American Elsewhere

CHAPTER TWELVE




It’s a bad night, Joseph can tell. He can tell by how the trees begin to devour the sun, and the way the stars stab through the soft blue sky and shine down just a little too brightly. It’s in the way the wind rubs its back on the pines, and they bend a little more than they should. It’s even in the way his family’s chandelier lights the dinner table: the light is flat and lifeless, like it’s cast from a neon light filled with the powdery remains of trapped insects. It makes the food look like gruel and gives skin the look of parchment.

On nights like this, his family knows, you get your day done as fast as you can, and then you go to bed. It’s not enough to just stay indoors. You don’t even want to be awake. Being awake attracts attention, which you definitely don’t want.

But awake is exactly what Joseph is, as he lies in his bed and stares at the ceiling. He tries to ignore the shadows dancing across the blinds in his bedroom window. He tries not to think of Gracie, and her cool touch and saddened eyes. She seems so much sadder these days, and since Mr. Macey caught them he hasn’t dared contact her. And he tries not to think of what could be happening out there, among the buttes and bluffs around Wink, or in its darkened streets and alleys, or in the playground at the elementary school. Tonight is most definitely a bad night. One of the worst in a while.

He freezes, and sits up in bed a little. Was it his imagination, or was there a tap at his window? He soon realizes it wasn’t his imagination, because there’s another tap, this one much louder. Then a soft pitter-pat as something rains against his window, like sand…

He stands up and walks to his window, but does not open his blinds. They glow slightly from the streetlight outside. He sees something dark fly up and strike the glass on the other side, and there’s another tap.

Someone’s throwing things at the glass, he thinks. Or are they being tossed by the wind?

Joseph reaches toward the blinds, but hesitates. He has never heard of someone’s window being tampered with at night… that’s not how things are supposed to go. But what if it’s known that he’s awake? What if this is how his crime is addressed? Maybe this is how it happens…

But Joseph throws caution to the wind, and he takes one slat of the blinds and lifts it up ever so slightly. A blade of light pokes through, and he squints to see through it.

His window is on the ground floor, and he can see the edge of the forest just beyond his house. There’s a figure standing just beside the trunk of one tree: a white hand is resting against its bark and is barely caught by the luminescence of the streetlight.

The hand rises and gestures to him, telling him to come out, and his heart nearly stops. He should never have looked through the blinds, he thinks. This was all a huge mistake…

The figure seems to grow frustrated at his lack of response. It gestures again, and Joseph is just about to shut the blinds when the hand’s owner steps out into the light.

It is Gracie. She is dressed in black, except for a checked skirt. Her skin is paler than usual. She looks almost bloodless in the streetlight. She gestures to him again.

This worries Joseph: they shouldn’t be seeing one another after Macey caught them, and it’s definitely not a night to be going out. He glances around at the trees, then pulls his blinds up and opens his window.

“What are you doing?” he hisses as Gracie approaches. “Go back home, Gracie! It’s dangerous out!”

“Not for me, it isn’t,” she says. There is something soft and hollow in her voice. “Come out with me. I need to talk to you.”

“What? Are you insane? I can’t come out in this!”

“You can if I’m with you,” says Gracie. “Come out, Joseph. You won’t be harmed.”

“Mr. Macey caught us, though. We can’t risk it.”

“Mr. Macey’s what I want to talk to you about.”

He looks at the trees bending in the wind. They bend so much he’s sure they’ll break. “They’re angry,” he says softly.

“They aren’t angry,” she says. “They’re scared. Scared and confused. Come out with me.”

Joseph looks into her eyes. There is something new there, something that shouldn’t be. It’s as if there’s a flaw in their color that’s appeared overnight. “All right,” he says.

He puts on some slippers and climbs out the window to her. She holds out a hand for him, then leads him away into the woods.

The woods are cold and strange in the night. The way the wind runs through them makes it sound as if they are filled with voices. Sometimes he and Gracie pass through a glade and it looks like no place on earth: the stones are black and shiny, and boulders with queer angles lean drunkenly against the night sky. Joseph smells the air and realizes it has that electric, ionized scent to it, and he understands she is leading him through No-Go Zones, one after the other. But these are ones he has never seen before, ones no one in town might even know exist. He is almost faint with fear at the idea of it.

“Where are you taking me, Gracie?” he asks.

“To the lake, to talk,” she says. “In quiet. There are too many eyes here in the woods. Too many eyes in town, too, too many ears listening to everything and everyone.”

“And the lake will be safe?”

“Safer. Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because no one wants to be near the lake,” she says simply.

The woods go on and on. Joseph never knew they were so big. But then, he has never really ventured into them before. As a young boy he always wanted to, for what child would turn down an untamed kingdom just beyond his doorstep? But it was drilled into him from the start that his life, like everyone’s in Wink, was to be anchored to the streets and sidewalks and well-lit areas, places of sunlight and fresh breeze. The other places, the places in the forest and those hidden in the canyons, well… those just weren’t theirs to have.

Gracie holds up a hand, and they stop. She places a finger to her lips. Then she looks up and scans the pines above them. Joseph looks with her, but sees nothing. It feels like they’ve been looking forever when they hear a sound coming from the treetops.

It’s an awful sound, one that makes Joseph’s teeth hurt, like someone’s taken a swarm of some particularly vicious cousin of the cicada, tossed them all in a bag, and given the bag a shake, pissing them off. And yet Joseph feels there are words in that buzz. The thing in the trees is calling out a message, like a warning—This territory is mine. Stay off.

Gracie motions to him to stoop down low, and they begin to creep around the area the sound came from. As they pass through one glen Joseph looks up through the branches, and he sees something at the top of a tree, near the trunk. It is dark, but he thinks he sees the silhouette of a man, balanced perfectly on a high branch like a rooster on top of a barn. In the starlight Joseph thinks he can make out the edge of the man’s face, and while he can discern a nose and a mouth, he cannot see any ears, or eyes… as he looks closer, the dark figure shifts a little on the branch, settles back its shoulders, and it lifts its head, and as it does the horrible buzz fills the forest again.

Joseph feels his heart ratchet up its rate until he can feel his pulse in his eyes. The shadowy figure in the tree trembles as the buzz dies to a close, and he can see the thing begin looking around from the top of the tree, searching for intruders…

Gracie takes Joseph by the shoulder. “Come on,” she whispers. “Hurry.”

“I thought you said nothing in the woods would hurt you,” Joseph whispers back.

“I think so, but I don’t want to test that.”

They slip around the thing in the tree and come to a path down to the lake. The path is very steep, but Gracie seems to have no issue seeing in the dark, and with her to guide him Joseph has no problem. Soon the trees draw back and the lake emerges: it is not really a lake, but more of a pond, fed by an underground spring. It is long and thin, a gash in the mountain’s side. The waters are so still they are like a mirror, a puddle of stars among the rocks. On the far side is the elderly Miss Tucker’s house. He notes that she is awake, apparently without concern: all of her lights are on, and he can see her moving in the windows. But then, he has heard she has an arrangement, just like Gracie.

Gracie sits down on a stone shelf beside the lake, and Joseph joins her. “What is it?” he asks.

Gracie just stares at the pink moon in the skies. Then, “You know I love you, don’t you?”

Joseph is startled by the question. He is not sure what to say. He has never even considered the question. He longs for her, needs her, yes, but that’s quite a bit different from love.

“I hope you do,” she says. “You are the only good thing in my life, Joseph. The only normal thing. The only thing that reminds me that I’m a person. My parents don’t, not anymore. Everything changed after they made my arrangement. And Mr. First… God. Sometimes I fool myself into thinking he’s… it’s…”

She falls quiet. Joseph watches apprehensively, not sure what to do. “What is it?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Someone needs to know,” she says. “And I want to take care of you.” She steels herself. “You remember the last time you came to see me? When I went to go see Mr. First, and Mr. Macey caught us?

“Yes,” says Joseph, who honestly wishes he could forget it.

“They let me stay when they talked. I guess they didn’t think I could hear them, or understand them. It’s not… normal when they talk among themselves. They don’t talk like people.”

“I don’t know if I want to know this, Gracie,” Joseph says. “I know too much already. I know I used to laugh about things like that, but… but ever since Macey found us…”

“Macey doesn’t care,” she says.

“He doesn’t?”

“No. He has bigger things to worry about. He’s been walking out into the countryside, every night. I’ve seen him.”

“Why?”

“He’s been talking. Letting everyone know the news. Gossiping, I guess.”

“To who?”

“There are many of them that look like us, Joseph,” she says. “More than you think, probably. That’s what they’d all do, if they could—look like us. But some can’t. Like Mr. First. And others. And they can’t stay in town. They have to find their own way wherever they can.”

She looks into the waters. Joseph follows her gaze, staring into the starlit lake. It takes him a moment to realize he can see beyond its surface: there are rocks down there, spectral and silvery, and some plant life, like moss or reeds. But some of the plants do not look like reeds. They’re too fleshy, too pale. And they all seem connected to something, like there’s a big tangle of them down in the lake.

A minnow, no more than a dart of black in the water, comes swimming by one of the fleshy reeds. The flow of the reed changes—from sine to cosine, thinks Joseph, who’s a bit of a math geek—as if it’s resisting the current of the water, which a reed definitely should not do. But then the reed snaps out, silent and snakelike, and he sees a flash of tiny, shining needle teeth, and the minnow is gone…

“Wh-what’s that?” Joseph stammers. “What’s down there?”

“It’s why there’s no one near the lake,” says Gracie. “But it won’t bother us. I’ve talked to Miss Tucker about it.” She bows her head. “I listened to them speak, Mr. Macey and Mr. First. They talked like old friends. Which I guess they are. But Mr. Macey… he was terrified. I’d never seen that before.”

“Everyone seems nervous, after Mr. Weringer died,” says Joseph.

“And that’s what’s strange. No one’s ever said it—no one ever says anything, of course—but they can’t die, can they? It’s not… allowed. There are rules.”

Joseph nods.

“You’re afraid of them, aren’t you?” Gracie says.

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“Some, maybe. They’re not bad. They’re just lost. But for the longest time, I thought they weren’t afraid of anything.” She looks back at him. “But I was wrong, Joseph. They are afraid of someone. And they’re afraid of that person just as much as we’re afraid of them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mr. Macey came back to Mr. First again,” she says. “He said he’d learned who killed Weringer. Or he thought he’d learned who. He said a word then—I couldn’t understand it—and Mr. First went all quiet. And after that, Mr. First was so dismayed he could barely talk, to me or Mr. Macey. I didn’t know who it was they were talking about, but it’s someone new, and the… I guess the rules don’t apply to them. Whoever this person is, they’re allowed to hurt things, to kill them. I don’t know why they haven’t before now, but that’s what they’re doing. Or what they did, to Mr. Weringer.”

Joseph huddles close to Gracie on the stone shelf. His intentions are far from amorous: he is terrified, terrified of the thing in the water and those strange glens in the woods, and now she’s telling him about someone even worse, someone that inspires fear in things he thought couldn’t even understand fear. Yet Gracie is still and calm, a stable rock on this dark, swirling mountain, so he clings to her.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks.

“Because I don’t want to see you hurt,” she says. “Things are changing in Wink. Things never change in Wink, but that’s what’s happening now. I want to make sure you’ll be safe.”

“Would you run away with me, Gracie?”

“Run away?” She is quiet. “I’ve never thought about it… I don’t know if… I don’t know if I’ll be able to get away.”

“But I’d want you to come with me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Joseph, are you listening? This is much, much more important than you or me.”

Joseph draws back a little, stung.

“You don’t understand how bad this is,” says Gracie. “I might be one of the only people who knows what’s going on, thanks to Mr. First. He’s given me certain… authorities, though I’m not sure he knows it.”

Joseph looks at her out of the side of his eye. She is staring into the dark waters with queerly lifeless eyes. “Is that why you seem so different?” he asks.

She shuts her eyes. “It gets worse at night. In the day I feel all right, but at night… things change.” She swallows. “I’m in one place… and then, if I’m not looking, I’m suddenly someplace very different. Somewhere with red stars, and many mountains…”

There is a ripple in the water, then another. At first Joseph is nervous, eyes searching for those fleshy tendrils in the water, but then he realizes Gracie is crying, her tears falling into the pond. It is a disturbing sight, for she cries without moving her face at all: her eyes are wide and calm, with tears simply welling up at the rims to leak down her face.

Joseph embraces her and holds her close. “It’s all right,” he says.

“It’s not,” she says. “It isn’t and it won’t be. Not for me.”

“We’ll make it all right.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. We’ll do what we can, I guess. We can’t do anything more than that.” But though Joseph’s words are comforting, he is disturbed. He’s held her as she’s cried before, but not like this, arms limp and eyes wide open as she talks into his lap in a monotone voice.

There is the sound of singing from the other side of the lake. Miss Tucker has hobbled out of her cabin and is standing on the dock with a lantern, singing a tuneless little reel. There is a splash from the center of the lake, a bit of froth stirred up—perhaps by the wind, perhaps by something else—and he sees the old woman stoop and hold something just above the waters. Perhaps a fish? A hunk of meat? He isn’t sure. There is another splash, and a moan from somewhere near the dock, and she stands back up and wipes her hand on her dress. But now her hand is empty, and she is smiling out at the waters with the fondness of a trainer observing the antics of a well-behaved pet.

“What I would give,” says Gracie, “for an arrangement as simple as that.”