No response.
I thought about going to find him. But first I tried another spot in the ground, and, to my relief, the blade cut solidly into dirt. A few more tests, and I concluded that, no, the floor wasn’t mainly rock. At least not near the surface. I’d been unlucky the first time. And so I began to dig. It did me some good, the physical labor. I didn’t pace myself at all and was out of breath almost immediately. Good. Throwing myself into the hard job of moving earth, I was able to keep myself from thinking too hard about the reason I was here.
Each time I rammed the shovel into the ground, I prepared myself for the inevitable layer of rock. But each time I came up with dirt, I felt a little closer to going home.
I heard Nolan return a few times, dropping branches and rocks outside the cave. Then he came inside and asked if he could take a turn. By then a hole was already taking shape at my feet, and a heap of wet dirt was growing beside me.
“No,” I said. My face felt gritty from sweat and dirt. “I’ll keep going.”
“You sure?” he asked.
My answer was another shovelful of dirt. He left me alone without another word.
My back began to ache like it did whenever I shoveled snow. I acknowledged the pain with indifference, but I didn’t quit or even slow down. The hole was growing. Soon this would be over. The only thing that could stop me, I believed, was a layer of rock. Or maybe a thick, thick root.
First, what I see in dreams: the bag beside me moving almost imperceptibly in the moonlight. So slightly, I wonder if it’s only shadows paying tricks. Or the defective vision of someone who’s been shoveling dirt too long. I resume my digging, but then I hear a slow zippering sound. Fascinated, I watch as the bag unzips an inch, then two, then three. First I’m hit with the rotting stench of a thousand corpses. Then a finger slides out. Sometimes it’s the stiff, hairy finger of an aging panhandler. Other times it’s a young, feminine finger, the nail carefully polished, and I know right away that it’s Cynthia in the bag—badly hurt, but not dead. Sometimes it’s one finger; sometimes it’s two or three. When that happens, the diamond in her engagement ring reflects the moonlight.
And then the nearly deceased speak to me. They ask simple questions, the only ones that matter.
What have I done wrong?
I tell them they’ve done nothing wrong. I try to explain that I never meant for any of this to happen. I just kept believing we could fix our mistakes without anyone getting hurt.
Must I die?
Yes. You must.
But you can change your mind.
I’m sorry. There’s nothing to be done.
But you could if you wanted to.
What makes you think I can be a hero now, when I couldn’t do it two days ago when all I had to do was stop a car?
Not a hero. Just a human being.
I’m sorry.
Then you must be the devil.
I don’t think I am. But I suppose it’s possible.
Every so often, in the dream, I’ll surprise myself. Yes, I see your point, I’ll say, and unzip the bag. And whoever it is inside will emerge as if from a cocoon, whole again, and I’ll feel a joy unlike anything I’ve ever felt in waking life. But when the dream takes this course, eventually I realize that I’m dreaming, and that this dream, as beautiful as it is, hasn’t been worth it, because now I’ll have to wake up. But I don’t wake up. When the dream shoots off in this joyous direction, it always repeats and repeats until eventually it gets back on track and the worst thing happens.
I don’t know why these dreams always include the sound of the bag unzipping. It isn’t what happened out in the woods that night.
The sound I heard was different.
Soft, breathy, lasting about three seconds. A sound like the last moments of an air mattress deflating. Then it stopped.
I froze. Wondered if I’d imagined it. Or heard a gust of wind, made strange by the acoustics in this rocky chamber.
It hadn’t sounded like the wind, though. It sounded like a sigh of resignation, an animal’s last gasp. Maybe even a blissful utterance, an unconscious response to a final dream of shimmering light. But one thing was sure: It was a sign of life.
Sometimes the dream will begin much earlier, back at the house in Newfield. Sitting on the back deck with Cynthia on a sunny late afternoon drinking iced tea. Or it will begin at a gig. I’m a drummer again, living in New York City and playing with High Noon, and Gwen is playing the bass, and everyone I’ve ever loved is there in the audience watching, cheering me on, and I feel so glad to be making music again that I can’t help myself from sobbing.
But no matter where the dream starts, or how often it repeats, it always ends exactly the same way: in the cave, with the bag slowly opening.
And then—always—the shovel.
This is where my nightmare and my waking world collide.