of shredded roots, closed his eyes and laid back down, completely uninterested in being rescued.
Karla was already disemboweling the next pod, and I helped her this time, unraveling the bottom, so that the woman inside slid out feet first and landed gracefully on her feet.
“Way to stick that landing,” said Bern. “Bravo!”
The freed woman stood before us, her eyes focused and calm. She was sturdily built, freckled on her chest and upper arms with large droopy breasts sporting wide, dark areolas. She was not shy at all about her nakedness. 
“So this is hell?” she said. “Not exactly what I expected.”
“You’re not dead yet,” muttered Lille.
A blast of fetid air came rushing through the tunnel.
“What was that?” said Bern, looking into the darkness. The air went still and then another blast came blowing out.
“This is not Hell,” said Karla. “Not even close. Do you hear those grumbles? Those are Reapers. Inside of them, that is the real Hell.”
“Bring it on,” said the woman, folding her arms. She sighed and leaned against the tunnel wall, as if she were waiting at a bus stop.
“I would think twice, if I were you,” said Lille. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“I’ve done enough thinking for a lifetime,” said the woman. “If you want to help someone, help the girl in that nest thing behind mine. The poor thing can’t seem to stop whinging.”
Karla’s eyes popped wide and she made her way down to the third pod. Its occupant dangled calm and motionless. Another blast of foul wind came rolling up the passage, its stink more intense, and this time it was accompanied by the sound of claws ripping into roots.
“Karla … uh … I think we’d better be going,” I said.
“Wait!” said Karla, swirling her finger and loosening a hole in the tightly knitted pod. 
A slender wrist flopped out and dangled free. Delicate, but calloused fingers, curled and uncurled reflexively.
Karla reached up and touched the small hand. 
“It is her! This is Isobel!”




Chapter 47: Her Special Place

A curious mixture of relief and panic replaced the bleak resolve that had gripped Karla from the moment I glimpsed her at the Reapers’ den. I caught her eye and she graced me with a fleeting smile. But there was work to be done.
She peeled away at the unusually tight knots enclosing her sister while I focused my will on the stalk, unwinding it partially and then snapping it off completely. The entire pod fell to the floor of the tunnel, bounced and split open, unfolding like a flower.
There, in the center of the bloom, looking back at us with a sullen, sleepy expression, was a girl with honey, blonde hair, waves of it sweeping out, framing her face like a corona. She was curled up in a fetal position, reluctant to move.
And then suddenly, she sprang up, her stunned surprise snapping into pure rage. She 
“How did you find me? This was my own special place! My private hideaway.”
“It is not special and it is not only yours,” said Karla, seizing her sister’s hand, and tugging her upwards, like she was trying to get her sibling out of bed and ready for school on a Monday. 
“It was mine. Nobody bothered me here. Until now.” Her fierce eyes panned the faces surrounding her. “Who are all these strange people?”
“They are my friends. Now come. We need to go.” 
“Go away! You’ve spoiled everything, La.”
“Oh, get over yourself. You need to come with us.”
There was a flopping sound, down-tunnel and another blast of wind. 
“What was that?” said Isobel.
“It is why you need to come.” She dragged her sister out of the pod and hauled her to her feet. “We cannot play around.”
“Gah! I have no clothes!”
Lille offered Isobel her shawl, which she promptly wrapped around her waist. Isobel saw her sister’s hand come to rest on my shoulder. Her eyes flicked wide. She looked at me and glared.
“Who is this boy?”
“He is my friend, James,” said Karla, “Now come.” 
“You have a boyfriend? Does Papa know? Where did you get … did he give you that ring?”
Karla ignored her, her gaze gone soft. “Shish! Listen!”
The tunnel went almost completely dark, apart from a faint emerald glow brushing parts of the walls, like the afterglow from a luminescent toy. The wind reversed direction as if something was sucking all the air back the other way.
“There’s something here,” whispered Bern. “And it’s damn big.”
“It’s about time,” said the freckled woman, with a wry smile. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”




Chapter 48: The Mother

The creature lurked in the shadows. Flashes of light revealed only a vague silhouette of its bulk.
With a twist and a pull, moving his hands like a magician performing a parlor trick with handkerchiefs and coins, Bern turned his cane into a wicked-looking lance with an elaborate, hooked and spiked blade.
“Are you daft, Bern?” said Lille. “We’re not fighting this beast. We have two … no, three … rank novices with us and no Astrid.”
“Just in case, dear. Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”
“Fight what?” said Isobel. “What is it?” said Isobel. “What’s down there?”
“Your worst nightmare,” said Karla.
“Sounds like … an elephant,” said Jeff.
“Smells like a dead cat,” said Isobel, wrinkling her nose.
The bulk shifted and caught a bit of the glow from the tunnel walls. Its knobby hide glistened, and riddled with scars and sores.
“What’s it doing, hanging back like that?” said Bern. “That’s not typical Reaper behavior.”
“It’s probably confused,” said Lille. “How often does one of these encounter a group of free souls? They’re used to having us packaged up neatly in pods.”
“Are you saying it’s afraid of us?” I said.
“What a poor baby,” said Karla. “Come. Let us pass through the wall before it finds its courage.”
She flattened her hand into a blade and knifed it between the strands forming the tunnel wall. The roots resisted fiercely, shoving her hand back out. 
“Here, let me try.” I grabbed a fistful of roots and squeezed, picturing crackers crumbling. But instead, they stiffened up and refused to yield. Wiry bits poked out and punctured my palm.
“Ow! What the fuck?”
“It’s the Reaper,” said Bern. “I’ve seen this happen. The tunnels and beasts, they work together sometime. It’s some kind of symbiosis … or maybe  even different parts of the same organism.”
“Or maybe the roots want the damned things fed and back to their den,” said Lille. “Minimize the battering.”
A pale, frost-like patina spread out from the patch as the hardening and condensing propagated down the length of the tunnel.
“Oh Lord! But I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Bern. “We’re trapped in this tunnel.”
“This is not just any Reaper,” said Lille. “This is a Mother.”
“I bet its range is limited,” said Karla. “Lille, take Jeff and Isobel up the tunnel. Keep going until you find a place to break through the wall. James and I will hold the beast back.”
“Say what?” I said, startled. I was ready to run.
“It is the only way,” said Karla. “If we all leave together, it will follow, and seal the tunnel wherever we go.”
“Oh for Heaven’s Sake,” said the freckled lady, stepping forward. “Do you all need a human sacrifice? Because I volunteer.”
“Kind of you, ma’am,” said Bern. “But to it you’re just a snack. I doubt you would even slow the creature down.”
Karla tore a root from Isobel’s pod and fashioned it into a long bow. She broke off strands and formed arrows, feathering the tail and pinching the other into sharp, barbed points.
“I’m not leaving, La,” said Isobel. “I will fight with you.”
“M-me too,” said Jeff. “This … was in my dream.”
“Isobel, you will do what I say and go with Lille. You are too new here to make a difference.”
I had been standing around, befuddled, still hoping we’d all reach a consensus to flee. When Karla glared at me, I reached down and peeled off a chunk of the brittle stalk that had attached Isobel’s pod.
I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the most potent hand-held weapon I could imagine. I waffled between a .50 caliber machine gun, an RPG launcher and a bazooka. 
Having never handled such devices, I was forced to use movies to try to visualize what one would look like, but it was difficult to wrap my mind around all those moving parts and mechanisms. I conjured scenes from ‘Black Hawk Down,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ “Kill Bill.’ Kill Bill?
The roots in my hand churned and twisted. Knobby bumps formed only to melt away. Instead a gun or rocket launcher, the most beautiful steel samurai sword formed under my hands. Bern gasped. 
“Marvelous, James! It looks sharper than the dickens.”
“I was hoping for a bazooka.”
Jeff saw what I had done and tried his own hand at creating. He came away with a limp root, that recalled some of my first attempts at weaving.
“All of you, quit standing around!” said Karla. “Take Isobel and go! We will discourage it from following too close. We will buy you some time.”
“But La!” said Isobel.
“Don’t worry, Izzie, we will catch up with you. I promise.”
Lille took Isobel’s hand. “That means you, too, old man,” said Lille to Bern.
“What do you mean? I’ve got my weapon at the ready.”
“Let the young ones deal with this. They’re spry enough and have enough sense to get out of the damned thing’s way when it makes its move. At least I hope ….”
Bern sighed, his face reddening. “Fine.” He lurched off after Lille and Jeff. “You two, don’t dally too long.”
“Isobel, you do what my friends say,” said Karla. “They are good people, they will keep you safe.”
The bloated creature lumbered forward into the light, looking like an enormous, deformed walrus, blind and obese. It dug its claws into the roots, its stubby legs struggling with the slope. It was heavily scarred, covered with warts and sore-like gaps in its hide. 
The freckled lady staggered back from the wall. “Ew Lordy! This isn’t exactly what I bargained for.”
“It looks hurt,” I said.
“Reapers can shift their shapes but they don’t seem to heal very well,” said Karla. “They carry their wounds like badges. But it does not seem to slow them.”
“I’m joining your friends,” said the freckled lady. “Do you think they would mind?”
“Just go!” said Karla, without even looking at her. She was lengthening the arrows she had already made, broadening and sharpening their tips.
The woman trotted off, feet flopping side to side in a most awkward stride.
A spasm shook the tunnel wall. A wave of constriction came rippling forth from the Reaper, like a wave of fractured stone, knocking me off my feet. The freckled lady stumbled but kept on running. 
The constriction slowed, halting before it reached the others. Bern reached the blunt end of his lance through the gap that remained. The freckled lady grasped it. He hauled her through. The tunnel crunched and crumbled as the walls continued to pinch shut. Isobel screamed. Bern’s stunned face was the last thing I saw before the tunnel collapsed completely. A wall of rubble now trapped us before the Reaper.
The tunnel walls around us creaked and crackled as the strands continued to harden, taking on the consistency of rebar and concrete. We backed away until we reached the dead end.
“The rubble, is it loose?” said Karla, keeping her eyes on the beast. “Can we dig our way through?”
I kicked at a pile. It didn’t budge. “It’s like … frozen solid.”
“Crap,” said Karla.
“So what do we do?”
“There’s nothing else to do,” she said. “But fight.”




Chapter 49: Maelstrom

A score of arrows, freshly notched, lay heaped at Karla’s feet. She took my hand and squeezed it hard. At first, I couldn’t tell if she was afraid or trying to reassure me. 
I looked at her and she was calm. I was freaking out, but she had this confidence in her eyes that couldn’t help but rub off on me. As preposterous as it sounded, she acted as if we still held the upper hand in this situation. It was clear, between the two of us who had the stronger and braver heart. 
This Reaper was big, bigger than any I had yet seen, so big, it could barely fit itself into the tunnel. The collapse and the rigid walls not only trapped us but forced the beast transform itself into something more snake-like to squeeze itself into the narrow space. 
“That thing’s in no rush to get after us,” I said. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“It will come. It is just being wary. I can see from the scars that it has been many fights.”
“With … you guys? Luther?”
“No, not us. And Luther, I doubt,” said Karla, sneering. “Perhaps … Victoria.”
With its front end narrowed into a tapered snout like an anteater’s, the beast began to move, heaving its blubber up the slope. A reddish glow pulsed in the walls each time the beast flung itself forward, almost as if the light were the pain it inflicted on the root system.
Karla strung her first arrow and let it fly. It bounced off the roof and spun harmlessly to the ground. Too much arc. She gave the next a deeper draw, but it skittered against the floor. The narrowness of the tunnel was making things difficult. Once she found her mark, however, she rarely missed.
Each arrow that stuck in the Reaper’s snout made it groan and shudder. She upped the ante by holding her palm over each tip and making them glow white hot before sending them off. The Reaper paused with each direct hit, but quickly re-gathered itself and kept on coming.
I felt stupid and useless standing there with my sword waiting for the thing to come to us. I wish I could have made a weapon with some range.
“We can’t defeat it,” said Karla, flinging arrow after arrow, like a machine. “But maybe we can discourage it. Make it wish for an easier meal.”
“I think we’re just making the damned thing mad,” I said.
“You have a better plan?”
I shrugged.
“Then make me some more arrows. I am running low.”
It was nice having something to do, only my arrows didn’t quite have the consistency of Karla’s. They were all different lengths and weights, which challenged her accuracy. 
And meanwhile, the creature kept squeezing forward, inexorably, like a flood of cold molasses. The arrows had slowed it, but it obviously had no intentions of retreating.
“It never had to come to this,” I blurted. “You could have come with me … in Inverness.”
“You think there are no monsters on the other side?” said Karla, pausing to straighten a curve in an arrow I had fashioned less than true. “Think again.”
“We didn’t have to come back here. We could have gone to London … to Rome.”
“Stop! We’ve been through this already. I would have lost Isobel if I couldn’t return here. Now, at least, I have her attention. When we … if we … make it back … she will talk to me … she will listen.”
The beast took its sweet time creeping forward. In response to the arrows it had armored up its snout with thick plating that deflected Karla’s arrows. 
A ring of prehensile tentacles began to sprout from the tick. It kept its maw closed and protected as it approached us, but flaps and wrinkles revealed the accordion-like pleating that would burst open to envelope us when the time came.
“I wish that we had Astrid with us,” said Karla. “She has always had a way … with energy … and fire bombs.”
“Astrid … she’s gone over to the dark side.
“What do you mean?”
“Luther, I mean Arthur … she’s working for him.”
“That is not the dark side,” said Karla. “You are looking at the dark side.”
I leaned on my sword, staring at the slow motion apocalypse sliding our way. “We’re not going to make it, are we?”
“We don’t know that.”
“I mean … because if not … this really sucks,” I said, the frustration really began to mount. “You know what I went through trying to find you? To have it all come to this. Gawd! I just want to stick this fucking blade down that bastard’s throat, lop its wormy head off.”
“It … doesn’t have a head,” Karla pointed out.
As soon as I said that, my sword began to glow, a dull red at first, transitioning to orange.
“Holy crap! What’s happening?”
“Stay mad. Mad is good,” said Karla, scrambling to fix my half-assed arrows.
The creature continued to alter its shape, reabsorbing its stubby legs, fanning open its moist and flapping maw until it scraped the sides of the tunnel. Teeth formed at the leading edge, scraping into roots. Branch lights shot ahead like grounded lightning.
Tentacles slapped wetly against the walls. The lining of its mouth and gullet rolled forward and formed a second mouth, like a worm turning itself inside out.
“Oh, no fucking way. I ain’t letting that fucker slobber all over us.” I raised the sword and stepped out to meet it. 
“No James! Stay back! Maybe it is bluffing.”
The beast sensed me and heaved itself forward, ripples of blubber cascading down its length. Its hide smelled like rotten sneakers. Bits of decayed flesh clung to its skin. Several bulbous tentacles extended and came swinging my way. 
I plunged the now white, hot sword into the first blob that swung my way. The flesh sizzled, filling my nostril with an odor like burnt fish. The beast retracted and like a startled cat, spat out a nasty gasping hiss.
The creature reared back and launched its snout me against like a rocket, stretching its unarmored body like a boneless earthworm. I dodged aside, swiping at it as it went by, slashing deep into the plating.
Karla fired arrow after arrow into its eversible gullet at close range, causing it to pucker and retract.
The beast re-gathered itself, goose pimples on its tentacles growing into spikes. It coiled its body behind its armored front, forming a fleshy spring, preparing for the final strike. One lunge now, and it would easily reach the end of the blocked tunnel, taking Karla and I with it. 
“James, come here … with me. Please?”
I refused to have things end like this. I whacked the tunnel wall with the sword, knocking some bits loose but it was clear there was no way out. 
Karla had laid down the bow, and fashioned her own sword—a blocky, unwieldy thing like a primitive claymore.
“James … if we keep fending it off … back here … together … maybe it will tire and leave us alone.”
“Does that thing look tired to you? Does it?”
Coils continued to accumulate behind the business end of the beast. A fire grew in my belly. I extended the sword, and again it glowed—orange then yellow then white.
My heart throbbed in time with my brain. My whole body felt like it was going to explode. 
I noticed how the tunnel immediately beside the beast remained flexible, bowing out and expanding as its coils thickened. I took in those roots with my unfocussed gaze and summoned them to obey my heart. 
When I swirled the sword around, every root lining that passage twisted and contracted clamping down on the coils. They clamped down on the coils. The beast grunted and tried to spring, but was stuck in the pinched off tunnel.
“That’s it! That’ll give it a taste of its own medicine.”
“You?” said Karla, mouth agape. “You are doing this? How?”
The beast roared, blasting us with its hot and foul breath. Its coils burst through the sides of the tunnel. It inched forward, re-tightening its coils against the shattered tunnel. 
Swirling that sword, I stared down the creature’s pouting maw. Roots tangled in its bristles and prodded its underbelly. Something hard and hot formed deep in my belly as if I were impregnated with something beyond the physical.
It was painful beyond anything I had ever experienced. My eyes rolled back in their sockets. I moaned involuntarily and this ball of something kept growing, building the pressure inside me, squeezing my organs against my bones.
And then, whatever it was—a ball of energy, the life force of my soul—broke loose from my groin, and came spinning up my torso. It split into two and raced down my arms, splitting again down each of my fingers, breaking loose from my body with a ripping groan.
Ten pulses of cold fire came spinning like ninety mile per hour sliders into the beast and the already shattered tunnel, blunting its snout, ripping the roots to shreds. A vortex of fragments spun, picking up more and more pieces with each rotation. Roots liquefied, causing the creature to lose its grip and spin along with them, coils and all, as a massive void opened up beneath it.
The creature lunged, gripping what it could reach of the matrix with every claw and feeler it could muster. A hooked tentacle came whipping into Karla’s leg, knocking the claymore from her grip. She shrieked as she fell and was dragged off. 
Sword held high, I leaped and hacked at the tentacle as it slid past me. Karla grabbed onto my leg, hauling me down. We tumbled in the grip of the severed tentacle to the edge of the vast crater that had opened up beneath the beast. Only a tangle of severed roots kept us from spilling over.
Appendages sallied forth from the beast and latched onto whatever root structure remained. The creature deformed itself, shifting its weight wherever it could find purchase. It looked like a giant amoeba hovering over a vast cauldron of severed roots and the ever-widening vortex. 
Its dripping maw sniffed us down, drifting our way, sensing victory, opening wide in anticipation. 
I twitched my sword. The beast’s pseudopods ripped loose. It plummeted, spinning out of sight through a maelstrom of shattered roots.




Chapter 50: The Upper Reaches

Karla and I clung to the edge of the vast, conical abyss. If not for a few stray loops and curls of frayed root, we both would have plummeted with the Reaper. 
The vortex had sliced through many layers of tunnels. Like severed but bloodless arteries, their dark openings gaped, some ringed with seepages of light. At the thresholds of several broken tunnels, lesser Reapers nosed about confused and bellowed into the void.
Hands trembling, too scared to look down, I looked over to see if Karla was okay. She had no obvious injuries, but she had this goofy vacancy in her gaze, as if she were dizzy or plastered.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because … what you did … was amazing. How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, still stunned. “I just wanted it to happen, and … it happened.”
“Bern was right,” she said. “You are special.”
The partially severed roots unraveled and snapped under our weight. Karla cried out and started to slide. I grabbed her wrist and hauled her back. We crawled away from the edge, up to a flatter part of the mangled tunnel that felt more secure. Panting, I jabbed my sword into the tunnel floor and leaned back against the wall, struggling to gather my breath.
With the Reaper gone, the walls lost their stony texture and much of their mass. The roof sagged, its fibers gone limp as if all resolve had abandoned every root. Feeble lights flickered through the occasional strand. They were back to being ordinary roots again, if these roots could be called ordinary.
Karla grabbed my face and kissed me. Her eyes twinkled, and it wasn’t just from the tears. I had never seen her so giddy.
Bern’s staff poked through curtains of shredded root that had only minutes earlier had been a pile of immovable rubble. I got up and slashed at them with my sword, letting them fall into a heap. Karla recovered her claymore and joined me, wielding the heftier weapon with both hands.
“Hold on, Bern!” I said, as his staff nearly jabbed me in the groin. “We’ve got it from here.”
“We?” he said. “Oh thank God. Are you both okay?”
“We’re fine.”
“La!” Isobel scrambled through the cleft and leapt onto her sister. “Thanks God! I thought that smelly thing ate you.”
“No way,” said Karla. “I’m much too bitter. It would have spit me out. James is the one you should worry about.”
“Astounding!” said Bern, staring down the tunnel at the enormous pit. “Incredible.”
We pushed through to the other side, where Lille rushed over and gave us each a hug. Jeff looked on all sheepish and befuddled. The freckled lady crouched before some pieces of root arranged in a tic-tac-toe grid. She was trying and failing to create something out of them.
“What are you trying to make?” I said.
“I don’t know. Anything,” she said. “A poncho … a toga … something to cover my butt.”
“Picture something you know real well—its smell, its feel, the way it flows—and it will come.”
“Oh look at you, acting like a professor now,” said Karla. “Just make her something already. Unless … that is … you enjoy keeping her in the nude.”
“That’s not it at all. It’s just … if she’s gonna be here, she needs to learn.”
“Calm down,” Karla giggled. “I was only joking.”
“But what if we’re not Weavers … like you guys?” said Jeff.
“I don’t think that’s possible,” I said, laying my sword down. “I think everybody’s a Weaver … deep inside.” I collapsed against the tunnel wall, feeling completely drained. 
Bern and Lille kept whispering to each other. They tossed glances, looking at me with a strange expression I could only describe as sheer awe bordering on worship. I wasn’t used to getting that from people, to say the least. It felt weird and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
“Well,” said Lille. “After something this, I suppose we could all use some tea, don’t you think?”
***
She was a tea addict, that Lille. Either that, or an obsessive compulsive. Only that could explain her mastery of tea. Every pot she brewed was different and distinct, even if the cups she poured came out perfectly clear. Darjeeling, Keemum, Oolong, Lapsang Souchoung—she had every possible variety in her repertoire.
On top of that, she somehow conjured a remarkably close approximation of cinnamon scones. I had yet to figure out how to make anything remotely edible from a root, and here she was passing around a basket of these luscious pastries, flaky, steaming and moist.
Karla took advantage of our break time to fit the freckled lady in a cottony summer dress with a floral print, while Isobel braided her hair. It turned out she had a name—Claire—and she came from New Orleans.
Bern cleared his throat and banged his staff against the floor of the tunnel to get our attention.
“Lille and I were thinking … it’s time we all had a chat about our future.”
“What future?” said Claire.
Bern ignored her.
“We obviously would have an issue returning from whence we came, since James has conveniently put a rather large canyon between us and the other end of the tunnel. Of course, if we so wished we could manage to devise some manner of suspension bridge to get us across, but—”
“Get to the point Bern,” said Lille, jabbing her elbow into his side.
“The point is … we have no desire to go back. There’s nothing left for us in the ‘Burg but consternation and persecution. Anything we created at our little cottage and our cabin can be recreated elsewhere. So, in short, we plan to continue onward. Thanks to James, it’s guaranteed to be free of Reapers … at least, until the tunnels repair themselves … which, considering the scale of the damage, will take quite some time. But the question is … do any of you care to join us?”
“Well, I sure ain’t going back,” said Jeff. “Not if those … things … are down there.”
“I don’t care one way or another,” said Claire. “But I guess I wouldn’t mind tagging along with you all, wherever you guys decide to go.”
“I’m torn,” said Karla. “We have our friends left behind. Astrid. Xiao Ke. And I miss my little dome.”
“And Nonno is down there,” said Isobel. “Remember?”
“Your little dome?” I said. “Your little dome is trashed.”
“Trashed?”
“One side’s bashed in. The roof’s collapsed. Your stuff’s strewn all over and turning back into roots.”
Karla sighed.
“So … uh … where would we go?” said Jeff.
“Upward and outward,” said Bern. “I don’t know exactly where that will lead us or what we will find, but I’m hoping it leads us closer to a certain enlightened soul we once met in Luther’s square. Some of you may remember Victoria?”
“Do you have any reason to believe she’s up here?” I said.
“No,” said Bern. “Other than she and her people don’t seem to be anywhere else we’ve bloody looked. And believe me, Lille and I have looked far and wide for that particular community of free souls, even before Victoria decided to pay us all a visit.”
“Free souls?” said Jeff.
“Unbound to life,” said Bern. “Or at least life as we know it … on the other side.”
“Ooh! I like the sound of that,” said Claire.
“You mean, dead?” said Isobel, scrunching her face.
“Listen up you all,” said Lille. “We can’t be certain we’ll find what we’re looking for up there. But there’s a sweet breeze coming from the passages ahead of us. To me, that’s reward enough. It certainly promises to make our explorations more pleasant than all the stink and stagnation we find down below.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Karla. “I think I will join you.”
“Me too,” I said cupping my hand over Karla’s.
“And me,” said Isobel, adding her hand to our stack.
***
And so, it was unanimous. All seven of us agreed to go onward and upward with Bern and Lille. Of course I was going to end up going wherever Karla went, even though she had made up her mind without first checking with me. But maybe she just knew.
I didn’t have the luxury of worrying too much about our long-term prospects. My mind kept dwelling on my little problem back at Inverness Station. Depending on how things went there, I might not be sticking around long enough to reach any community of free souls.
My mind couldn’t stop dwelling on the prospect of an unnatural and involuntary death. The thought of leaving this existence that way made my heart quail, not because things were so wonderful in Root, but it was the only place that Karla agreed to be with me. I was still convinced we could carve a decent life on the other side, but so far I had totally failed to convince her.
She must have noticed the worry in my eyes. Either that, or she was totally clairvoyant.
“I was thinking about your issue,” she said, as we slogged behind Bern. “Don’t worry. I’ve spoken to Isobel. We have a plan.”
Isobel nodded and grinned.
“What kind of plan?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll take care of things. I’ll make some arrangements. Just stay put. Don’t get on a train and don’t leave the station. We need to be able to find you.”
“What if the bounty hunters have a different plan?”
Her brow furrowed. “Stall. Just try and stay in the station. We will try to get there as soon as we can. The problem is, I don’t know which of us is going to fade first.”
“Well, it’s not gonna be me,” I said. “I’m in no hurry whatsoever to get back.”
“You act as though you have a choice,” said Karla.
“Personally, I can’t wait to go home,” said Isobel. “I’m going to laugh in Papa’s face. It turns out, the joke is on him. There is a place to hide where he can’t reach.”
“Don’t you dare disrespect Papa,” said Karla. “He will bash your head in.”
“I don’t care anymore.” She skipped ahead to catch up with Lille and Bern who was setting a blistering pace for a man with a lame left leg.
***
The higher we climbed, the narrower the tunnel became, and the more tightly it wound. It now had the dimensions of a culvert I used to play in back in Ohio. I could touch either wall without stretching and had to crouch slightly to avoid bumping my head.
A faint blue glow, barely discernible as light, revealed each curve. Random spots flashed like fireflies from time to time without pattern and without repeating. Shadows lay thicker in side tunnels. Any creature that might be lurking could watch us pass, itself unobserved. 
Bern no longer walked at the head of our little expedition. The adrenalin that had driven him had waned and he now lagged far behind with Lille and Claire. Jeff, of all people, had become our trailblazer, calling back to us at every junction to make sure that we followed.
Wind whistled through the passage, scented with a mix of something resinous and something else that smelled like sun-cured hay—a refreshing change from the rotten egg emanations of the Reapers.
“I wonder if this was such a smart idea,” said Karla. “This place is so sterile. We have not seen a single soul.”
“That’s good, isn’t it? No pods means no Reapers.”
“I suppose,” she said.
“I sort of like it here,” said Isobel. “If only it wasn’t so dark.”
As we turned the next bend, there came a gushing, dripping sound.
“Hey guys!” said Jeff. “It gets wide here. And … there’s like a waterfall or something.”
We climbed over a hump and down into a wide, circular bowl filled ankle-deep in cool, clear water. A pair of trickles, faintly illuminated by some external source, dribbled down from a large, round hole in the ceiling.
“It’s a sinkhole,” I said, splashing out to the center. Jeff was already there, staring up at a thousand pinpoints of light.
Karla came up beside us. “Oh my God! Are those—?”
“Stars,” said Jeff.
“But are they?” I said. “Is that even possible? I thought everything here was tunnels and roots.”
“What else could they be?” said Karla, entranced, the star light glinting off her forehead.
Isobel seemed somewhat less impressed, but she hadn’t been in Root long enough to know how dreary and claustrophobic it could get.
Bern and Lille caught up, walking with the increasingly chatty Claire, who was telling them about her sordid life as a waitress in a strip club. Seven heads gawked at the sky through that hole.
“Looks like this is the end of the road,” said Bern.
“Not so fast,” said Lille. “What’s up there, I wonder?”
“You mean … we should abandon the tunnels?”
“Exactly.”
***
Bern wove us a thickly knotted rope with a grapple at one end. Jeff and I took turns tossing it up through the hole, until it caught securely on the overhanging rim. 
Bern gave it a firm tug to set the hooks. He brushed his hands off and looked at us. “Alright then? Who’s first?”
“Tsk, tsk,” said Lille. “You don’t expect me to climb that swingy thing. I’ll drop and shatter my tea set.”
Under Lille’s guidance, Bern wove a second, identical rope and grapple. We set it alongside the first and created rungs between the knots, strengthening and stiffening the resulting structure until we had ourselves a sturdy ladder.
“Now, that’s more like it,” said Lille.
“I’ll go first,” I said. “If that’s okay.”
“Be my guest, lad,” said Bern. “Better you than me.”
There was enough of a glow for me to see the smiles all around as I sank my fingers into the soft rungs. A wind swirled down and buffeted me as I rose above the basin. As my head poked above the rim I was greeted by a sky without limit, carpeted with millions of stars.
“Oh my God!”
“What do you see? What do you see?” said Karla, anxiously.
“No tunnels, that’s for sure. Just open sky. There’s another world up here … a whole ‘nother world.”
Isobel came up behind me, quick as a monkey, with Karla close behind. The others joined us, one by one, with Bern bringing up the rear. We milled about, heads tilted back, gawking and exclaiming in disbelief.
“Look, there are mountains!” said Isobel.
Indeed, the horizon was rumpled with peaks and veiled with shreds of something gauzy that had to be clouds. A faint patch of glow highlighted one stretch of hilltops, as if there were a distant city or a fire just beyond.
“Is this Heaven?” said Claire.
“Looks like … Arizona,” said Jeff.
“Are you alright Bern?” said Lille. “Your breathing’s gone kind of ragged.”
“I’m just … speechless. This is beyond my dreams.”
“That’s not saying much, coming from you.”
“No, but … I was just hoping for a smaller tunnel … a quieter patch of roots.”
“Do you suppose there are monsters here?” said Isobel.
Karla sighed. “Probably. Aren’t there always?”
I put my arm around Karla and she snuggled up against me. There was a bit of a nip in the air. It felt like that big sky was going to swallow us up. Isobel came over and took Karla’s hand.
“La? How come I can’t feel my fingers?”
“What? Oh Izzie! You’re fading!”
“You too!”
Panic shot through me. There was a gap where Karla’s shoulder had been, and holes in her face, where the star light shone through.
“Crap! We just got here.”
Even in the dimness I could see the calm confidence in Karla’s eyes. “No worries, my love. We’ll be back.” 
She leaned in to kiss me, but was gone before her lips engaged, brushing my cheek with a touch so light it could have been the eyelash of a butterfly, if butterflies only had eyelashes.
I staggered into the space she had just occupied. Only Bern’s quick and firm hand kept me from tumbling over the rim of the overhang.
I dropped to my knees, anchorless and adrift in the universe like a boat ripped from its moorings.
***
Claire was in mid-sentence, telling us about the evil things drunken men do in Baton Rouge when she too, blinked out. Jeff faded soon thereafter, without as much as a peep.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” said Lille. “How this nasty place operates. Just when things are getting good, it boots you out.”
“But you guys never seem to leave,” I said. “What’s your secret?”
“Pessimism,” said Bern. “Toxic and absolute.”
“Not to mention, a hefty helping of mechanical life support on the other side,” said Lille. “One of these days, nature will prevail and this will all be over. But we’ve had a good run, Bern and I. No regrets.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure about that,” said Bern. “I see no reason why we couldn’t figure out a way to extend our stay indefinitely. I mean, there must be a way. Perhaps … Victoria’s crowd That Frelsi place, wherever it may be.”
“But I thought you were supposed to be a pessimist?” I said, smirking.
“Oh no, not here. I meant on the other side. Here is where all my hope resides.”
“So what do we do now?” I said.
“Well you know,” said Bern, squinting off into the distance. “That light certainly intrigues me. I wonder what’s that’s all about.”
“Well, before we go, let me fetch us some water, in case we need a spot of tea,” said Lille, veering over to the little stream that drained into the pit. 
“We shouldn’t go too far,” I said. “The others … how will they find us?”
“Far enough to learn what’s what,” said Bern. “See what that glow is all about. Who knows when they’ll be back … or even if.”
That last quip caused my stomach to clench. Of course, Karla would be back. But would I? The uncertainty of it all sent my head spinning.
Lille returned, water sloshing in a basket she had converted into a bucket.
“I could swear there’s something in the bottom of that riffle that is a perfect substitute for mud. And there are plants, too. I thought they might be cress but they’re too bitter. Who made this place, I wonder?”
“Someone more skillful than Luther, I should think,” said Bern.
“Or Victoria,” said Lille.
“Alright then?” said Bern. “Shall we?”
***
We walked toward the light on the horizon, which seemed to increase in intensity over time. I kept looking back the way we had come, making sure I knew how to return to the sinkhole. As much as I dreaded it, I feared I might have to climb back down into those tunnels some day to find Karla.
The land was barren, like a desert, sparsely clothed in tufts of grass and bushes that gave off a strong turpentine-like smell when we brushed against them.
The air grew chillier. I ripped a branch off a shrub and tried to fashion a warmer shirt from it, but not much happened when I applied my will. I ended up with a fistful of coarse twine and twigs. There was something up here inhibitory to Weaving, or maybe it was just me and this was the first sign of a backslide.
This diminishing of my skill left me feeling vulnerable. I still had that sword, but now it was just a blade, not an instrument for super-powered Weaving. A Reaper would have its way with us up here.
But something about the whistle of the wind and the rustle of the brush told me that we didn’t have to worry about Reapers anymore. Not up here.
We came to a hollow that had trees growing in it, and a spring-fed pond.
“Willows!” said Lille. “Now this is the kind of place one puts a cabin. Never mind that horrid cave. I bet there’s fish in that pond. And with willows we have lumber, firewood. Coppice them and we have rods for furniture and baskets. And I’m talking about real weaving here—physical—none of this mental gymnastics.”
“Now Lille, don’t you be getting all domestic until we know exactly what we’re dealing with here. This could be Hades, you know.”
“Somehow … I doubt that,” said Lille, wistfully. “I could have sworn I smelled honeysuckle back by that brook.”
“Hell flowers. That’s all they were.”
“Now stop. You’re just being crotchety. I think we all need some tea.”
“Oh please. You and your tea.”
“Listen to you. You definitely need some tea.”
She unpacked her kettle and filled it with water from the bucket. She did her usual swirl and twirl over the top but the water refused to boil.
“Here, let me give you a hand,” I said and pointed my index finger at the kettle until it trembled. Steam began to waft from the spout.
That felt gratifying. It was nice to know I hadn’t lost all my powers.
“There are some strong spells binding this landscape,” said Lille. “We’re lucky to have James here to unbind them.”
“But why me, of all people?”
“What do you mean?” said Lille as she poured our cups. “Why not you? Do you find yourself unworthy?”
“Of course he does,” said Bern. “This is Root. The land of self-hate and doubt.”
“Something tells we’re not in Root anymore, Toto,” said Lille.
“For me to have these powers … it doesn’t make sense. I’m just James Moody. I’m a nobody.”
“Ah, but you’re the son of Darlene,” said Bern.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“These things tend to run in families. I’m just saying.”
“My mother … she had powers like this?”
“I’m just saying,” said Bern. He took a sip and made a face. “This tea is weak.”
“Count your blessings,” said Lille. “At least it’s hot and tastes somewhat like tea.”
***
We headed off again, though Lille was reluctant to leave the hollow. She had already placed four stones on a terrace above the pond to mark the corners of the cabin she aimed to build.
The silhouetted hills which had been flat and black as paper cutouts began to bounce and reflect the burgeoning light and take on definition and dimension, if not yet color.
“That glow,” said Bern. “That is no city like we thought. I do believe that we’re looking a sunrise.”
“What a shame,” said Lille. “I was hoping for some nice little village with a cozy inn and a bakery.”
“Personally, I can’t wait to see what daylight brings us,” said Bern. “Even if it is a wilderness.”
I walked with a bounce to my gait, feeling a bit like a girl from Kansas heading down a yellow brick road. I wanted to stay in the moment and enjoy the adventure, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Karla and the trouble waiting for me on that bench back in Inverness Station. 
The glow ahead brightened and rose above the hilltops. A perfect dome grew like a bubble into a golden orb that perched there, all speckled and splotched with craters and mountains.
“Well what do you know? It’s not morning after all,” said Bern. “Certainly had me fooled.”
My heart did a flop at the implications of this place having a moon. But something about it seemed off. Was it the arrangement of its features? Its size and color? I couldn’t quite pinpoint exactly what was wrong, but something definitely seemed different about this moon.
A swarm of buzzing tingles overtook me, stinging my skin like a limb re-awakening after having fallen asleep. “Ah fuck … here comes the fade … I’m out of here, guys.”
Bern sighed. “Ah … too bad. It’s down to me and the old broad again.”
“If you don’t like my company mister, then fine, I’ll go back and start building my new cabin.”
“I was just saying, it was nice having James around.”
“Au revoir, James,” said Lille. “You take care now.”
“Catch you on the rebound,” said Bern.
But this time I wasn’t sure I’d ever be back.




Chapter 51: Showdown

Again, my head was a spinning bag of mush. Some rhythmic, treacly sound oozed through the air—music, I guess it was called. It played over the train station’s public address system. It must have been present before. I just hadn’t noticed it filling the gaps between train announcements.
And then I could feel the bench pressing hard against my back, digging deep into my thighs. The old lady who had been sitting next to me was gone. I was relieved to find myself alone. The station was empty, not a train or passenger in sight.
I must have left my brain behind in Root, because when I glanced up at the clock, I couldn’t remember how to tell time. It had something to do with the position of those fast and slow hands, but I might as well have been staring at a pile of runes.
A man stepped out from behind a support column. He was smiling, but not in a friendly way. A bulge protruded from his denim jacket that was obviously the barrel of a pistol.
His mouth moved and made noises, but it took a long while before I could process his sounds into meaningful words. He spoke with a thick brogue, but it was my head that was the problem. This was the worst post-Root hangover I had yet experienced. It left me feeling positively brain-damaged.
And then—suddenly—the music became Van Morrison, the clock told me it was four in the morning and the man started making sense.
“I said, you’ve run a long way, haven’t you, mate?”
I wasn’t sure I could talk yet, but words found their way out.
“What do you care?”
“I care about the price that’s on your head, mate. And ain’t it my lucky day? They just upped the ante. Somebody out there’s real anxious to find you. Got your face plastered over all of Europe.”
I kept staring at that lump in his jacket.
“Are you gonna shoot me?”
“Not if I can avoid it. You’re worth more delivered alive than dead. But it’s a decent enough bounty dead, in case you’re getting any ideas. Now get your arse off that bench and do exactly what I say.”
I stood slowly up, my body creaking and aching from all the abuse I had been inflicting on it lately.
“Where are we going?”
“Shut your face and walk towards that exit ramp.”
“Wait a minute. Why should I? If they’re just gonna waste me ... I mean … why don’t we just get it over with here?”
He shoved me hard. “I said get along. We’re going outside.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “Why should I go with you if they’re just going to off me?”
His eyelids flickered. “You don’t know that. Maybe they just want to talk.”
“Yeah, right. Sounds like I don’t really have any reason to go. You might as well shoot me now. Why don’t you? Are you scared?”
“Scared of what?” he chortled. “I’m not scared of no little yank twerp. Now get your arse moving.”
“You never killed a man before, have you?” My eyes scanned the station for some sign of activity, but there was absolutely no one here, not even a bum.
“I’ve cracked plenty of heads in my day. And I’d be happy to oblige and blow out your brains if you don’t get along! Even dead, you’re worth a decent wad of quid.”
He shoved me along. I moved as slowly and clumsily as possible, feigning an injured leg. Karla had warned me not to leave the station, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stall. The guy was getting pretty nervous and pissed off.
I walked slowly to a handicap access ramp that led up and out of the station. The concrete carried a sheen from the light mist was falling, droplets swirling under the street lamps.
Now that we were almost outside, I was the one getting nervous. Time was running out. The odds of my escaping would get no better than they were at this very moment with me and him one on one. If this guy had any friends on the way, my chances of freedom would slide to the infinitesimal. I considered making a run for it.
A dark shape shifted in the shadows behind a vending machine. A shoe scraped on the concrete.
“Drop it!”
Karla stepped out from behind the vending machine wielding a foot long chef’s knife. My thrill turned instantly to panic on seeing her pathetically inadequate weapon.
“Karla. He’s got a gun!”
The bounty hunter looked at her and chuckled. “Ooh! Such a big knife for a little girl. Who’s this? Your girlfriend?”
“Put that gun down,” said Karla, with a growl to her voice. She came after him like a fencer.
He laughed again. “No. You drop your blade, sweetcakes, or your boyfriend gets it. What on earth are you thinking? You’re ten feet away and I’ve got a gun. Do you think you’re a fucking ninja? You’re not even holding it properly.”
“Oh? And how is my sister holding that shotgun?”
“What … shotgun?”
“Isobel!”
Isobel turned the corner behind us and leveled an ornate shotgun with a burl wood stock at him. 
The guy wheeled around, using me as a shield. Karla pounced, extending fully, jamming the point of her blade into the wrist of his weapon hand. The gun went off as he lost his grip, deafening in my ear, hot gases from the barrel singing my cheek. I thought I was dead, but the bullet struck high on a wall above a ticket counter. Plaster crumbled down. 
I spun away and dove onto the tile floor, scrambling for the pistol before it could slide onto the tracks. 
The bounty hunter crouched, his good hand clamped over his wrist. Blood trickled down his fingers and pooled on the white tiles.
“You won’t get far,” he said. “None of you. I’ve got friends on the way.”
“You are not the only one with friends,” said Karla. “And don’t you dare think one minute that my little sister does not have the will to shoot. Her father takes her for skeet, and she is a very good shot and full of hate for evil men, aren’t you Izzie?”
“That’s right, La. I say kill them all!”
“Stand next to that pillar.”
“What?”
“Do it, or we will dispose of you here and now. It might interest you to know that we have all three contemplated suicide. It is how we met. Think about that. Your death means nothing to us. We have nothing to lose.”
The guy’s cell phone went off. Isobel saw it lying on the ground next to the Coke machine and crushed it under her heel.
“You’re all a bunch of loonies,” said the guy. 
“Now go! Up against the pillar. James, Isobel keep your guns on him.”
I pointed the guy’s own pistol at him, though I had no idea how to cock or even to tell if it had a safety. Isobel kept the barrel of the shotgun leveled on his chest. Her gaze had a manic intensity.
The bounty hunter complied grudgingly, leaning against a support pillar that was about as him. Karla pulled a bicycle chain from her handbag, went behind the pillar and reached the chain around his torso, twisting it until it dug into his flab and locking it onto a metal mount for a fire extinguisher. 
“That should hold you a little while.”
“You won’t get far,” said the bounty hunter. “If he had come along with me they might have let him live, being a first-timer and all. But not no more. Not after this. Clemency’s out the window. They’ll have every miscreant in Europe on your trail. They’ll nab your bum. You just wait.”
“Good luck finding us where we are going,” said Karla.
“Oh? And where’s that? Let me guess. The Isle of Man? The Orkneys?”
“Frelsi,” said Karla. “Come, Isobel … James. They are probably waiting for us.”
***
We exited the station to a city that glistened. Veils of mist, silvered by the street lamps, wafted in the fickle breeze, droplets so tiny they defied gravity, rising and flying, refusing to fall.
A wheeled suitcase sat next to a phone booth, pull handle extended. Karla slipped her blade into an outer pocket, but left the handle sticking out. Isobel concealed the shotgun beneath her oversized raincoat. I didn’t know what to do with the gun. I had seen guys in movies stick them under their belts in the small of their back, so that‘s what I did, worried I might shoot myself in a butt cheek in the process.
Karla strode off towards a bridge wheeling the suitcase behind her. Isobel trotted to catch up. I checked the entrance of the station to make sure we weren’t being followed and went after them.
The streets were abandoned. The occasional delivery van went by, raking us with its headlights.
“So where exactly are we going?” I said.
“Isobel has a cousin in Glasgow who’ll put us up. He’s the Black Sheep of the family. An atheist.”
“Glasgow? But isn’t that kind of close? We can’t stay put there. They’ll find me.”
Karla set her chin and swiveled her head around, regarding me with cool, clear eyes. “You’re not coming with us.”
“What?”
“Only Izzie and I are going to Glasgow.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It is simple. The only way for us to be together is to stay apart. Keep our hearts heavy. That is the trick.”
“But that’s ridiculous! But it doesn’t have to be this way. We could run away together.”
She twitched her head, quickly and decisively. “There is nothing left for us in this world. Root is where we belong. We just need to find Frelsi and learn how to ditch this place without giving up our souls. And now that we find those upper reaches, I think we are closer than ever. No?”
“But there’s nothing there. I went on with Bern and Lille after you guys faded. There’s nothing there but wilderness.”
“You can’t know that. You are here. You must have faded right after us.”
“Come with me to Rome. I know how to keep us safe there.”
“You are not safe anywhere with us, nor we with you. Three are much easier to track than one. You are better off on your own.”
We walked onto the bridge as a heavy truck rumbled across and shook the grating. I could see a river churning far beneath the treads.
“But what if something happens … and I never see you again?”
“That’s a chance we need to take. Don’t you understand, James? Frelsi is eternity. Frelsi means freedom.”
“I don’t care about fucking eternity. I want you now.”
Karla stopped and turned around under the street light. Isobel stood by her side, rapt and enthralled by our quarrel. Her eyes were just as fierce and determined as her sister’s.
“Think about what you just said. How stupid you sound. Immature. And after all you have seen. Think about it, and you will know why I feel how I feel.”
I was shivering. There was plenty of chill in the air, but I didn’t feel cold. I felt adrift.
“But where will I go?”
“I have someone coming who will take you to Wales for now. But you must not stay in any one place too long. But Wales is a lovely place to start. Safe and lonely, where can you miss me and be miserable in peace.”
“This is insane. Why won’t you come with me?”
She rolled her eyes. “You are being dense again, James. How many times do I have to explain to you the art of surfing?”
She looked at me with eyes as hard as the steel beams that made the bridge, and as soft as the rain. “Life here mostly sucks, James. And even when it is not, it is temporary. We both know there is something better … and forever. Victoria’s people know how to make it so our bodies can be discarded. But it will take time.”
A small car—a Fiat—pulled up, driven by a thirty-ish man with a flat top and a nose ring. Isobel hopped into the back, propping her shotgun up against the window. The guy got out and loaded Karla’s suitcase into the trunk.
My heart tumbled, my innards swirled, as if my organs had been caught up in a violent storm.
“James, this is Linval. His friend Sturgis should be coming along soon to take you to his Grandpa’s place in Brynmawr. He’ll give you room and board in return for chores. He’s lost a leg and does not get around as well as he used to.”
My head was swimming. “When did you … arrange all this?”
“Wales was supposed to be for Izzie and I. Back when I still hoped you would never find me in Inverness. But then you came and now I see it is a better place for you. Izzie and I can lose ourselves in Glasgow. No one in the family is in touch with Linval. They don’t even know he is alive.”
She opened the passenger side door.
“Karla … no … I can’t do this—” 
“You are not to come to Glasgow, do you understand? And stay out of Cardiff, too. There is too much big time drug dealing there.”
“But … Karla … I can’t live … I don’t want to … without you.”
She paused and looked at me. Something in my eyes and posture must have affected her because she stepped away from the car, swooped over and settled into my arms, pressing her cheek up against mine. I was too obliterated to hug her back, but my arms slowly found their way around her shoulder blades. 
Tears dribbled onto her collar and mixed with the raindrops already beaded on the nylon. I didn’t sob or anything, I just leaked. I wanted to say stuff but my words refused to congeal.
“Don’t worry. You just ride that storm. Let your heart despair, as I will mine. The more you do, the sooner we’ll see each other in Root.”
She lifted herself up on her toes and studied my eyes. “We are both young,” she said. “Time is on our side.” She kissed me on the lips, brief and soft, and stepped away. 
She got into the car without looking back and slammed the door. Isobel stared back at me, a faint smile curling her lips—a blonde Mona Lisa. The window rolled down. Karla jabbed her finger at the window towards a lone headlight coming our way across the bridge.
“Here comes your ride.”
The Fiat pulled out from the curb and did a three point turn, heading back across the bridge. A motorcycle pulled up, ridden by a young man with a black goatee. He wore a watch cap under his helmet.
“I’m Sturgie. Hop on mate. We’d best be off. It’s a six hour ride to my Granddad’s.”
I got onto the back of the bike and looked across the bridge towards the Fiat’s retreating tail lights. I lifted my eyes to the chaos of the clouds just now beginning to reveal their true nature in the burgeoning dawn. 
The motorcycle roared off and I knew right then that my heart would never heal, would never be at calm, not here in this world, not ever unless Karla and I found our way to Frelsi. We were doomed to one path forward through this life. I could only pray we weren’t reaching for the unreachable.




Epilogue: What, no death?

Wait, wasn’t he supposed to die? But he does. Just not yet. 
In a hurry, are you? Wishing me dead? There was a time when I too rooted for bad things to happen to me, because that was my only ticket to Root. 
Death will come for both me and you, I guarantee, before you know it. There’s much more to tell about the time that comes before. We’ve only scratched the surface here. 
But that will have to wait because …
I’m fading … not to Root … not to Earth … but to a place where only the good and the dead can go.

*****

THE END