Wireman

CHAPTER 31

DALEY DROVE FAST, too fast. The world spun past the windows.

For a while Nick battled demons: light, airy, horned beings that clutched him and sucked the breath from his mouth. But they went away, and he felt empty. He was no longer tormented by the people of either world. He was in a corner by himself where winged creatures, hoping to get to him, beat out their lives against the invisible barrier.

Nick reached up to touch the safety glass of the windshield and dreamed his fingers sliced through into the night. He could grasp the stars if he wanted and bring them down to earth to warm him. He could hang the moon on the Milky Way and walk in its silvery light. He could create universes and, with a puff of his breath, set them whirling forever. If he wanted to leave the earth and enter another galaxy, he had the power.

His fingers came away from the glass, retreated to the silent space where his temporal body lounged.

Daley drove too fast. He was taking them both into the past where escape would be impossible. Surely he realized his mistake? He had battered down the walls holding everything in its place, and what lay ahead were years torn from a calendar they should never witness again.

Too fast, slipping backward, snatching for telephone poles, for clouds, for the starry sky to halt the awful, sickening plunge into the hideous past.

His blond hair fell over his forehead like a veil. The blood on his hands was dried and flaky. He breathed specks into his nose.

Daley was not listening. Daley was alone. Daley had forgotten his only brother.

Nick felt a split starting at his groin and zigzagging up his abdomen, between his nipples. A line going straight up his neck, over his face, into his falling hair, and down again, like a snake swallowing its tail, back to where it began. Everything was going to fall out from inside him and lie in a wriggling heap between his legs.

He should have pocketed the stars when he had a chance. He should have chinned himself into heaven on the hook of the platinum moon. He should have taken God’s place and toppled the planets with a sigh.

Was it too late?

Tentatively, Nick reached out with one hand to the glass that held him in place, earthbound. His fingers met resistance. He could not discover the secret passage into the heavens again.

It was too late.

He turned to stare out the window into midnight. The seam inside him widened, and an eagle swooped within the confines of the car and carried away chunks of his soul while Nick watched—helpless.

A man crouched over a shallow grave patting red damp clay into place. Another man held the shovel and hung his head.

Birds, wakened by the coming of the men, flew in startled bands through the pine boughs, looking for quiet. The sky withdrew its starlight and the moon scuttled into a gray cloud. There was rain on the air, the promise of sudden showers.

The man holding the shovel loosened his fingers and let the mud-encrusted handle fall to the ground where it bounced on the new grave. The man with his hand on the dirt darted backward, sat down in a puddle, and struggled to his feet.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

“Nothing,” the other man answered simply.

“It’s all my fault.”

“It was never your fault.” The voice was oddly comforting.

“I didn’t do it all, everything, did I?” he sounded anxious, confused.

“No. We always shared the blame.”

“I want to die. I’ve wanted to… die… for a long time.”

“I know.”

“Do you love me? Has anyone ever loved me?”

Silence engulfed the makeshift cemetery and even the birds nodded in their roosts.

There was a timeless interval where nothing moved. The wind slackened, the pine needles were stilled, the rain was held in abeyance by an invisible hand.

And then the rain poured down, trampling the red, raw earth. The side ditch filled and drained into depressions left on the land by old graves long since forgotten.