Far Far Away (32 page)

Authors: Tom McNeal

And then the baker and the grocer went about their business just as they might have done at any ordinary moment of any ordinary day. Is this how the horrors move hidden among us—carried in the pockets and cuffs of the commonplace and the routine?

From the service station, the baker wheeled his delivery truck onto Main Street. It was early Sunday evening; the street was quiet. The van passed by the darkened bakery and—what was this?—pulled into a space near the café. The baker glanced at the covered bodies in the back—they still intermittently breathed; otherwise they were motionless—then without locking the doors or raising the windows behind him, he walked into Elbow’s Café.

Upon entering, the baker genially received the welcoming nods and greetings of his fellow citizens. He found the Sunday newspaper on a seat near the front counter and, passing a friendly glance here and there, made his way to a table in the middle of the room, where he snapped open the newspaper and began to read.

Jenny Applegarth set a glass of iced water on the table. “Well,” she said in her good-natured way, “to what do we owe this little surprise?”

The baker’s blue eyes twinkled. “A beautiful Sunday and a strange hankering for one of Elbow’s beef pies.”

As Jenny Applegarth walked toward the kitchen, I said,
Listen, if you will. This man—he is the Finder of Occasions. Jenny Applegarth, listen. You must listen!

“Beef pie,” she said to Elbow Adkins through the window to the kitchen.

Fräulein Applegarth!
I said in a rising voice. I was shouting, actually.
Listen! You must listen!

She scooped a glass full of ice and poured iced tea.

Jeremy’s father emerged through the swinging kitchen doors carrying an empty tray. He began clearing dishes from a vacated table.

Jeremy is in trouble!
I screamed into his ear.
He and Ginger—in terrible trouble!

He wiped the table clean, and as he passed by the baker’s table, he tipped his head and said, “How are you, Sten?”

“
Hallå
, Mr. Johnson,” the baker replied. “It’s good to see you out and about.”

Over his lowered newspaper, his cheerful face might have seemed as comforting as the rising sun.

“Good to be out,” Jeremy’s father said, and he cast a glance across the room to Jenny Applegarth, who gave him a quick smile in return.

“And how’s that boy of yours?” the baker asked. “Getting into trouble or staying out of it?”

“Oh, mostly staying out of it, I guess. Wish he’d get out more, though.”

The baker nodded. “It’s the game-show disappointment, I suppose.”

“That’s part of it, sure,” Jeremy’s father said. “But it’s also what went on … there at your house.”

The baker waved his hand dismissively. “That was nothing. Some mischief by”—he winked—“whoever it was.”

“Yeah, well, I wish everyone was as forgiving as you are,” Mr. Johnson said.

As Jenny Applegarth set a steaming beef pie in front of the baker, he smiled and said, “You have an unusual boy there, Mr. Johnson. Very bright, very bright, indeed.” He cut into his pie. “I just hope this town doesn’t drive him away.”

Jeremy’s father, clearing the next table, stopped abruptly. “How’s that?”

“Oh, it’s just that I’ve seen it before.” The baker blew softly on his forkful of steaming food. “And there have been so many runaways lately.”

Jeremy’s father stiffened. “Jeremy’s no runner. That’s just not his way.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Mr. Johnson. Though, of course”—he cast a twinkling eye toward Jenny Applegarth—“you can’t underestimate the power of female persuasion.”

Mr. Johnson, blushing slightly, brought his curled fingers to his cheek as if to rake them through his beard but then realized the beard was gone. He took up his cleaning with renewed industry, and the baker continued his leisurely meal.

I hastened back to the van and drew close to the covered bodies.

Jeremy, can you hear me? Are you there? Listen, if you will!
My voice rose.
Wake up, Jeremy! You must wake up and scream and shout!

He did not stir. There was only the occasional rise and fall of the coverlet. The time between each breath stretched almost beyond my endurance.

Back and forth I shuttled between the café and the van, between assuring myself that Jeremy and Ginger were still alive and seeking to effect their rescue. Twice more I tried to gain the attention of Jenny Applegarth and Mr. Johnson and even, with every decibel I might muster, Elbow Adkins himself.

Nothing.

No one heard me.

Once Jenny Applegarth stopped at the baker’s table and stood smiling down at him. “So, Sten, maybe you’ll tell me the secret of the Prince Cakes.”

The baker seemed startled. “What do you mean, the secret?”

Jenny Applegarth chuckled. “How you get them perfectly, identically scrumptious time after time.”

The baker’s cheerful manner recomposed itself. “Ah, well. I’m afraid even a woman of your beauty cannot coax that from me. Otherwise, you would soon be making my own Prince Cakes as well as I make them!”

“Or maybe better!” Jenny Applegarth said with a laugh, and
moved on to another table. Finally, the baker paid his bill—along with a generous tip—and then, with a wave to Jenny and a nod to Jeremy’s father, he strolled out to the van. When he pulled himself into his seat, he did not so much as glance at the rear cargo area but instead stared into the café with a strange, satisfied smile.

Then, almost without moving his lips, he whispered in Swedish, “With Prince Cakes, my dear Jenny Applegarth, as with all baking, the secret is the proper recipe, the proper ingredients, and the proper oven.”

The next moment, we were moving again, along Main Street, then around two corners to the baker’s house. Once inside the garage, he pulled down the door behind him, turned on the lights, and set about his business. Though he grunted and sweated, he worked with surprising efficiency, talking to Jeremy and Ginger as if they could hear him.

“There, now,” he whispered as he eased Jeremy onto a cart and wheeled him through a door to a shadowy landing. “One step closer to your destination.”

The baker stood above the same spiral chute that they had used a few weeks before, but now, instead of sacks of flour, the baker dragged Jeremy to its lip, talking all the while. “Sorry, my dear boy,” he said. “Sorry. Just a few inches more now.” And then, with a small grunt: “Off you go.”

Down Jeremy spiraled to the dark chamber below.

The baker followed by way of the stairs and, at the bottom, switched on a light. Jeremy lay half off and half on a cushioned cart set at the bottom of the twirling slide. “Almost there,” the baker murmured. He pulled Jeremy’s body all the way onto
the cart and then wheeled the cart across the great chamber. The squeak of the wheels was loud in the cavernous room—almost a shriek or a squeal—and, well, I cannot tell you how wretched and fearful I felt.

“Not far now, dear boy,” the baker crooned. “Not far at all.”

But the baker did not go to either of the two doors leading to the storerooms that Jeremy and Ginger had cleaned and stocked.

He went to the third door, the one that Jeremy had asked to look behind.

The baker pushed the door open and rolled the cart inside. The room was just as it was before—the shelves neatly stacked with baking supplies.

What I next witnessed I could scarcely believe.

By touching a hidden control, the baker caused the entire rear wall to moan and swing away. Yes, the whole wall was a secret door, through which the baker now rolled the cart. When the wall closed behind us, we stood in darkest darkness.

The baker pushed the cart forward into the blackness. I saw nothing and heard only the squealing wheels, but I sensed something else: the presence of someone or something, alive, shrouded in darkness, poised in waiting silence.

The wheels stopped squealing. I heard a metallic clank and the creak of hinges. The baker grunted, and it sounded as if Jeremy’s body was being placed on a bed, for I heard the squeaking of springs.

“There, dear boy,” the baker whispered. “Sleep, just sleep.”

The hinge again creaked and the wheels again squealed—once more the baker was moving off through the pitch-black darkness.

I stayed with Jeremy. He still breathed.

Somewhere in the quiet of the room, it seemed that something else breathed. Breathed and waited. I stayed close to Jeremy, to be present if he awoke, or to be present if he were to stop …

Who knows how many minutes passed before I again heard the groaning wall, followed by the cart’s shrieking wheels. I could not see the baker, but I smelled him. His scent, which had always favored sugar and baked goods, was now smoky and sour.

“Almost there,” he whispered, and then I again heard the clank of metal, creak of hinges, screech of springs. “There you are, my dear girl,” he said gently. “Isn’t that soft and snug?”

In the darkness, I sensed a kind of fence separating Jeremy from Ginger, but it was easy enough for me to slip through, and as I bent close and waited, she at last took a breath of air. So she, too, was alive. Barely alive, perhaps, but still alive.

The baker stood quietly in the darkness for a few moments—thinking what, I could not guess—and then he began to move away. My choice was to stay with Jeremy and Ginger or to follow the baker out of this place in search of help.

I thought that I should not stay but found that I could not leave.

I hovered close to Jeremy and Ginger in the pitch-darkness, taking in the acrid, metallic smell of their bodies, listening for the faint movement of air from their lips—and, also, from some other being in the darkness. For there
was
some other creature hidden there in the darkness, I was sure of it.

Finally, with terrible trepidation, I eased through the impenetrable blackness toward the breathing that was neither Jeremy’s
nor Ginger’s. I moved slowly, seeing nothing, listening, pulling odors toward me. The scent, I was almost certain, was human.

A person of unknown identity.

Who sat breathing and listening.

Listen, if you will
, I said, and said again, but there was no response.

I darted close, to stir the air around the creature.

Then, softly, uncertainly, a male whisper touched itself to the silence.

“Hello?”

The silence and darkness was total.

“Hello,” the voice said again, a little louder, and when it was met with silence, it became a whimper: “Oh no, oh no,” the voice said, and there followed a soft, prolonged weeping so miserable that it would squeeze pity from stones. Eventually, the crying subsided and the breathing of this wretched creature, whoever it was, fell into the slow measures of sleep.

Time in that darkness passed with unbearable slowness. I endured not from one minute to the next but from one breath to the next—a breath from Jeremy, a breath from Ginger. As a ghost, I had grown used to the elastic nature of time and had learned to abide it with patience, but here, in this darkest darkness, I felt
the minutes pressing in and thought I might be getting my first glimpse of what might prove a lasting madness, until, finally—oh, the relief of it!—I heard the only sound that could deliver me: the stirring of a human body.

It was Jeremy. He moved, and then he groaned.

He was in pain, but he was alive.

And, listen!—a murmur from Ginger!

A few long seconds passed.

Then: “That you?”

“Yeah.”

Their voices sounded molten and thick.

“Oh my gosh,” Ginger said. “Headache from hell.”

“Yeah, me too. And it’s so dark—I can’t even see my own hand. Where are we, do you think? Is there anybody else here?”

Suddenly, another voice came from somewhere else in the darkness.

“I am.”

Ginger and Jeremy drew themselves into utter stillness.