Eleven Twenty-Three (54 page)

“What—I mean, where is the—where is the
machine that kept me from turning?”

“Excuse me?” Mr. Scott says, cracking a grin.
“Machine?”

“Yeah,” I nod, completely mystified. “Where’s
the—where’s the thing that kept me from turning at eleven
twenty-three like everyone else?”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,
Layne. All this case ever contained was documents. Just like
mine.”

He holds out his scarred wrist for us to
inspect, but I’m not paying attention.

“No, no,
no
,” I say, losing it. “Look,
I handcuffed this goddamned thing to my wrist because I was told
that if I did, I wouldn’t turn again. So don’t tell me
now
that there was nothing in here all along but a fucking stack of
papers
, Scott. Don’t even try. I’ve had this thing with me
for four fucking days, and if I’d known there was nothing inside
it, I never would have—”

“There
is
something inside it, as you
can plainly see: documents. Important documents that you’re going
to need. So don’t worry about—”

“There was nothing in here all along but a
stack of
papers
!?”

“We kept you from turning again, didn’t we?”
he says. “And you weren’t the only one. There were others,
scattered around Lilly’s End from the beginning. They kept them
from turning, as well, for reasons that were vital to the project
and yet will remain undisclosed to us. Each of you were
administered something that would prevent you from succumbing to
the sickness. It required time to take effect, but it did, and you
were spared thereafter. So does it really matter the circumstances
by which you were kept out of harm’s way?”

“
Yes!”
I scream. “It
does
matter. It
always
mattered—oh my god. How was it
administered? And by
whom
?”

He doesn’t answer. The empty case falls from
my lap and lands on the floor with a metallic thud. It dangles
uselessly from my wrist.

“It was imperative, Layne, that you escape
from Lilly’s End by any means necessary, and further, that you
followed orders and brought the briefcase with you. It was a
seminal part of the training, you see.”

The truck stops for another toll booth.
Everything is spinning. My vision becomes blurred. I sit down and
bury my head in my hands. Mr. Scott reaches over and picks up the
five manila folders from the bench. He places them on my lap and
returns to his seat, waiting for me to calm down and begin
reading.

Paul Prescott runs his fingers through damp
crystalline sand and brings up a handful for closer inspection.

Nothing. He tosses the sand away and grabs
more. Again. The sky is brown today. It’s been sprinkling for
several minutes and the sand is clumped and soggy when my father
and I grab handful after handful, looking for something. I glance
in both directions along the shoreline, but see only a vast expanse
of sad yellow dunes that fade out into a tired ocean. The beach is
deserted. There are dim lights coming from the hotels and
restaurants and stilted houses along the shoreline, but they’re
deceptive: this town has been vacant for some time.

The waves are rough today. In the distance,
rumbling gray clouds are churning their way toward the End. There’s
a storm approaching.

“The trick,” my father says, rummaging
through the sand, “is to always—”

He stops, says nothing. We go on looking.
Behind us, the lighthouse beam comes to life and shines out into
the Atlantic. I try to concentrate on the sand, at how it clumps
and forms tiny mountains as I slide my fingers through it. I try to
focus on the way the grains cling to my skin, aching for escape,
for movement.

But I can’t. All I can think about is the
storm. That it’s coming and we’re not prepared for it.

“The trick is to always be the—” my father
begins again, but is flummoxed, speechless.

He throws his hand through the dirt with
greater and greater irritation, until finally he’s punching at the
little dunes, kicking at them and cursing. He grabs huge armfuls of
sand and launches them into the air, peering into the grains as
they rain back down on him. It gets lodged in his eyes and he’s
blinded, rubbing feverishly at his face, losing his cool. He stomps
around, baying like a Russian drunk. When he finally lowers his
arms and blinks the grit out, his crow’s feet are swollen and red.
Tears roll down his face. His hair looks grayer, thinner. He’s
ashamed and dying.

There are no shells on the beach.

Paul Prescott sighs.

“Well, I guess there will be no father-son
lesson today after all, huh?”

“It’s okay, Dad,” I say quietly, looking out
into the whitecaps. “You’ve handed out this lesson before,
remember? Many times over, in fact.”

“Yeah, but you never really listened to me,
did you, son? I can tell.”

I notice that he’s looming over me now,
staring down at this lone progeny of his, who despite Paul’s best
efforts and prayers, grew into a man that bathes in defeat and
speaks in a language of excuses and vague three-year plans. What a
disappointment I must have been to him.

“There are no shells on this beach,” he
finally declares, walking several feet away with his eyes fixated
on the ground. He comes back, shaking his head. “What do you think
it means, Layne?”

“I doubt that it means anything, Dad,” I
answer, looking at the churning clouds making their way toward
Florida. “It just means there are no shells. That’s all.”

I don’t believe this though, and my father
knows it. He goes on staring at me, but not with the same
calculating demeanor that I’ve known for so long. He’s not
measuring my anti-worth as his only child, or that I’ve never seen
Portland. He’s not thinking about the fact that I’m a schoolteacher
with no students, or that I’ve fled to a place where my closest
ally is anonymity. He’s no longer considering my $17.22 American
checking account balance or that time I asked him what a mortgage
was.

Paul Prescott is thinking only of shells. How
they’re gone, and in their place miles and miles of sand remain.
All around us is sand. The shoreline is entirely devoid of its
usual sun-bleached coquinas, chitons, conchs, bivalves, and
wentletraps. There is nothing out there now but trillions of
lifeless pebbles eroding in the wind.

There’s nothing worth remembering here.

When I look up again several minutes later,
ready to face my father’s next lecture, he’s no longer towering
over me. I scan the track of buildings dotting the beach, and then
peer out into the endless lines of dull brown retreating north and
south, away from here.

Paul Prescott is gone.

“Layne, over here.”

I turn toward the ocean.

Seawater swirls around my father’s feet,
soaking his Italian shoes and encrusting his new socks with grime
and salt. He watches, grinning with childlike bemusement. Then he
takes three more steps, heading deeper into the surf.

“Dad!” I call out, my voice metallic and
hushed. “What are you doing?”

Paul Prescott runs his fingers through the
water. He makes little splashes with his palm. Then he turns to me
and waves goodbye.

The truck comes to a stop. A moment later,
someone comes around and opens the back door. Mr. Scott closes the
briefcase for me and helps me to my feet. Tara holds the documents
for me. We stagger out into a vacant parking lot behind the service
entrance of a three-star hotel. A plane takes off from somewhere
very close and roars over our heads, toward the stars.

“It’s this way,” Mr. Scott says. We follow
him, and two agents in unconvincing civilian attire follow us,
their hands stuffed into their jacket pockets.

The site of an environment outside the
confines of the End sends me into mild shock, and I head down the
dully carpeted hotel corridor in a daze. Tara appears to have
slumped down into the same funk. She drops the papers twice on the
way to the elevator. The five of us squeeze into the lift and Mr.
Scott hits the button for the 17
^th
floor.

Staring at my reflection in the polished
steel, I am devastated by what I see: random gray strands awash in
a sea of blood-sticky black hair; eyes like sinkholes planted
beneath permanently jutted brows; ten years of wrinkles; a badly
chipped tooth; a bottom lip bleeding from a wound I can’t see; and
a homeless man’s stubble sprinkled with dirt and tiny pieces of
Julie.

Tara casts no reflection, which sends a
shiver down my spine, which aches dully in my lumbar region.

We leave the elevator and traverse a long
empty hallway. I glance up at the hotel security cameras mounted
every few feet along the length of the ceiling. I fight off the
hypnotic effects of the hallway carpet pattern.

Mr. Scott stops by a random room where the
door is already open. Tara and I follow behind him, but he shakes
his head and produces a key card from his pocket. There’s slight
movement behind him, and I absently glance over Jonas’s
shoulder.

“Um, you’re next door, actually,” Mr. Scott
says breathlessly, alarmed by where I’m looking. “You’ll find
clothes and everything on the bed, so just—”

When I see him, the floor drops away from me
and I am sucked into the caliginosity like light plummeting into
the recesses of a black hole.

In the hotel room behind Mr. Scott, Hajime
snaps his cell phone shut and says something to his father in
Japanese. Mr. Miriyama nods and pours himself another glass of
bourbon.

I open my mouth to scream.

Hajime sees me, but for a long moment does
nothing. Finally, he holds up a half-drank bottle of Asahi and
points in my direction.

“I
told
you it was the chemtrails,
Layne,” he says, and moves out of view.

He resumes his conversation in Japanese again
and Mr. Scott shoves me along, toward the next nondescript suite. I
try to open the door to get inside but can’t stop my hands from
shaking and finally Tara has to help me. We’re squeezed into a
hotel room that looks like a hotel room and the door is pushed shut
behind us. When I look through the peephole I see the two agents
standing in the foyer, waiting.

I turn toward Tara and begin crying again. We
embrace each other and stand together in the dark for a long time.
Neither of us speaks of what we’ve just seen, and we take a shower
together in total silence.

Some time later, Mr. Scott stops by our room
with an insignificant key and unlocks the handcuff on my wrist. He
hands me a first aid kit and sets the battered briefcase by the
door. He tells us that one of the agents will throw it out in the
morning.

Jasmine Reynolds takes my hand in hers and
tells me that she will read my palm.

The walls crystallize around us, and the
windows have all been bolted shut and covered with wooden planks.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
plays loudly from a small TV in the
corner. Hajime, his younger sister Mitsuko, Mark, Chloe, Tara—they
all watch us through identical 4-D glasses that immediately reveal
their intentions. I take a deep breath as Jasmine clutches my hand
and stares at the lines in my palm.

Jasmine picks away stray bits of pink hair
from her eyes and waits intently before telling me my fortune. I
sigh, having difficulty waiting any longer.

“Well?” Chloe asks over my shoulder,
adjusting her glasses.

“Yeah, Jasmine,” I echo. “Well?”

“Um, it doesn’t look good, Layne,” she
mutters. “I hate to say this, but frankly I’m afraid for your
past.”

10:44:01 PM

I look at my watch, knowing that by the time
the plane lands in San Francisco, Lilly’s End will have already
experienced its final eleven twenty-three, and will be standing at
the precipice of the still point.

Mr. Scott escorts us into Orlando
International Airport and hands us our plane tickets. The other two
agents wait in the parking garage, radios in hand. Mr. Scott stays
with us while we check in the suitcases of clothes and provisions
provided back at the hotel. Then he accompanies Tara and me as far
as the metal detectors and comes to a stop in front of a bookstore
that sells Michael Crichton novels.

He extends his hand and for some unknown
reason, I shake it dutifully.

“So I have one final question,” Tara mutters
to him.

“Go ahead.”

“What about the ghosts?”

“Ghosts?” he repeats, raising his
eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Tara says. “The ghosts. You never
told us why everyone from the End looks like that. Transparent.
Gray. You know, like
ghosts
do? You never told us why that
was happening, and why only Layne and I can see it.”

Mr. Scott looks at me, appearing genuinely
baffled. I fold my arms and wait for his answer. He scrunches his
face and shakes his head.

“Um…I’m sorry,” he says. “But I have no idea
what you’re talking about. Ghosts? Maybe you two need some rest.
Try to get some sleep on the flight.”

Tara and I accept this without another word
and move closer to the security checkpoint

“What do we do if we need to contact you?” I
ask him, but don’t really listen for a response, as I already know
what it will be.

“
No one
will contact me after
tonight,” he says. “They’ll contact you.
Zai-jian
.
Men-zou.
”

“
Zai-jian
, ” Tara and I whisper, and
watch him disappear among the airport non-people.

We pass through the metal detectors,
passports in hand. I send the portfolio with the documents inside
down the conveyor belt and through the x-ray machine. I’m almost
surprised when no alarms go off and the leather portfolio is handed
back to me without incident.

Once we get to our gate and take our
positions on the faux-leather seats near the windows closest to our
plane, I think of the last remaining spirits of Lilly’s End. I
envision them boarding the trucks, passing bottles of lukewarm
water around during the long ride north, toward what they have
deluded themselves into believing is safety. I imagine the way the
flames will dance and glow as all their clothes and personal
belongings turn to ash. I think of lonely graves in the desert and
the way wood rots and how quickly bricks and mortar disappear under
the foliage. I think of all the stories no one’s told.