Kings of Infinite Space

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIS ISN’T HAPPENING, Paul told himself. This is a dream.

“We have to hurry,” said Bob Wier nervously, as the pale men hovered around Paul, handing him his shorts, his trousers, his shirt. “You don’t want to be late.”

One bloodless pair of hands lifted his shirt from behind so that Paul could slip his arms through the sleeves, while another pair of hands worked the buttons. “Late for what?” said Paul.

But Bob Wier wasn’t listening. He had cracked Paul’s front door and was peering watchfully into the parking lot. Through the door Paul heard the distant rumble of late-night traffic on the interstate.

“What’s going on?” asked Paul numbly. He felt sapped, drained, which only served to convince him further that this wasn’t really happening, that someone hadn’t just tugged up his trousers and zipped his fly and buckled his belt, that someone else hadn’t just lifted his right foot, and then the left, to put on his sandals.

“Let’s go,” Bob Wier said, and he slipped out the door. Paul felt the soft grip of several pairs of hands urging him out into the hot night.

The parking lot of the Angry Loner Motel was as still as Paul had ever seen it. No one stood along the balconies; no open doorway threw a wedge of yellow light onto the pavement; not one shabby curtain twitched. Even Mrs. Prettyman’s windows were dark. Apart from the distant roar of the highway, the only sound was the soft scrape of feet against the asphalt and Paul’s own shallow breathing. Bob Wier wrung his hands again near the storm drain at the center of the lot, while another pair of pale men in shirt and tie and glasses hovered near him. How many of these guys are there? Paul wondered, and he tried to glance over his shoulder at the ghostly men hustling him across the asphalt, but they only pushed harder, making him dash along on his toes.

“Hurry,” whispered Bob Wier, nervously scanning the balconies on either side, and the two pale men next to him stooped and hauled up the drainage grate without a sound.

“Wait a minute,” said Paul, and he locked his knees, scrabbling at the asphalt with the heels of his sandals. “What the—”

But the hands lifted him bodily into the air and lowered him into the wide drain, where another pair of hands reached up for Paul’s ankles. He pedaled his legs madly, for all the world like Olivia Haddock being lifted into the ceiling, but the hands grasped him firmly and tugged him down into the drain. As he descended Paul glanced up and saw the anxious face of Bob Wier surrounded by the moon faces of several pale men, all of them printed against the black sky.

“Don’t fight it,” whispered Bob Wier.

The hands beneath him placed Paul’s toes on a narrow rung, while hands from above did the same with his fingers. Paul found himself descending under his own power. The rungs were chill and damp, and a similarly chill, damp breeze blew from below, tickling Paul’s ears and wafting up his pant legs. Looking up again he saw Bob Wier’s backside and the scuffed soles of his penny loafers as he lowered himself into the drain, while below, when Paul dared to look, he saw a pale scalp descending into the dark and even farther below, little flashes of light gliding to and fro at the bottom of the shaft.

Not happening, Paul chanted silently, not happening. I’m fast asleep and Callie’s fast asleep next to me. I’m wrapped in my baby’s arms, and this is a dream.

Still, it was an unusually vivid dream. They descended far enough that Paul’s arms and legs started to tremble from the exertion, but just when he needed to stop and catch his breath, the hands below grasped his ankles, then his calves, and then his waist, steadying him as he stepped off the ladder onto a gritty floor. The flashes he had seen from above turned out to be pale men wielding flashlights, and as the beams glided all around him, a dizzy Paul noted roughly carven walls of rock, streaked with damp. The beams caught glittering drops of water along the low ceiling, and Paul felt the humidity of the tunnel close around him like wet gauze. Sweat started out of his hairline and under his arms.

Bob Wier came down out of the drain a little out of breath, and his footsteps scraped along the gritty floor of the tunnel towards Paul. Pale men dropped silently out of the drain like large, plump spiders, mingling among the ones waiting at the bottom. In the jittery glare of the flashlights, Paul tried to count them, but their faces shifted and faded too quickly. He couldn’t even hear them breathe, which, he scolded his dreaming subconscious, was an unnecessarily creepy detail.

“I’m dreaming,” Paul said earnestly to Bob Wier.

“Sure,” said Bob Wier, catching him by the arm and tugging him down the tunnel. “Whatever you say.”

As they marched downward into a dank breeze, Paul managed to smile. I might as well enjoy this, he decided. The ol’ lizard brain is working overtime tonight. The beam of the lead man’s flashlight bored down the tunnel ahead of them; against the glare Paul saw the silhouettes of several heads, each egg-shaped outline furred by a buzz cut. He glanced back and was blinded by the beams of a couple more flashlights. The tunnel was full of the reverberating tramp of feet. Just relax, he told himself, and have fun with it.

“Hi ho!” he sang. “Hi ho! It’s off to work we go!”

Somebody cuffed his ear from behind, and Paul cried, “Ow!” Ahead, he glimpsed Bob Wier’s profile in silhouette, looking back over his shoulder. “Try to take this seriously, Paul,” he said.

Up ahead he saw the flashlight glow reflected off a bend in the tunnel, and then the walls of the tunnel swung away and the ceiling lifted, and the air became less close and a little less humid. In the play of flashlight beams Paul saw a wide, natural cavity of creamy yellow stone, the walls and ceiling etched smoothly into sharp peaks and shallow scallops, like meringue. The floor here was smoother and firmer, with less grit, and the farthest beam showed a broad track winding away into the dark.

“Okay,” Paul said, beginning to feel pleased at the DVD quality of his subconscious, “this is pretty good.”

Silhouetted against the beam ahead was a low, squarish outline, and then the flashlights from behind illuminated a scruffy little golf cart, a two seater without an awning, its white side panels dinged and smudged. Out of the dark the hands of pale men guided Paul up onto the passenger seat. Bob Wier squeezed next to him, his knees spread wide around the little steering wheel. He turned the ignition, and the little cart vibrated to life. He switched on the cart’s headlights and stepped on the accelerator, and the cart whirred forward, its fat little tires crunching against the track. Paul looked back to see the pale men standing in a bunch, all of them watching him go, their flashlight beams lancing in every direction. On a sudden whim he stood up in the cart and waved to them with the back of his hand, like departing royalty.

“My good and faithful subjects,” he trilled, in a queenly falsetto. “God bless you all.”

Bob Wier grabbed him by the belt and hauled him back into his seat, just before Paul could be brained by a low hanging rock.

“I just want to say,” said Paul, “that this is the best dream I’ve ever had.”

“Listen, Paul.” Bob Wier’s face was in the dark, while ahead of them the creamy peaks and scallops of the cavern walls glided through the headlamps. “You need to prepare yourself for what’s about to happen.”

“Oh, alright.” Paul settled back in the narrow little seat, feeling more effervescent by the minute. “I’ll play along.”

“They’re going to demand a sacrifice from you tonight.” Bob Wier grimly maneuvered through the dark with both hands on the wheel.

“It’s a kind of hazing, right?” said Paul, blithely. “You guys are going to paddle me or something.”

“It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do.” Bob Wier’s expression was unreadable in the dark. “Take your wife, your only wife, whom you love, and offer her as a burnt offering.”

“What?” said Paul. “What’d you say?” The buzz of the golf cart reverberated off the cave walls. “What book of the Bible is that?”

“The Book of Bob,” said Bob Wier.

“Well, it’s not funny,” said Paul. “I don’t want it in my dream.”

“I offered her up, thinking, you know, at the last minute the angel of the Lord would intervene.” Bob’s voice was barely audible over the whirr of the motor and the crunch of the tires. “But He didn’t come. God let me down, Paul.” Bob Wier choked and looked away. Paul glanced at him, but all he saw was Bob’s silhouette against the glow of the headlights.

“But then, to be fair,” Bob Wier said, “I’m no Abraham.”

After that they rode in silence, and Paul crossed his arms and sulked. The cart passed several turnoffs and branchings of the cavern, and Bob Wier always took the widest path. The damp breeze blew stronger in their faces, and the walls moved farther back from the pathway, so that much of the time the dim little headlamps illuminated only the pebbled surface of the wide path, with nothing but darkness beyond. This is getting boring, Paul thought, and after a glance at Bob Wier to make sure he wasn’t watching, Paul surreptitiously pinched himself in the thigh, trying to wake himself up. I’d rather be watching Born Free, Paul thought, than riding a golf cart into hell with Bob Wier.

But then he saw a glow up ahead, an illuminated patch of rock beyond the headlights, and Bob lifted his foot from the accelerator and let the cart’s motor grind down to a stop just before a curve. A steady light shone from around the bend, and Bob switched off the ignition and stepped out of the cart, gesturing in the dim light for Paul to follow. Around the curve Paul found himself in the upper reaches of an enormous natural amphitheater, where a rubbled floor descended to meet the sloping ceiling at a narrow point far below. The room was thickly forested with dripping stalactites hung from above and soapy bulges of flowstone below. Some of these formations had joined in the middle, forming slender, gray-green columns, smooth and knotted like long strands of nerve tissue. A mellow light came from all around, from bulbs set in nooks and crannies and linked by loops of fat cable.

Bob Wier led Paul down a narrow path that wound between the columns and the stalactites, and Paul had the feeling that he was walking through the strings and lumps and tissues of somebody’s brain. My brain, he decided. That’s where I am. I’m dreaming of a journey to the center of my own head. He laughed aloud with delight. This dream was turning out to be a concatenation of every subterranean narrative he’d ever read or seen, from highbrow to lowbrow and every brow in between, a Mixmastering of Dante and Jules Verne, of Tom Sawyer and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of the Mines of Moria and the Hall of the Mountain King. He looked up and was well pleased with the fecundity of his subconscious. The ceiling was forested with pale, almost translucent soda straws, and seamed with small stalactites like jagged mountain ranges seen from above. To either side, in niches like private boxes at the farther reaches of the amphitheater, the formations were growing together like connective tissue, and out of these crannies the pale faces of homeless guys watched Paul. He thought he heard a steady murmuring; it wasn’t the usual—“Are we not men?”—but something else that he couldn’t make out.

The air was cooler as they descended but more humid, and Paul thought he smelled something other than the dank air of the cave, something that reached to the back of his nostrils. But he couldn’t place it, and he mopped his forehead and flung the sweat away from his fingertips. Bob Wier had sweated a wide streak down the back of his polo shirt, and he seemed to be gasping even more than the exertion demanded. They had reached the lowest circle of the amphitheater, where a passage led to an even brighter chamber beyond. The wind was coming from that narrow gap, and Paul thought gleefully, what next? Trolls? Dinosaurs? A Balrog? The circle of panders, seducers, and flatterers?

“Hey, Bob,” said Paul. “Mind if I call you Virgil?”

Bob Wier stopped and glanced with wide-eyed anxiety back up the slope. Paul turned too, to see several pale men with flashlights trooping down the path from above — How’d they get here so fast? Paul wondered, then thought, fuck it, don’t ask, it’s a dream — while others filtered out of the crannies, stepping carefully down the slope around the soapy bulges of stalagmites. Their murmuring was getting louder, but Paul still couldn’t make out what they were saying. He turned to go forward again, but Bob Wier held him back with a hand on his shoulder and fixed him with an intent gaze. He lifted his hand from Paul’s shoulder and turned it palm up, offering Paul the ignition key of the golf cart.

“Take it,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “Take it and go back the way we came. It’s not too late for you.”

“Maybe Virgil’s too formal,” Paul said, still determined to get into the spirit of things. “How ’bout just ‘Virge’?”

“I beg you,” breathed Bob Wier, his eyes filling with tears, “in the name of Christ Jesus, go back now. I’m going to hell, but you still have a choice.” He essayed a trembling smile. “ ‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.’ ” He swallowed hard and said, “Philippians, chapter two, verses twelveand thirteen.”

Paul’s smile faded, and his next remark—“Don’t be a buzz-kill, Bob”—faded on his lips. He glanced down at the key in Bob Wier’s trembling palm, but then it was too late, as the gathering tide of pale men reached the bottom of the path.

“What is the law?” they were murmuring. “What is the law?”

They flowed around Paul and Bob Wier, and with the mild pressure of their hands swept both men through the passage into the next room.