Dividing Earth: A Novel of Dark Fantasy (8 page)

They stared at each other. After a while Mary looked around, at the mahogany bookshelves that had been built into the walls, at the volumes that rested within them. All that knowledge, all those keen minds; the savagery of dynamic thought captured on reams of yellowed paper, bound by ancient leather and forgotten in the upper reaches of austere academia. How long had it been since the dean had climbed that oak ladder? How long since he’d taken down a volume and been touched by the fire?

All of a sudden, as if he’d heard her thoughts, the dean stiffened. “Have a wonderful day, Miss McDylan. I imagine your future here at Carmichael will be short.”

She nearly turned to walk away, but stopped. “All these books, all this showy stuff—and for this,” she said, turning, gazing into the darkly colored, deep room.

The dean looked up. “What, Miss McDylan?”

“You’re surrounded by this,” said Mary, thinking of Jesus and the money changers in the temple. “But all you can think about is basketball money and what the alumni might think. Have you really thought much about Mike? About his face?”

The dean stepped back as if he’d been pushed. Slowly, he shook his head and opened a folder before he glanced back up. “I’ve got a mess to clean up, Miss McDylan.”

Mary stared at him a moment longer. Then she turned around, pulled open the tall, heavy doors, and walked out.

* * * * *

Unable to sleep, Mary lay in bed and thought of Mike Randall. Wind pawed at the window. The tree outside, seen through the quilt tacked over the window, cast a dancing man on the wall. She lay awake for hours, thoughts coursing through her like electricity.

Before Grady stood up with the lighter, Randall had been captain of the basketball team; he’d dropped his pants on a large anatomical incongruity; he’d owned every space his body took up. Life had been good.

No more.

And a measure of the blame was hers. Mike had chosen to mistreat her. But deep in her heart, just as she’d known that the evening would turn sour if she continued to drink, she’d known Grady would hurt him. She’d watched her palm the lighter, and although she hadn’t known exactly what was coming—

She and Mike were the same. No different.

Mary sat up, crept from her bed, her feet slapping on the tile. She felt along Grady’s boxspring. Her fingers slid along the floor, over a hairbrush, around a half-filled glass and into Grady’s purse. She nabbed the keys, hoped they wouldn’t jangle. Then she hesitated, keys in hand. Would it be stupid to apologize, to do the right thing regardless of circumstance?

Mary glided past the cracked door, closed it and made her way downstairs.

By the illumination of a single streetlight she found Grady’s Toyota, a late-eighties relic. The lock turned easily, but the door wouldn’t open. It hitched, stuck on something. She tugged on the handle, but it didn’t budge, so she yanked, stomped her foot against the wheel well and pulled. After two or three minutes, she tired, stepped away. And saw it. The door was lopsided. With an anxious sigh, she got on her knees, jammed her fingers under the metal, forcing it up. It wrenched past the jamb. She toppled back. From the macadam she climbed into the car, tapped the business end of the key at the ignition, but it didn’t fit. “Damn it!” she screamed, slapping her hands on the steering wheel.

Beneath the console was a button. She stared at it a minute, then pressed it and tried the key again. It slid in. She turned it. Nothing.

“Can anything else go wrong?” she sobbed, slamming her palms against the wheel. Then her eyes drifted down. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The Toyota was a stick shift. She’d never driven one. “Okay,” she said, taking deep, calming breaths. “You’ve seen Daddy in the ‘Vette. You’ve even paid attention.”

On the floor were three pedals. The accelerator, the brake, and the next one over had to be the clutch. Hadn’t her father said that shifting wasn’t difficult? Did you depress the clutch just to start the car, or to shift as well? Closing her eyes, she recalled her father in the Corvette, his legs working. She shoved the clutch to the floor. The car rolled. She cried out, took her foot off the clutch. The car jumped. She stepped on the brake, then the clutch; pushed the button, twisted the key. The engine turned over, sprang to life, hummed pleasantly.

The drumstick was digging into her side. She slid it from her sweats, laid it on the passenger seat, and grabbed hold of the gear shift, rubbed her palm over the ball, on which an idiot’s guide to a manual transmission was printed in white grooves. Slipping the stick from first, she left it in the center of the console a second, recognizing from the grid that this was neutral. The car teetered on its wheel base. “Okay, okay, here we—“ and she released the brake. The Toyota rolled back. Instead of lightly pressing the gas, in her fright she stomped it down. The engine raced, the car spun back in a wide arc, and she screeched in operatic spasms.

She missed a late model Porsche by inches. The Toyota only stopped because as the car lurched and lunged her foot slipped fell off the gas and onto the brake by fortuitous accident. The car gurgled, belched and died.

That’s when Grady knocked on the driver side window.

Mary screamed, jumping half out of her seat. Moon and starlight flashed off the windshield.

“Roll it down!” yelled Grady, smacking her palm on the glass.

Mary grabbed the lever and turned it, half expecting Grady’s hands to come shoving through the opening like a set of claws. Instead, Grady tossed her arms over the down window, resting her chin on them. “What’cha doing?” she asked, as if Mary were sneaking off to a party without her.

“I’m so sorry, Grady, I was—“

“You okay?”

Mary hesitated. “I need to see him.”

“He got what he deserved.”

“He was wrong. But so were we.”

Grady’s eyes clouded over. She stared past Mary.

Mary touched her. “Don’t go.”

“Why?”

“I need you to drive.”

Grady’s lips slid up, revealing her gap teeth. It was a strange smile. It was a great smile. “Yeah, you were fixing to wreck my pile, weren’t you?” she said, opening the door. “Bitch. Move over.”

* * * * *

The hospital was half-lit. A few floors were completely black, their windows reflecting moon. The only lighted entrance was the Emergency wing. Three orderlies smoked under a broad awning.

Grady parked, asked, “You coming?”

Mary glanced down at her purple pajamas. She really hadn’t thought this one through. Moments later, she caught up with Grady, who was a few feet from engaging the orderlies. “Uh, how are we gonna get in at this hour?”

Grady flashed that maverick grin, her eyes lit up, and Mary knew it had already happened.

A heavy-set woman noticed them first. “May I help you?” she asked.

Grady didn’t even glance at her. Instead she sped past, colliding with a large man behind her. She grabbed him in a bear hug. “Quinten!” she yelled, pulled back, her hands on his massive arms. “How are you?”

“Uh, fine,” he said, looking confused.

“Come on!” said Grady, linking her arm in his, leading him toward the electric doors at the end of a brightly lit walkway.

Mary followed, giving the woman a shrug.

Grady continued strolling with Quinten once they were inside. Past two sets of swinging doors, the hall past the ER was eerily silent. She instinctively lowered her voice. “Quint, my boyfriend is here. I haven’t seen him since . . . since—” and she choked back a fabulously phony sob.

“Randall?”

Grady nodded.

Quinten shook his head, sighed, and said, “Fourth floor, Room 412.”

“Thanks, Quint,” said Grady, leaning up to kiss his cheek.

Quinten lifted a finger. “I didn’t send you. You’re on your own.” Quinten shoved past Mary. His steps echoed a moment, then vanished. The strangely distant sounds made by a slow night on the ER found them in bursts.

Grady shot past the elevators opened the door to the stairwell. “Going up?”

“Why the stairs?”

“Shut up and follow,” Grady said with a laugh, taking the stairs two at a time, and Mary struggled in pursuit, her steps tapping opposite Grady’s. She felt half-dead by the time she found her friend grinning by the door marked: 4. “We gotta be stealthy, a couple of church mice.”

“Right, right,” said Mary, panting.

Grady opened the door. They slipped onto the floor, both of them looking for any white-coats hovering by the reception desk to their right. A sign on the wall told them to turn left.

Room 412 was the third door on their left. Grady disappeared inside. Slow as always, Mary followed her inside only to skid to a stop.

Grady had her hand on a vinyl drape. She walked it back and the metal rings sang. Light from the hallway splashed off the waves of vinyl.

Mike Randall lay in a bed that was at half mast. An IV pole festooned with bags of clear liquid hovered over him like a wraith. Glucose and antibiotics and God-knew-what dripped into a long tube attached by a needle to his arm. Gauze curled around his head like a turban. Black patches on his face surrounded burns. There was a white patch over his left eye. He was breathing raggedly.

Grady stepped back as Mary neared him. “Oh God,” moaned Mary, wiping a tear from her eye.

Grady took her by the shoulders, rubbing them.

They jumped when Mike choked, took a harsh breath and coughed. “Who’s that?”

Mary leaned over his bedside.

His right eye fluttered. Above it, half an eyebrow arched. He licked his lips. Then his mouth spread wide in a smile. “Hey,” he whispered. Light danced like a dying fire in his eyes. He opened his mouth and slowly, almost carefully, spit in Mary’s face. “You fucking whore,” he said.

Grady flashed into motion, grabbing the metal IV pole, but Mary caught her by the arm.

Mike grinned at them.

“No,” said Mary. “Leave him be.”

Part Two: Fate is Convergence

“The soul makes the body.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Memory, prophecy and fantasy—the past, the future and the dreaming moment between—are all one country, living one immortal day.”

—The Great and Secret Show,
Clive Barker

Chapter Nine: Daniel

1

The preacher and the innkeeper rode to the north end of town. After William tied their horses to a sycamore, Durham dismounted. They made their way toward a cabin bathed in moonlight.

The front door swung open and for a moment William imagined the black doorway was a portal of some kind, but then Daniel, whom he’d heard so much about but had never seen, filled the doorway, a large man in every respect. William stopped in his tracks beside the preacher and covered his mouth. His skin prickled. He wouldn’t realize until later why his blood had chilled—he only sensed some connection between this massive man who lived on the edge of town and the angular man of God standing to his right.

The cabin was humble and built of logs. Even from 30 feet or so away William smelled tar, sawdust and vagaries he couldn’t place—some sort of alcohol, perhaps. Jutting behind it, a chicken coop housed what he guessed would be food enough for a year. Above it a thread of smoke filtered into the sky. Inside the door, just behind the huge man, books were stacked from the floor to the ceiling.

“It’s late,” the preacher called out, his normally commanding voice made small by the open space. Or it might have been deference. William sensed a history between the men, a past he couldn’t yet grasp.

Daniel merely smiled.

“Do you not sleep during the Devil’s hours?”

“And who’s to say that these,” said Daniel, gazing into the night sky, “are the devil’s hours?”

“They took Our Lord from the garden during these hours, did they not?”

“
Our
is such a presumptuous word, Reverend,” said Daniel, somehow producing a cigar from his trousers. “But then, you are nothing if not presumptuous.” He smiled again, stuck the cigar in his mouth. A flame appeared in his palm.

William blinked, shook his head. It was some sort of trick. Had to be. Then the preacher glanced knowingly back at him and said, “Pagans cursed our town this evening.”

“Must have been an eventful night.” Daniel took a drag, exhaled a stream of smoke.

“Are you mocking me?”

“Heavens, no.”

“They asked for you,” said Durham, jutting his chin out now, as if he expected the man before him to grow wide eyed and afraid; or as if he desperately wished him to.

But Daniel chuckled, still paying more attention to his cigar than to Durham. “Nothing like a band of curious pagans.”

Durham took a step closer and finally Daniel glanced up. His eyes, which had been filled with nothing but contempt, now showed a vague concern. “I warn you . . .” began Durham.

Daniel moved quickly: He spit out his cigar and leapt from the front stoop, landing in the dirt directly before the preacher. Durham stumbled back, collapsing onto his backside.

“Hey now!” yelled William.

Daniel eyed him, raising a finger, and the innkeeper stepped back. Then he turned to Durham. “And you,” he whispered. “You should have known better than to come here.” Daniel turned, hopped up the steps. “Do what you will, Nathaniel,” he said, his back to them.

Then he slammed the door.

* * * * *

William moved to help the preacher, but Durham smacked his hand away. “I swear to the Lord Jesus Christ that man will die by my hand.” The preacher turned toward the horses, spit on the ground and glanced up at the moon. “Let’s ride,” he said.

The innkeeper hesitated.

Durham whirled around, fisted his hands and screamed, “Now!”

2

Daniel collapsed into his only chair. Before Nathaniel had come, he’d been awakened by dreams of dying livestock and premonitions of the girl. Now, upset and shaking, he clamped his teeth down on another cigar and stared into the fireplace, trying mightily to make sense of his brother’s visit. He’d known the girl was coming, but he had begun to believe her parents wouldn’t bring her. He’d seen them—
seen
being, for Daniel, an action best done with closed eyes—checking into the inn, but he’d also seen the way the innkeeper had looked at them over the counter, the way he’d sneered when they’d mentioned his name.

Daniel cupped one hand beneath his cigar, rubbing it like a genie’s lamp, and with his other hand he absently fondled the armrest. He stared through the fire, into the black recesses of the hearth. The flames, blue near their origin beneath the log, curled yellow-red over the dying wood. Sparks drifted toward the chimney like lightning bugs. Aside from everything he’d seen, fire had been very much on his mind. His visions were surrounded by flames, his sight a blinding column, around which a conflagration swirled.

“You can stay,” Nathaniel had told him when he’d somehow made it here, years ago. Having survived a beating and the water treatment, barely, back in Salem, he had set out to find his half-brother. After seven months of living off the land, he’d arrived in Tempest with nothing but rags hanging from his bones, stinking of the flesh he’d spent getting here. His moccasins had long since shredded; his footsteps left a wake of blood and pus. Near madness, he trudged through the dirt streets, screaming over and over, “I am Marnie Durham’s son! Does a man named Nathaniel live among you?”

But the day went white before anyone answered, and he awakened days later in a bed. Then his brother leaned over him, not smiling, his eyes full of an abiding worry, asking if he could survive travel. Nathaniel didn’t wait for an answer before hurrying him into the back of the wagon. At the edge of town, he yelled at the horses and they rolled to a stop. Daniel crawled to the edge, pulled aside the curtain at the back of the bed, and immediately let it drop back into place; the sun seared into his eyes like a brand. With a voice like the rustling of ancient parchment, he asked his brother where they were. But Nathaniel didn’t say. He only helped him down, then turned, spread his arms against the sky and said, “We’ll build the cabin right here.”

And so it was. After they completed it, Nathaniel came by every few weeks, his wagon full of supplies; after unloading it, he tipped his hat and rode back to town: he never invited Daniel to return with him, never stepped foot inside the cabin he’d helped build. Nathaniel Durham was ashamed of his half-brother, frightened of the mysterious half of his blood.

Daniel had hoped it might be different, but he wasn’t surprised. The red death had taken James Durham two summers before his birth. The next spring, a stranger came to town. He charmed the widow Marnie, then vanished amidst rumors of wizardry. A month later her blood did not come and she and Nathaniel, six at the time, fled their home during the night. The boy never forgave his mother, never forgave the unborn. Of course the unborn would know none of this until it was only history, albeit history that had taken on the quaint air of myth.

“Please, Nathaniel,” he whispered, staring past the fire. “Forgive me.” He took the pipe from his mouth, placed it at his feet. With a groan he stood, shuffling into the center of the room, thinking of the strange feeling that had come over him lately, the sense that his past was on a collision course with his future.

Daniel leaned back, closed his eyes and saw only fire.