Passage-2
942 Words
I OPEN MY EYES TO THE rough brush of something across my cheek. Arlen’s tongue drags over my nose and he whimpers with excitement when he sees me coming too. As I struggle to sit up, he rises on his hind legs and covers me with kisses, tough little paws digging into my chest and then my thigh as he slumps to a seated position with his tail still thumping. He yawns happily, gets up again, and sticks his nose into my sweater.
I’m outdoors, near a body of water, on a stretch of coast that’s less sand than gritty dirt. Surely, I’m dreaming. I must be in my misshapen cocoon of a bed, covers wrapped up to my chin. Or I’m in the hospital hooked up to tubes, a bullet lodged near a vital organ. Nothing hurts, and Arlen is solid and real in my arms, but I don’t know if that means I’m actually conscious. I pat the pockets of my jeans: no cell phone or wallet. It’s impossible, but here I am, and I get up because what else is there to do.
The lake is not large; I can see its circumference through the slight haze, outlining a rough turquoise oval with russet patches in the depths. Across from us is a hill, dry and bedraggled, that continues indefinitely on either side, as though we’re at a ridge or fold in the earth. Arlen whines at my feet, then changes to the low, grating rasp that makes him sound like something out of an exorcism. He looks at me expectantly, and I scoop him up and hold him close. He quiets down.
“I can give you passage.”
I whirl at the voice behind me, stumbling in my haste to back away when I see the speaker. One eye in the creased face is wide and milky, the skin around it pulled by a drying secretion. The place where the other eye should be is puckered, collapsed, as if the bones of brow and cheek have moved closer together, intensifying the asymmetry of having a single eye. Arlen stares too, vibrating with a barely audible growl, huddling against me even as he signals his warning.
“I can give you passage,” the woman says again. The wild black hair and disfigured features could belong to either s*x; the broad body is shapeless under many dark rags. But the voice is female, and old. “Answer me! Are you deaf and dumb?”
Compelled by the nearness of her body and a warmth I can almost smell, I’m fixed to the ground, like someone only seconds from the train bearing down on him. “What do you mean by passage?” I say.
She seems surprised, her expression unchanged but her shoulders straightening. “A young man. I sensed a much older presence. What is the animal with you?”
I clutch Arlen closer. “Dog.”
She pauses, her nearly toothless mouth working the space around the few uneven stumps. “Are you looking to go in?”
“In where?”
One hand rises out of the voluminous garments and points across the lake.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“The unmoored and the dead walk the same plain.” Her head wobbles as if palsied. “Didn’t your grandmother ever tell you that?”
“No.” I had only my father, and now he’s gone.
“Doesn’t matter.” Her expression remains neutral. “I can let you in.”
“Am I dead?” The question escapes me before I can assess its prudence.
“If you were, you wouldn’t need me.”
“And who are you?”
She stiffens, turning her head up and away from the lake, her one eye panning the landscape blindly as if she hears something. “Make up your mind, boy. Come with me or go, quickly.”
I take a few steps back. “We’re going.”
Her face crumples into a sly grin. “Better watch out for them, then. You’ll be back.”
I walk away with Arlen still in my arms. Then her words register, and I start running. He struggles to jump down, and I let him so we can both run faster. I don’t know what we’re fleeing, but the inky fear billowing in me lightens my feet and soon we’re over a crest that descends to a plain filled with goldenrod, unexpectedly bright under the thickening clouds.
* * *
* * * *
“RICHIE?”
A blast of cold air hits me, packing pain that centers in my nose but branches down my cheek and up my temple. I’m on the living room floor, trembling.
Eric hovers over me. “Can you talk?”
I swallow something thick, and mumble without words, glad to have a roommate now despite all the times I’ve wished I could afford to live alone.
“Should I call 911?” His voice is carefully modulated but his face is a map of panic. Around the room the winking lights of a police car or emergency vehicle loop from left to right and back again.
“Am I shot?” My whisper, hoarse and grainy, settles into the air unnaturally. The lights circling the walls make me dizzy. I close my eyes, but the dizziness stays, so I reopen them.
“No, but you hit your head pretty bad.”
“Did it stop?”
“You mean the shooting? Yes. The police are out there now.” He leans forward intently, his face wavering before me. “I’ll get help.”
“No. I’m okay. Where’s Arlen?”
It’s the way he flicks his eyes to the left with a tic of the head. I try to sit up but feel a swirl of nausea. “He must be in the other room,” Eric says.
He reaches for a pillow on the sofa and slides it under my head. Now that he no longer blocks my peripheral vision, it catches something on the floor nearby, and I don’t want to believe it. The crumpled black shape gives truth to my foreboding.
Arlen.
* * *
- Writer
