He sniffed, smiling.
“Each of you is, at present, lying kinda sorta dead on the side of a coastal road. This is due to a recent head-on collision with one Mr. Howard Heyward, age fifty-eight, of two hundred eighty-one Admiral Road, South Kingstown, who was driving a Chevrolet Kodiak tow truck. Time is standing still. It has become trapped inside an eighth of a second like a luna moth inside a mason jar. There is a way out, of course. There is one means by which the moth can escape and time can fly irrevocably free. Each of you must vote during the last three minutes of every wake. You must choose the single person among you who will survive. This person will return to life. The remainder of you will move on to true death, a state permanent yet wholly unknown. The decision must be unanimous, save one dissenter. There can be only one who lives. There are no exceptions. Do you have questions?”
No one said a word.
All I could think was that he was senile after all. He also seemed to have once been an actor, because he had intoned his speech like the baritone narrator of some old 1950s TV Western starring John Wayne, his voice lilting, old-fashioned, and grand. There was an effortlessness to his every word, as if he’d given this memorized speech dozens of times before.
He was waiting for one of us to say something.
Kipling started to clap. “Bravo.”
“Hold on,” said Martha, scowling. “Is he selling Bibles?”
“What do you want?” demanded Cannon.
The man shrugged. “I am a simple resource. I desire no compensation, monetary or otherwise. Nonetheless, I wish for you to succeed.”
“Succeed at what?” asked Whitley.
“The vote.”
“Listen,” said Cannon. “It’s been a long night. Tell us what you want.”
“It appears my delivery was a bit rushed for your comprehension. Would you like the news a different way? Dramatic reenactment? Flash cards? A second language? Italian tends to soften the blow of even the most ominous prognosis, which was why Dante used it for the Inferno.” He cleared his throat. “Buonasera. Tra la vita e la morte, il tempo è diventato congelato—”
“That’s enough,” snapped Cannon. “Get the hell off this porch.”
The man was unfazed. He smiled, revealing small gray teeth.
“Very well. Good luck to you all. Godspeed.”
He hopped nimbly down the steps, striding out to the driveway. Within seconds he was drenched and vanishing into the yard beyond the lights. We listened to his footsteps sloshing through the grass.
“My brain just exploded,” said Martha.
“Worst door-to-door salesman ever,” said Kip, shaking his head. “I think he learned his sales techniques from Monty Python. What did he call us?”
“Dead,” I whispered.
“Right. I’ve been called many things. Deadhead. Deadbeat. Never just plain old dead. Has a sort of bleak ring to it.”
“He’s a Jesus freak,” said Whitley, nibbling her fingernail. “Right? In some cult? Should I call the police? There may be others out there. They might be waiting to break in here and slaughter us or something.”
“He’s harmless,” mumbled Cannon. Yet he seemed unnerved. Scowling out at the empty driveway, he suddenly seized an umbrella and barreled outside just as another monstrous clap of thunder exploded and the rain fell harder. He stomped into the yard, looking around, disappearing in the same spot as the old man.
We waited in silence, apprehensive.
A minute later, Cannon reappeared.
“Must have headed back to the road. No sign of him.”
“Let’s check the security cameras,” said Whitley.
They headed downstairs to the surveillance room, and Kip and Martha—muttering about needing “a stiff drink before the ensuing elderly zombie apocalypse”—shuffled back into the living room.
I remained where I was, staring outside.
There had been something legitimately upsetting about the old man. All the eloquence, the formal speech, the accent—at once like a cable newscaster’s and someone who’d spent a year abroad in England—seemed only to conceal a deep calculation. As if what he had told us were only one small piece of a grand plan.
I watched the woods, searching for movement, trying to steady my drunken head.
Suddenly, music erupted from inside, overlaying the storm with a soundtrack, softening the night’s edge. With a deep breath, I shut the door and bolted it. Whitley was right. He was probably just looking to recruit people for his church.
Still, I walked past Kip and Martha, curled up stroking Gandalf on the couch, and took out my phone, stepping into the hall. My mom answered on the first ring.
“Bee? Is everything all right?”
I could tell from her anxious tone that she and my dad were both still awake, doubtlessly reading in bed: Dad, one of his thirty-pound presidential biographies, Mom trying to read a thriller by James Patterson, though she’d probably been skimming the same paragraph four, five times before blurting “I don’t understand why she had to go see them. They still have some mysterious hold on her.” Then Dad, with the patient, knowing stare over his glasses: “If she wants to see them she can, Victoria. She’s an adult. She’s stronger than you give her credit for.”
I realized I had no idea why I was calling, except to hear her voice.
“It’s too late to drive back, so I’m spending the night,” I said.
“Well, your father needs you at the Crow for opening. Sleepy Sam called to say he’s having a tooth pulled.”
“I’ll be there.”
She lowered her voice: “How’s it going with them? Can you talk? You sound upset.”
“Everything’s fine. I love you.”
“We love you too, Bumble. We’re here if you need us.”
I hung up, just as Whitley and Cannon were returning from the surveillance room.
“No sign of him on the cameras,” said Cannon.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“This night gets an A-plus in weird,” slurred Martha.
“Wasn’t it hilarious how he asked to be called the Keeper?” said Kip, shaking his head. “The man looked like more of an Eastern European Santa Claus.”
Whitley wrinkled her nose. “That was my Internet password for everything for years. I’m not even kidding. The keeper one-two-three.”
In the end, the consensus was he was Just One of Those Things, one of life’s untied shoelaces. As the thunderstorm raged on, however, lightning cracking and thunder yowling, at one point a giant oak branch crashed onto the back deck, demolishing the entire railing.
We jumped, staring at each other, doubtlessly imagining the same thing: here it was, the beginning of the horror to which that funny old man had been the creepy prelude.
Only nothing happened.
Another hour passed. Whitley talked about being sexually harassed by her boss at the San Francisco law firm where she’d had an internship all summer. Cannon couldn’t tell if he was in love with his girlfriend, an international fencing champion.
“Love is this elusive bird,” he said. “You’re the lifelong bird-watcher, looking for this rare red-plumed quail people spend entire lives trying to see for three seconds in a cherry tree on a mountaintop in Japan.”
“You’re mistaking love for perfection,” I said. “Real love when it’s there? It’s just there. It’s a metal folding chair.”
When no one said anything, I realized, embarrassed, I’d blurted this as a clumsy way to bring up Jim. And I was about to. Then Whitley got up to get more Royal Salute, and Kipling muttered that he hadn’t been this wasted since he was nine, and the moment was gone.