Ashes of Foreverland Page 6

  Upstate New York

  The tulips’ petals had fallen.

  They rested on the mulch in various degrees of yellow, faded by sunlight and age, signaling the end of spring. Alex snipped the tulip stalks. She had plans for the backyard. A row of fruit trees against the fence and a vegetable garden in the corner.

  She entertained thoughts of moving to upstate New York or even western New Jersey, where they could purchase acreage. Samuel could still get to the city and, should she decide to write again, she could get to her agent.

  For now, she just wanted to be home.

  There was a hole in her glove and dirt was getting under her fingernail. She went to the garage and found another pair, almost new, in the bottom of a bucket, but they were too small even for her hands. They were for a child.

  Alex searched under the workbench for another pair of gloves. She noticed her briefcase stuffed inside a plastic bin. It was on top of a stack of papers, empty cups and sweaters. Samuel must’ve cleaned out her car.

  It had been months since she drove her car. In fact, she hadn’t even left their property.

  The leather smelled like work. Life was smooth now, like gliding over black ice. She hadn’t seen her briefcase since getting out of the hospital, hadn’t even thought about it. Half-written notes and unsigned contracts were mixed with traffic tickets.

  The small raincoat was at the bottom of the plastic bin. She pulled it out and something fell. It was the National Geographic, the one from the doctor’s office. She hadn’t seen it since the hospital.

  The bookmark.

  She’d forgotten about that. Her name had been written on the piece of notebook paper in green ink. It was rather shocking at the time. No one ever used her full name, not outside the family at least. Now it was gone.

  She smoothed the wrinkles on the cover. The island was small and isolated in an endless ocean. A sense of déjà vu passed through her. The issue was a few years old, which would explain the wear. She licked her fingers and flipped to the cover story.

  Places You’ll Never Want to Leave.

  The piece was dominated by photos of remote tropical islands. Heaven does exist, said one blurb. It’s just hard to get to.

  The photos were stunning, but the centerfold resolved the sense of déjà vu. That was the one from the travel agency, the piece of mail she’d opened when Madre and Hank were visiting.

  The exact same photo.

  There were no credits. She turned to the front, went through all the names where the photographers were properly recognized, but nothing was credited for the tropical island.

  “There you are.”

  Alex dropped the magazine. Her heart thudded. Despite the clear sky, thunder faded in the distance. Spring showers were coming.

  Samuel had the mail in one hand, a tall glass of tea in the other. He handed her the glass and shuffled through the mail, dropping most of it in the recycling after ripping the junk in half. One of them was a large white envelope addressed with green ink, her name in big block letters.

  Alessandra.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Did you clean out my car?”

  “Someone had to.”

  He began searching the shelves for car wax. Alex remained in the garage, staring at the recycling bin. The return address was a travel agency. She couldn’t remember the name of the other one, but they had to be the same.

  It was getting hot and stuffy. The afternoon heat was picking up fast. She pressed the glass of iced tea against her forehead.

  “Where’d you get this?” Samuel held up the National Geographic.

  “It was with my stuff.”

  He thumbed through it, frowning. His complexion turned a shade darker, eyebrows protruding. She felt the heat of his anger and took an involuntary step back.

  “I didn’t put that in there.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t clean out the car.”

  “Where’d you get a three-year-old magazine?”

  “It was from the doctor’s office. I had it with me in the hospital, remember?”

  He fanned through the pages. The bookmark fluttered out from the last couple of pages. It landed on the workbench, her name staring up at him in green ink.

  Green ink. The travel agency envelope was also lettered in green ink. Samuel grunted. Something twisted inside her when he made that sound, like predators were nearby.

  “You do this?” He held it up.

  Did he not remember the magazine? He had to bring it from the car to the hospital room.

  But that didn’t mean he read it, didn’t mean he pulled the bookmark out. But the way he was holding it, the way his eyebrows protruded told her he didn’t. And he really wanted to know who did.

  “Yes,” she said. “Just marking a spot.”

  “When did you start using your full name?”

  “I was playing around.”

  “Playing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “With your full name?”

  “I don’t remember a lot of what happened then, Samuel. Is something wrong?”

  He was nodding. It wasn’t her handwriting, and he knew it.

  “Where’d you get a green pen?”

  “It was at the hospital.”

  She avoided stepping toward the recycling bin. Half the travel agency’s envelope was turned up. He’d obviously forgotten about it or wasn’t paying attention when he ripped it.

  “Just seems odd you would write this,” he said.

  “I’m a little confused. Is there something you should be telling me?” She found her footing, like she sometimes did in the middle of a debate with Hank. Sometimes a good offense is a good defense. “It’s an old magazine, Samuel. Here.”

  She placed it in the recycling bin, perfectly covering any trace of green ink. “You keeping that for evidence?”

  He was still pinching the bookmark. When he didn’t move, she snatched it from his fingers and threw it away.

  “Could you haul a bag of mulch to the tulip bed?” she asked. “My back is a little achy.”

  He thought about it, then smiled. It was a forced smile, one that never quite reached his eyes. She pretended to search for gloves while he took a bag out to the yard. She quickly grabbed the junk mail and hid it on a shelf of old paint cans, making sure the magazine stayed in the exact same position.

  The spring shower that, minutes earlier, sounded nearby had cleared up.

  The sky was cloudless and blue.

  ——————————————

  Alex quickly tore the large envelope open.

  More vacation fliers. She quickly found the one she was looking for. It was the overhead view of an island with white sands on one side, cliffs on the other.

  She could’ve held it next to the National Geographic centerfold; they would be identical. National Geographic wouldn’t use stock photos. Unless the agency pilfered it, this was highly unusual.

  The Land of Forever, the title said in the corner. Why would you ever want to leave?

  Later that night, she and Samuel watched a movie with a bottle of wine. They slipped into bed. She waited until he was snoring, and then waited another half an hour.

  The old wooden steps creaked on the way up to her office above the garage. She turned on the computer, the first time in months, and typed a search.

  Land of forever.

  The result was at the top, the number one hit.

  A gust of wind hammered the house. The windowpane creaked.

  She swallowed a hard lump, looked at the door and listened. A familiar sensation buzzed in the back of her head, sending up the small hairs on her arms. Her journalist instincts lit up. Something was about to happen.

  She clicked the link.

  Foreverland.

  10. Tyler

  ADMAX Penitentiary, Colorado

  Gramm raked his fingers through his hair and counted the stray follicles. He always counted, sort of a way to show his respects to his receding hairli
ne.

  A former chemist, his hair used to be thick and wavy and fall over his ears, curled just above his eyes. He was known as the surfer scientist. But twenty years in the United States Penitentiary knocked the surfer out of him. Now it was thin; now it was gray. Now he watched the surfer scientist disappear one follicle at a time.

  He started up the metal stairs, his footsteps clanging on the treads. Two pairs of footsteps trailed behind him. Gramm waited on the third floor.

  Melfy, a short, heavyset African-American guard, carried a tray with a bowl of soup and a carton of milk. Her tight curly hair was cut close to the scalp, but there were signs of gray mixed in. Gramm noticed those things.

  Drake, the second guard, pulled himself up the steps, his boots clobbering the metal treads. The six-foot-something, pasty-white male still smoked on his days off. He wheezed on the top step.

  Gramm stared at the flabby piece of work, raking his hair five times. It would cost him twenty follicles. They passed through a checkpoint without pausing. Green metal doors were on each side, the paint chipping from the surfaces, white numbers painted below sliding slots. The stringent odor of cleaning supplies stung his nostrils.

  They stopped at the last green door.

  “Hold on.” Gramm raised his hand.

  He took several slow breaths. His heart rate only became more violent. It didn’t matter how many slow breaths he took, it wasn’t going to slow down.

  He nodded.

  Drake threw the door open, the scent of potpourri wafting out. Beneath the floral aroma was the smell of old skin and decay, like something dying a very slow death.

  One that was thirty years in the making.

  A cafeteria tray sat on a cluttered desk, the food cold and untouched. Gramm waved Melfy inside. She replaced the tray with the one she was carrying, the soup still warm and spilling over the edges.

  There was a bed against the wall. It was thick and wide and humming. Gramm took the chair from the desk and sat down, facing the bed and the old man sleeping on it. Dr. Tyler Ballard looked to be one hundred years old, but Gramm knew he wasn’t quite eighty.

  The old man wore a gray uniform with a number stitched over the right breast. It was loose and wrinkled, oddly matching the thin skin that sagged from his cheeks and chin. Even his eyelids were paper-thin, the bulge of irises moving beneath them.

  Gray and withered, only the slow rise of his chest and the fluttering of his lower lip suggested he was alive. Only the rosy flesh around the needle in his forehead was other than gray.

  Drake, the fat guard, wheezed like a long-distance runner finishing a marathon, his lungs wet like a recovered drowning victim. He stepped forward with that rheumy gaze, the long-term effect of a mental hostile takeover, a man with a biomite brain that had been hijacked years ago. The imbecile was dull and trainable, which made it that much easier for Dr. Ballard to take over the fat man’s biomite-laden brain and reprogram his thoughts to do whatever Gramm needed. Still, the oaf couldn’t follow directions.

  He reached for the old man and Gramm yanked him back. You don’t wake him.

  They watched and waited. Gramm raked his scalp. Twelve follicles were lost before the old man’s chest began to swell, a long, deep breath. He smacked his lips.

  His eyes fluttered.

  His fingers began to crawl. The bed whirred, internal rollers kneading the aged body.

  Dr. Ballard’s hand rose like invisible strings lifted it. His hand hovered over his face and stalled like the puppeteer wasn’t sure what to do next. Dr. Ballard focused on his fingers and the lines creasing his palm, then reached for the needle.

  He pulled it out.

  Gramm squeezed his hands together to avoid squirming, to keep from pulling his hair. That lone feeling of the needle plunging in or out of the brain was cold and foreign, tasted like metal, an inch and a half of surgical steel that glistened.

  The old man propped himself up on one elbow and threw his weight to his side. Gramm and the two guards watched him slowly work his way into a sitting position. They didn’t attempt to help. He had made that clear long ago.

  The bed continued to thrum.

  The old man leaned on his knees and contemplated the needle like script was written along the gleaming shaft. Then he broke it off and threw it away. Three deep breaths with his eyes closed, he hummed upon exhalation. When the paper-thin eyelids fluttered open once again, blue eyes with sharp edges aimed directly at Gramm.

  Gramm’s head hummed with a cold touch.

  “Tell me,” Dr. Ballard said, his words long and drawn, “why she is searching for Foreverland.”

  Gramm fidgeted. He couldn’t help it. He uncrossed his legs, dropped both feet on the floor but didn’t answer. It wasn’t time to answer.

  “What rekindled her interest, Gramm? Answer.”

  “I...I don’t, don’t know. No one has sent emails or texts or called. Samuel has been with her the entire time and, and given her everything she wanted.”

  “Hank’s behavior didn’t seem odd to you?”

  “He was a little feisty, but that’s been his personality, the way she knows him. If he changed, she’d notice.”

  “But we don’t need him goading her back into writing, either. We need her happy, content. We need her to sleep, Gramm. Not motivated.”

  Gramm allowed his hand one pass through his hair.

  Dr. Ballard didn’t ask about the magazine and the photos of the tropical island. He would bring it up later, discuss whether this was another coincidence or a pattern. No need to pile on.

  There’s bigger news.

  He rubbed his face with both hands and stared at the floor. Gramm could feel the old man’s thoughts churning. Give him enough time and he would have a solution. But that was the problem.

  Time.

  The old man didn’t have much. He insisted on letting his body wither like a husk of harvested corn.

  “I don’t like this.” He raised his hands.

  Drake and Melfy took them on command and helped him stand, waiting by his side to let the world balance beneath his feet. His elbows were bruised. Gramm suspected there were bruises on his buttocks and back as well, despite the specialized bed.

  The old man shuffled to the desk and drank a bottle of water without pause, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at Gramm. The queer coldness was in his head again, starting in the core of his brain where a patch of biomites had been seeded. The sensation crept out like frozen tendrils.

  Dr. Ballard sensed the worry. “What is it?”

  Gramm could barely feel his legs when he stood. He didn’t want to say it, not out loud. If he thought about it, concentrated on the image, the doctor would just know it as if it was his own thoughts. But the old man just returned from Patricia’s Foreverland; he was still adjusting to physical reality.

  Gramm would have to say it.

  “The boy. We’ve lost him.”

  “Danny?”

  “He...left the villa. Didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Where did he go?”

  Gramm shook his head. That was all the old man needed to know. It was obvious now that he said it out loud. Hank’s badgering, the National Geographic, Alex researching Foreverland, and now Danny had disappeared.

  This is no coincidence.

  And there was no time for complications.

  The old man dropped the spoon and pushed the tray away. Melfy guided him into the hallway. Drake and Gramm followed them out to the yard, where the doctor would spend the next half an hour walking and thinking and returning to the world of flesh.

  He would decide how to address these changes.

  And fast.

  SUMMER

  A snake sheds its skin.

  To be born again.

  “What do you have to offer, Mr. Deer?”

  “Call me Jonathan.”

  Mr. Connick glanced at his notes and shook his head.

  He blinked, his eyes closing an extra beat, considering whether he should t
hrow Jonathan out of the office, have him arrested. His name was a joke, but in a meeting like this, no one showed their true face.

  Jonathan reached into his jacket and revealed an index card sharply folded. The other sheet, the one with a list of names, would remain in his pocket for now.

  “You can speak freely,” Mr. Connick said.

  The office was soundproof, tamperproof, completely isolated from eavesdropping. Still, Jonathan slid the card across the polished desk. They stared at the steepled note.

  Mr. Connick bounced his fingers, perhaps considering, once again, throwing him out. He leaned forward and read what was written on the inner portion of the fold.

  “This is what you want. I asked what you have to offer.”

  “Can you deliver?”

  Mr. Connick tapped the rigid edge of the note on the desk, staring at Jonathan’s eyes. They were green for this meeting, and slightly narrow. He’d reshaped the bridge of his nose and extruded his brow. Only a few people in the world knew his true identity. But no one, no matter how much technological power they had, would be able to match Jonathan’s identity with facial recognition.

  Not even Mr. Connick.

  He got up and paced along the spacious window with a view down Chicago’s Adam Street. The lake was visible between the buildings. The note bounced between his fingers, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “Audacious, Mr. Deer.” His voice reverberated off the glass. “What could you possibly have to offer me for this? Money? Information? Power? I assure you, whatever it is, there is not enough to get what you’re asking. Nothing even close.”

  He flicked his wrist. The note skidded across the desk, landing on its side, open for Jonathan to see his own handwriting.

  “What could you possibly offer us?” Mr. Connick said.

  Jonathan leaned back. “Your very own universe,” he said. “Foreverland.”

  11. Danny Boy

  South Boston

  The rental car was still running.

  Danny adjusted the vents. The sun had moved behind him, the glare no longer in his eyes, but it was still blazing hot. No one was doing much of anything outside. Every thirty minutes, a stringy woman would come onto the porch to smoke. She’d stare at him until she finished, flick the butt onto the lawn and go back inside.