Something happened. His body shook. His insides roiled like curdling milk in time-lapse. His hair stood on end. He felt like throwing up, thought he did but it was so hard to tell what might be happening in such a moment where he played hostage to some metaphysical malevolence. His hearing caught only white noise, his eyes saw only blue light...and then, darkness ruled.
Pure utter darkness.
First, gray.
Then a sliver of light. Dull at first but growing like the sun’s first glimpse over a flat horizon. The light rushed into Leonard’s eyes like bitter acid, biting the surface regardless of his attempt to shutter them. He felt a growing discomfort--pain--first at his face, then his hands. In an attempt to look around, the pain traveled to his eyes, drawing tears which cooled and comforted and allowed him to slowly take in the vista surrounding him. First, the light, which grew to gold then cleared, bringing forth a landscape rather familiar to him. Then, the grass beneath him. Beyond, a stretch of sand. Hulking figures stoic in the soft earth, blind yet seemingly peering at him: a stranger in these parts temporarily lost in his own mind.
The pain ate at him, and he brought his hands up to his still-blinded eyes, rubbed them until the tears dried and brought forth full sight of the environment.
Hemmingway Park. Fairview. The playground.
Leonard climbed to his feet, staggered like a man after a binge, then steadied himself as his equilibrium found an acceptable level. He leaned against a sycamore tree, gazing at his hands, the reddened skin burned from high temperature, it seemed. With similar discomfort, he imagined his face carrying the same tender cast. His uniform, it was hot to the touch too, and when he rubbed his hand against his chest it came away with a coating of fine blue-colored dust.
Blue
, he thought.
There was a blue light in Pamela Bergin’s motel room. Or was it Richard
Sparke’s
room? There’d been blue dust at every scene. And here it is, on me. What does it mean? What the hell does anything mean? Might want to pack it all in, Leonard, head home and settle into my boring life, which doesn’t seem so bad right now.
Leonard paced across a flat of grass to a thin cement walkway, which took him to the edge of the park. A few mothers pulled their eyes off their frolicking children to gape at one of Fairview’s finest tackling the sidewalk with all the grace of one of its half-dozen homeless stock.
How did I get here?
He exited the park through an inlet in the encircling fence. Once free of the park, he checked for his personal belongings. Everything he’d had on his person before being sucked into the blue light--a light ninety miles away, mind you--was still there: his gun and belt, his cell phone, badge, keys, and wallet. He checked the wallet and found all the contents still inside. The only item he didn’t bear was his hand-held, which he’d left in the motel room before leaving.
Okay, I was sucked into that blue light in the motel room, and now I’m back home. And I don’t remember how I got here. What the hell is going on?
He walked up Culver, then up Breton Avenue and Oakland Street, all the while replaying the events in his head leading up until the moment he stepped into the blue light. Richard
Sparke
, the seemingly mild-mannered (and now, seemingly dead; or recently resurrected) man who was wrapped up in truly mysterious circumstances that, to even the hard-edged probing type like Leonard, were nearly impossible to interpret. Nothing was for certain now. Except for the fact that Leonard was very tired, fatigued, and confused. With leaden legs he continued through the neighborhood and considered for a moment returning to the precinct, to his desk where he’d be able to sit down and report the extraordinary event to Reese and Kevin, whom he could only conclude had driven him home.
Instead, with barely enough strength to walk, he staggered three more blocks to Gaston Street, to house number 12. He stared at it for a moment then marched up the walkway and climbed the three steps leading to the front door of his home.
He felt someone shoving him. Then, a voice.
“Richard...wake up.”
Am I dreaming? Mother is that you?
He fluttered his eyes open, found himself caught in sunlight. The ground was warm, textured with nature: leaves, soil, dried grass. He looked up, remembered tripping into the blue light, and realized at once that wherever he was now, it would be acceptable as long as the man in black wasn’t with him.
He’s dead, Richard. Remember? Killed by your very own hand.
For an alarming moment Richard felt plagued by imminent danger, that no matter what happened, where he went or was ultimately taken, someone would come for him, either lead him away to some promising haven, or simply try to kill him. Pam had made both those points obvious as they spoke in the motel room, so anything was possible.
He twisted his head, saw Pam kneeling next to him, her face tinged red, a sourness commanding her features.
“Richard...we need to get out of here. Can you walk?”
Despite feeling utterly fatigued, he was able to climb to his feet and gaze around. They stood about ten feet deep into a wooded area. Once the trees broke, a finely manicured lawn spread out like a soccer field leading up toward an impressive silver-structured building with a plethora of mirrored windows. The windows climbed ten stories high before giving way to a penthouse of sorts, a pyramid-shaped framework running an additional fifty feet to its apex.
“Come,” she said. “To the building. We will be safe once inside.”
Richard gazed at the building with the same fascination of a U.F.O. enthusiast making his first sighting after a lifetime of searching. He stepped forward to the perimeter of the woods, realizing without doubt that once inside the building he would uncover the answers to all his questions--here he would discover exactly who he was.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, entering the sunlight. It stung his irritated skin. “And familiar. I feel as if I’ve been here before.”
“You have,” she replied, sidling up beside him.
“What is it?”
“
Quantugen
Industries.”
Quantugen
...
“I don’t know what it is, or what it means...but somehow I know the name.”
“That’s because it’s something you created, Richard. This is your building.
Quantugen
is your company.”
“My God...”
She grabbed him by the hand. “We need to go there so we can talk about everything. If we stay out here too long, they’ll eventually see us and become suspicious.”
Richard nodded. “Where exactly are we, Pam?”
She hesitated, then said, “Fairview, Richard. We’re in Fairview.”
There was no one home. That much he expected. Janice worked at the florist in
Milleridge
every other day--he couldn’t for the life of him remember what day of the week it was--and Greg was in school until three. He peered at the clock in the kitchen. Ten-thirty, it read. He stepped away, then shot a glance back at it.
Different. Janice must’ve bought a new one. Strange because she wouldn’t have put it up there herself. Unless Greg did it, but between school and baseball, the kid was out of the house more often than not and the last thing he wanted to do was little jobs like this, especially at the end of the day when dinner and homework rode high up on his list of priorities.
Then he noticed the sink. Piled high with dirty dishes.
Jesus
. Janice would’ve had his head if he left even one dish in the sink like this. And Greg knew better than to disrespect his mother’s neat and clean habits.
Something was wrong.
Leonard went to the bathroom, gazed at his face in the toothpaste-spotted mirror. Red like his hands, his skin looked as if it’d gone a few hours under the sun. Gingerly he washed his hands and face with cool water, then relieved himself before going into the bedroom.
The bed was unmade, another detail neat-freak Janice would never let sit. Actually, the whole bedroom was in shambles. Drawers open, clothing and towels littering the floor. Many of Janice’s trinkets were hidden beneath piles of tee-shirts and stacks of magazines. If it weren’t for the jewelry and money left out on the nightstand, Leonard would have believed the house had been robbed.
He lay down on the bed, caught some foreign odors in the sheets--nothing repulsive, just
different
, as if the bed had played host to a variety of people. A woman’s perfume, a man’s cologne, a sachet of lavender, a trace of musk, all coated with a layer of stale body odor. Even the faint smell of sauce with garlic, something Janice never cooked, lay nestled in the fabric.
In moments sleep began to whisk him away, and in the back of his mind he made a pact with himself. That he, Leonard
Moldofsky
, would become the family man he’d neglected Janice and Greg of for so long. As long as she agreed to clean the goddamned house. And explain why it had become so filthy.
They approached the building with caution, Pam’s eyes darting about, peering up at the overhead security cameras panning the outside environment. Hanging from eaves fifteen feet high, there were enough, so it seemed, to capture every length of space at any moment. When one slid out of view, its neighbor would trap the scene left behind.
“Keep your head down,” she said. “Security doesn’t pay too much attention to details, and they won’t question me. At least, I don’t think they will. But if they see you...”
Richard kept his silence, following her like a nervous child accompanying a parent to work for the very first time. She reached a sidewalk that circumnavigated the building and walked along it in the opposite direction of a huge parking lot filled with cars. They took it to the end and turned the corner where a steel door sat, impervious in the brick facing. Pam reached into her pocket, removed the billfold that Richard had rifled through earlier when questioning her identity, and removed a keycard. She slid it through a slot next to the door. A tiny green light flashed and they went inside.
The door slammed shut behind them. Cool air washed over Richard’s face, temporarily easing the discomfort of his sore skin. The hall was empty, a service conduit with water and gas pipes snaking across the ceiling behind the cloak of hanging fluorescent lights. The walls were institutional, cinderblocks painted steel gray. A fire extinguisher was attached to the wall near the door.
“Looks like a prison,” Richard said.
“Acts like one too. C’mon.”
They continued down the hall, Richard following Pam close behind. He began to feel suspicious of her, his earlier apprehensions returning and reminding him that even though her intentions seemed trustworthy at the moment, he shouldn’t exclude the possibility of her actions being solely self-serving, and that she might be deceitfully leading him into her web, as opposed to the fail-safe sanctuary she promised.
Regardless of her intent, Richard saw no alternative but to follow her. She appeared to be ‘in the know’ regarding his life, his intimate torments. She was the only one available to trust. A guardian by default.
They made a few turns, each bend taking them deeper into the bowels of the building. The roar of generators grew louder until they eventually descended a set of stairs into a large boiler room. Pam wound her way around two large generators to a steel door set back into a small alcove. She swiped her card and opened the door, holding it open for him to follow her. He stopped, looked into her eyes, which widened with impatience, and went inside.
He dreamed of lights. Blue lights. Not the dazzling illumination that filled the motel room earlier, but smaller,
subtler beacons floating orb-like in the air above him. They flickered, each carrying its own pulse. Only one at a time, each similarly taking its turn with unmistakable intentions. Morse code, Leonard knew, recalling the days during basic training when flashlights sent mock signals of distress from hidden drill zones, he, the interpreter from afar, challenged to decipher their message. These blue lights asserted their significance over and over again.
Go home...go home...go home...
I am home,
he called out to the dream lights
. I am home...
Then, a voice. Calling his name.
“Leonard!”
The lights dispersed in an outward burst, like fish avoiding a thrown stone. His mind at once erased the dream-world, whisking him back to the reality he left behind some indeterminate time ago. In the pallid real-world a figure loomed above, the outline unfamiliar, but…her features, they were recognizable.
Janice. His wife.
Here.
Now.
Different.
Then his sights cleared and he had a truly difficult time believing what his eyes were showing him. She’d undergone an obscene and seemingly impossible transformation. In just one day Janice
Moldofsky
had gained at least fifty pounds…but this extra weight was the
least
shocking part of her physical reversal. Her hair, always set to perfection, was horribly
scraggled
, dyed bright orange, a thick zipper-strip of gray racing across her scalp at the roots. Her skin was riddled with pimples, the arms victims of some bacterial disease that left them raw and crusty. Her clothes were disheveled and stained. She looked at him with clear disdain, perhaps repulsion, her hatred for him unmistakable. And when she spoke, Leonard saw that her voice and personality had become victim of some disturbing mutation as well.