Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (50 page)

11111
EPILOGUE

MONDAY, APRIL 11: 9:35
p.m.

Nolan’s house is nearly empty now. The bare wooden floors shine, reflecting the tame, crackling fire safely contained within the fireplace. The photographs are all packed away—those friendly ghosts closed up in boxes. Some will be removed and displayed in the new home, but many will remain in their boxes, pleasant memories to be taken out and viewed from time to time. His personal things are packed, and his late wife’s clothes have been given away. Last week his children came to help him pack, to choose some things of their own, to meet Marianne, and to approve of their father’s plans heartily.

Nolan sits in his pajamas on a mattress on the floor near the fire—an old mattress he and Marianne will use this one last night and then discard. The boxes of books, records, and personal things were sent ahead to Oregon today in the moving van along with the furniture. Still remaining in the house are the few things that will go in the car with them.

He watches the fire raptly for a while, then realizes he is sitting by himself.

“Honey, where are you?” he calls out.

No reply.

He sees a light shining behind the kitchen door. He knows that she’s using her new computer, one of a small number of things not sent ahead in the van. She has kept it here so she can continue working down to the last minute. The computer will be packed into the car tomorrow morning, but Marianne promised Nolan that she won’t unpack it at hotel stops along the way—has promised not to think of work during the long, beautiful drive up the coast.

They’re taking the slow route.

We both need the break from work. And from the memories.

The thought reminds him of the fifteen former Auggie cells who are now in custody and under treatment. Whether or not they carried out any killings, Gusfield says, they all have tangled memories of the acts of murder. After Auggie’s death, many of them telephoned the Insomnimania office in anguish and confusion. Others were identified by families or associates as information about Auggie’s cells was made public. Gusfield believes that more will be found after his new book is published describing their dissociative symptoms.

Even so, no cases have been brought to trial. And as the days go by, it becomes clearer that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute any of the Auggie cells—even those who, by their own admission, physically acted out the murders.

The whole business makes Nolan queasy. But he is thankful that Marianne has shown no dissociative symptoms—at least none that he can see and none that she admits. Nolan knows he will never fully understand what she went through on that terrible night eight weeks ago—that night when she became part of Auggie.

He will never forget the harsh sound of her voice on the phone when she was consumed by Auggie’s personality …

“Your precious Marianne doesn’t even exist.”

He calls out again:

“Honey, did you hear me?”

*

Marianne doesn’t answer right away. She’d prefer that Nolan not know what she’s doing. She is sitting on a kitchen stool, looking at the computer screen.

Nolan’s voice calls out again, more insistently this time.

“Honey?”

“Yes, I heard you,” she replies.

“Why are you in the kitchen? I want you in here.”

“I’ll be there in a moment.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just finishing something up.”

And then she whispers to herself softly, again.

“Just finishing something up.”

She is looking at Insomnimania’s desktop maze.

She takes a long, deep breath and types the words …

“Auggie is Auggie”

… and strikes the return key.

She stares for a moment at the message on the computer screen …

INVALID COMMAND

Marianne smiles.

She has carried out this experiment frequently during the two months since Auggie’s suicide. She doesn’t suppose that Nolan knows she does this. She’d rather he didn’t know. She would like to think that she will not keep making this check once they reach Oregon. But she knows that isn’t true. She will keep checking for months, perhaps even years, to come.

Can Auggie be really dead?

You can kill a clown. You can kill a personality, whether in the flesh or in machines. But can you kill the Trickster? Can you kill an idea, an ancient image that resonates through every single human mind?

Unlike many of the other cells, Marianne has had no nightmares since the whole thing happened. She remains unhaunted by Auggie’s memories. Perhaps she did not fall deep enough into his terrible heart.

Marianne fingers the side of her face and her left arm under her nightgown. It is pure nervous habit now. The burns are healed, and she has long since had no need for the doctor’s pain pills. But it makes her think of the woman who admitted starting the fire—the same woman, DNA tests showed, who drowned Renee.

Marianne had insisted that she must
see
the woman she had so often imagined. Finally, looking through a one-way clinic mirror, Marianne discovered that the large female warrior was only a creation of her own mind. The woman inside was only slightly heavier and more muscular than Marianne. Her hair was long, her eyes red and puffy, and her expression one of utter despair. Then the woman turned her head and looked directly at the mirror side of the window—directly, it seemed, at Marianne. For a moment, it was as though Marianne gazed into the eyes of her own reflection. It is the only image from Auggie’s world that haunts Marianne’s mind.

Nolan’s voice calls out again, a little impatiently.

“Honey, get the hell out here.”

“All right, already,” she calls back.

She shuts down the computer, rises to her feet, and goes into the living room.

*

Nolan feels a surge of relief at the sight of her scarred but beautiful face in the lighted doorway. It is
her
face he sees, clear and untainted—Marianne, with no remnant of Auggie there. Nolan wonders when he’ll stop feeling this apprehension followed by relief.

He thrusts the thought out of his mind. He grins at her.

“Hey,
there’s
my little punker!” he says.

She grins back at him weakly. He can see that she’s getting a little tired of this old joke. Marianne’s hair was shaved to the scalp because of her burns, and her hair is only now an inch-long bristle.

“So you
are
planning to let your hair grow back,” he says in mock resignation as she sits down on the mattress.

“Of course.”

“And you’re absolutely sure you don’t want to make it a Mohawk?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not being ridiculous. I’m crazy about women with Mohawks. Aren’t you going to grow one?”

“Only if you grow one, too,” Marianne says.

“Naw,” Nolan says. “Then nobody could tell us apart.”

They both laugh.

On the floor near the fireplace, propped against the empty bookcase, is the carousel horse, its layers of frayed and ragged paint revealing worlds within worlds of tantalizing stories that will be left just as they are. The pole has gone in the moving van. The horse will travel in the car with them.

“It was nice of Renee’s family to offer a choice of her things to friends,” Marianne says, looking at the horse.

“That was sweet, wasn’t it?” Nolan says.

The couple curls up together, tiredly, comfortably holding onto each other like survivors of a disaster, heads propped together, hands touching, eyes barely open.

Everything is quiet except for the friendly crackling of the fire.

*

“Are you going to miss anybody in L.A.?” she asks.

“I’ll miss Clay.”

“Anyone else?” she asks.

“Nope.”

“Won’t you miss Coffey?”

“Nope.”

They both laugh.

“Not just a little?” she says.

“Okay, maybe just a little. And what about you? Aren’t you going to miss anybody?”

“No,” she says.

“Not Stephen?” he asks.

“No,” she says.

But she does feel a pang of pity for Stephen—for the awful guilt he felt at the thing that happened, for the emptiness she knows still permeates his life. She hopes, for Stephen’s sake, that emptiness gets filled someday.

The world is full of lonely souls.

“So you’re not going to miss anybody at all?” Nolan asks insistently.

Marianne pulls herself against him, holding onto his arm tightly. “I won’t miss anybody,” she promises.

They gaze into the fire silently for a few long moments.

“What do you see in the fire?” she asks.

“Just a fire,” he replies.

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“You don’t see any faces or images or anything?”

“Hey, I’m a cop, not a poet.”

But Marianne
does
see something in the fire. She sees herself fulfilling a lengthy and arduous task. She remembers that solitary figure crossing a frozen lake carrying a mysterious bundle on its back. And now she has reached the other side of the frozen lake, where a loved one has long and patiently awaited her arrival.

The bundle she has been carrying is full of twigs and firewood. And now she’s built a huge, warm fire by which the two of them can sit and hold one another in the midst of a cold and sometimes bitter world.

“What do
you
see in the fire?” Nolan asks.

“Nothing,” she says, surprised at her little lie.

“Not a damn thing?”

“No.”

“Then what the hell were you bugging
me
about it for?”

She laughs. As they hold each other close, she wonders …

What’s out there beyond the campfire? Clear meadows or dark forests? Gentle dreams … or nightmares?

She knows that tonight she and Nolan will make love by the fire and tomorrow they will begin a new life.

But what about the day after tomorrow?

And what about the day after that?

Clusters of neurons rattle these questions back and forth across her brain and return a terse, two-word reply:

INVALID COMMAND

The Authors and Their Other Works

Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin are a pair of writers who usually work in collaboration. They met and married in Los Angeles more than 25 years ago, and have lived in Portland OR, Des Moines IA, Chapel Hill NC, and the historical Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende. Visit Pat and Wim at their
home page
. Their work has been published by large mainstream houses and by independent and educational publishers. Here are some of their other books you’ll find in ebook and paperback formats now (or coming soon).

Mayan Interface

A tightly-woven award-winning tale that blends mysticism, technology, archaeology, and authentic Mayan history. Fiction: Metaphysical and Visionary; Thriller

Kindle ebook
and
Paperback

Did you ever get the feeling you’ve NEVER been here before? That’s JAMAIS VU!

Jamais Vu Views

Real people, fictional world! Drawing on both
The Jamais Vu Papers
and the newsletter that inspired it, these “jamais inter-vus” are intriguing conversations between fictional characters and real people.

Metaphysical; Consciousness and Thought

Kindle
and
Paperback
editions

The Jamais Vu Papers

Or, Misadventures in the Worlds of Science, Myth, and Magic

First published by Harmony Books/Crown in 1991, this eccentric novel maintained a following over the years. The new 2010 edition has won awards for visionary fiction.

Fiction: Metaphysical and Visionary; Philosophy: Consciousness and Thought

Paperback

And more:

Horses: in myths, legends, folktales, ancient stories

Legends, mythology, and other horse tales from great storytellers, edited by Pat Perrin for today’s readers.

Kindle ebook
and Paperback

The Poe You Don’t Know

Readers of this book may be surprised to meet a playful, exuberant Edgar Allan Poe. Collected and introduced by editor Wim Coleman.

Kindle ebook
and Paperback

The Lullaby Tree

A no-holds-barred literary and theatrical extravaganza of ideas by Wim Coleman. Prose and verse, vulgarity and beauty, farce and heartbreak, earthiness and mysticism—meant as much to be read as to be staged.

Kindle ebook
and Paperback

Juggler in the Wind

YA; A quest beyond ordinary reality. A completely new take on the ancient Olympian Gods.

Kindle ebook
and Paperback (also in other ebook formats)

Anna’s World

YA; Multiple-award-winning historical fiction; 1845 America—a bright, headstrong girl faces challenges in a Shaker community and in Boston.

Kindle ebook
and Paperback (also in other ebook formats)

Red Monocle Series, middle grade adventures in myths and legends

The Taker and the Keeper,
Kindle ebook
and Paperback (also in other ebook formats)

The Death of the Good Wizard,
Kindle ebook
and Paperback (also in other ebook formats)