It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust. At first he can see only blackness interrupted by the four torches flaring around the room—as if he is floating through some region of outer space lit by many competing suns—and then the room begins to take shape.
He knows he is underground, from the staircase they dragged him down, the steadily cooling air, and its sulfuric, mushroomy smell. The floor is crumbling concrete. Square stone pillars are staggered throughout the space, the basement of some store that must have once sold children’s toys. There are heaps of rusted bicycles and baby strollers, a life-size clown with hair made of red yarn, moldy stuffed bears, shelving units full of video game consoles.
Among the stone columns stand a dozen or so bodies—whether men or women, he doesn’t know. They surround him, he discovers when he spins in a circle, all of them wearing black sacks over their faces.
“Go ahead. What do you want?”
When one of them speaks, he can tell the voice is a put-on, roughened to sound deeper than it is. “What do you know about Oregon?”
He checks his sleeve to make sure the letter is still there. “Oregon.” Until now, he has never said the word aloud, though he has read it countless times on maps, in books, and only minutes before in the letter. He feels as if someone has reached into his head and stolen what preoccupies him. He tries to keep his voice as calm as possible, but still it quivers. “Why do you want to know about Oregon?”
“Do you know the way there?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I know maps. I know paper. But that’s not the same as—”
“You want to leave this place, don’t you, Meriwether?”
That voice. Husked over, but familiar. He stares at the black sack. Holes have been cut into it for the mouth and eyes. He wonders if he can recognize someone by the eyes alone. The figure retreats a step.
Lewis says, “What do you know about—”
“You want to. Who wouldn’t want to? You’ve always dreamed about leaving this place. That’s why you bury your face in books and maps. You like to imagine that there might be more to life than this. You aren’t alone. We feel the same. We want you to take us beyond the wall. We want you to help us find the way to Oregon.”
“Absolutely not.”
“We need your help.”
“I am needed here.”
“We need you.”
“I am needed here.”
“By your mayor or your mother?”
“I am needed here.” He feels something rising inside him—boiling, spilling over. If it was a taste, it would be bile. If it had a color, it would be red. “Don’t make me upset. I’m getting upset.”
The ceiling seems to lower and the stone pillars to crowd around him like bars. The masked figures sneak closer, knot around him. His breath is whistling through his bared teeth. He is blinking back tears. He imagines that beneath their clothes are bones, that they are a horde of skeletons beckoning him into an open grave.
“Or what?” the voice says. “You’ll call for help? No one can hear you. We are asking you nicely. But we don’t have to ask you at all. We can make you—”
He tries not to let happen what happens next, but he cannot stop himself. His hands rise, unbidden, as if separate from him. Something takes form on his mouth, not words but sounds no one else would recognize, long vowels and flat, hard consonants uttered with speed and volume unlike him.
He feels a woof inside him, as fire makes when it finds a pocket of oxygen, and he can feel a heat in his hands. He hurls it—he does not know a better way to describe it than this, as if the heat were a heavy ball—at the figure across from him. The room brightens. The figure flies backward, as if dragged by an invisible wire, until stopped by a stone pillar. He cannot be sure over the thunder of his own voice, but he believes he hears a woman screaming.
She—yes, it is a she—writhes against the column and cries out, tells him to stop, calls him by name. “No, Lewis! Stop!” But he does not. He is outside himself, taken over by some current he only moderately understands. When he breathes, it is with a concussion of heat, and when he sees, it is through a scrim of hot, floating sparks, as if he is burning up inside. Her feet rise off the ground—she is suspended in the air—her arms lashing as if she might cast off whatever grips her. Her mask peels away from her face, and he sees then the copper-colored hair, sees the face twisted in pain. Clark.
He goes silent and drops his hands, and in doing so releases her. She falls heavily to the floor, a knot of limbs. She coughs and gasps for air.
Lewis feels a sudden exhaustion, as if all the energy in his body is spiraling down some pipe, and he knows he must escape this place before he collapses himself.
He looks at the masked figures around him to see if they will test him. But they are retreating, clutching and tripping over each other, falling back onto the bikes, bringing down a shelf of stuffed animals, and so he brushes past them contemptuously.
Chapter 4
THERE HAS ALWAYS been something different about Lewis.
When they were children, playing the drum game, Thomas could not understand how Lewis so expertly pursued him, despite his blindfold, always stepping around holes or over piles of excrement, climbing ladders, navigating alleyways, so that sometimes he was accused of cheating, peeking. But he wasn’t. He just had a way, if he concentrated deeply, of seeing without his eyes.