He grabbed her hands, just happy to feel her flesh against his even if it was this weird glossy spirit flesh. It was something. It was more than he had had in twenty-four hours which, when faced with the prospect of never touching her again, seemed like an eternity.
The knife tw.a.n.ged back and forth in the top of his head. He wanted to pull it out, not liking the way it felt in there, but he was afraid doing so would release a torrent of blood and that might just be all the blood loss his body could take. With a great jerk, he pulled Gina up and over his shoulder. It felt like spikes were driven into his lungs, ma.s.sive steel clamps squeezing them tight. Once firmly over his shoulder, his knees threatened to buckle. They couldn"t- he couldn"t- buckle. He had come too far to lose it all now. Now he had to go all the way. Never mind that this whole thing didn"t make any more sense to him now than it did when he first came home to find Gina missing.
Had to press on.
He went out through the door and realized he had not had to come through a door to enter this room. For that matter, he didn"t know how far away it was from the Utility Shed. He half-expected to step through the door and into an entirely alien landscape.
But, once again, he was in that sprawling field, the Utility Shed in the distance. Curiosity dictated he turn and look at the room he had just come from. It seemed to be one half of the train engine pair that he had seen at the entrance to the Wilds. Only, this looked even more peculiar because the train was stopped, not on any sort of track, and while the front of it was pulverized looking, there was absolutely no evidence of it having hit anything.
Jack felt like they would have to stop at the Utility Shed first to reclaim his body. A strong body would get them back to the hotel that much faster. The hotel was where they needed to go.
One key left.
He wondered if he would need the key to get back in the Utility Shed. If not, he wondered what that key could possibly be. Was there some other trial awaiting them? The desire to simply get it over with propelled him forward. He swam in and out of consciousness. Black periods where he couldn"t even remember putting one foot in front of the other. It took every ounce of concentration he had just to keep from falling over or drowning completely in that inky black sleep that called to him.
The Utility Shed almost jumped in front of him.
Gently, he sat Gina down in front of it, resting her back against the cinderblock walls.
The door was cracked.
He pushed it open.
The sight of Mr. Grin, John Briggs, suspended there was shocking. He had to fight an urge to destroy the body but, he told himself, it wasn"t the body that was bad. It was possible that Briggs had even been a decent body before whatever it was that Jack had destroyed moved in.
As Jack drew closer to his own upside-down body, he felt the black wave finally pull him under and when he came to he was looking through the open door upside down. All of his pain was gone except for the feeling of blood swelling his head and the numbing p.r.i.c.kles throughout the rest of his limbs. On the floor beneath him were the remaining key and the knife. Hysterically, he thought it was nice to know that he didn"t have to wander around with a knife in his skull.
He reached his blood-engorged hand out to clasp it around the knife. Raising himself up, he slashed at the rope holding him suspended, bracing for the nasty spill onto the floor. Mainly, he tried to be careful not to hit his head. After several slashes with the knife the rope finally snapped and he came down with a sickening thump on his shoulder blades. The pain was explosive and alive and he thought that, maybe, he liked it.
Taking several deep breaths, he bent to scoop up the key and hurried out of the Utility Shed to gather Gina, making sure she was still breathing.
The breaths were shallower still but they were still there and he hoped the hotel wasn"t that far away.
After a few minutes of moving at a quick trot, he could see the roof of the hotel.
Gradually, it became larger and larger and then he stood in the parking lot, ready to enter the cracked and broken front door of the lobby.
Mr. Thick was nowhere to be found.
The door to the office, Jack noticed, was shut. With Gina still slung over his shoulder, he attempted to open the door. Not surprisingly, it was locked. Digging into his pocket for the key, he realized he was breathing quickly and his hands were shaky. This was it. Maybe they had made it. Maybe they would pull through this, after all. After several attempts, he finally fitted the key into the handle, turned, and pushed the door inward.
The laundry bag sat on the now decayed desk.
Jack unzipped it and saw Gina curled into a ball inside.
At that moment, the office went up in a blinding flash of white.
Thirty-two.
Gina stood before him in the decaying office of the Hotel Eternity.
Jack felt the key in his right hand and looked at it. Only, instead of a key it was the ring he had bought. He dropped to one knee in front of Gina and said, "Gina Marie Black, will you marry me?"
She smiled. It looked like it took everything she had, but she smiled.
"Of course," she said.
And he slid the ring onto her finger.
It felt like the perfect ending but it wasn"t over just yet and Jack knew that.
Gina was still in her underwear and tanktop. Jack looked like he had been dragged through the mud. They held hands and walked out into the Wilds, careful to avoid any main roads on their way back home.
They reached the house near sunset. He was sure some people had seen them but probably just wrote it off as a curiosity. As soon as they got home they showered. Then they went to bed.
Lying there, Gina on his left, he tried to put his arm around her but she moved away. He just wanted to hold her. Just wanted to feel her solidity in his arms, to know she was real. But she didn"t want any of it.
There were also a lot of things he wanted to ask her. He figured she must have the answers to so much of it but, lying there and smelling the exotic scent coming from her, he didn"t know if he wanted to know all the answers. He realized he didn"t necessarily want to know if she knew she was adopted or if she knew where she really came from or why Mr. Grin wanted her for his or why he wanted to destroy Jack. He figured she probably knew the answers to all of those questions and maybe that was the great mystery about her. Maybe all of that was what kept him attracted to her.
He cleared his throat, staring at the ceiling.
"If you could choose to forget everything that happened to you, would you do it?"
"Yes," she said, unhesitatingly.
"Before I can help you, I just need to know one thing."
She said nothing.
"What happened to Briggs" soul?"
"It went bad."
"What made it go bad?"
"It was always bad."
"You know what I"m thinking, don"t you?"
"Yes."
"And there"s no chance your soul will go bad?"
"It is a healing substance. But, if a person is bad, it can only accelerate the rot."
Jack nodded.
"Just do it. And then I never want to talk about any of this again."
Jack did it.
Thirty-three.
The next morning, Jack went back to The Tent. The car was in worse shape than usual but someone had at least removed the enormous section of tree from it. This was the second day in a row Mr. Briggs hadn"t come in and n.o.body was really working. A number of people had ascended the dirt pile and were engaged in a vigorous game of King of the Mountain. The lady who worked across from Jack lay in her work s.p.a.ce, dirt smeared all over her face, nearly pa.s.sed out.
No one noticed him.
No one noticed as he took a wheelbarrow and filled it full of that rich, almost black dirt.
No one noticed as he took the wheelbarrow out to his car and filled the trunk with it.
He thought about all the dirt he breathed while working at The Tent. Even with the painter"s mask on, it was still a fair amount. He thought about how hard it was to remember what went on there when he came home. In short, he had had an idea.
When he got home, pulling into the driveway, he made Gina come outside and stand by the car.
"Okay," he said. Then he flipped open the trunk.
She grabbed handfuls of the dirt and began smearing it over herself, huffing some up her nostrils and coughing. Jack thought about doing the same thing but realized he never wanted to forget what he went through. He never wanted to forget what led him up to this point in life. Everything after would be simple by comparison.
Mr. Moran stood in his yard.
Oh, G.o.d, please, Jack thought. Don"t let him make eye contact.
Moran caught him trying to look away and raised his arm, coming over.
"You know," the old man said. "I had the strangest dream about you."
"Really?" Jack said. "Conversations that start with that never end up very good."
"I don"t remember it so well anyway. I"m old and addled. Say, why"s she coverin herself in dirt?"
"Don"t ask," Jack said. "She"s a weirdo."
"Guess so," Mr. Moran said. But he seemed to be so overcome with the oddity of Gina standing at the car and covering herself with dirt that he turned and walked away. He guessed now he knew what it took to end a conversation with Mr. Moran.
Later, as Jack told Gina about Sam, because he had to, he asked her if the dirt had helped and she said she thought it did. She sounded a little bit more like herself. Saddened at the loss of Sam, of course, but there was a bit of the old Gina there. They decided they would wait a few days and then declare him a missing person, realizing it was sort of incriminating that the police would have doc.u.mentation of Jack being the last person seen with him. But Jack doubted the cop who had come to Sam"s apartment was really a cop at all.
The next day, they went to Sam"s apartment, just so they could straighten it and remove anything too incriminating. They didn"t want the ghost of Sam to be tainted. Jack opened the door, not at all surprised to find that Sam didn"t keep it locked. Gina entered behind him.
From the kitchen, he heard a rustling.
"Go wait in the car," he told Gina.
"I most definitely will not."
"Gina, please, I think there"s somebody here."
"I"ll just stay behind you."
"Fine. But if it is somebody, I want you to take off running.
"h.e.l.lo?" Jack called toward the kitchen, wishing he had a gun at this moment.
"h.e.l.lo!" he barked this time, taking a few cautious steps toward the kitchen.
Gina didn"t even flinch when Mr. Grin came out from behind the wall. Hopefully, she didn"t even remember who it was.
Mr. Grin threw up his hands.
"Wait! Wait!" he said.
Now Jack was confused. That didn"t sound at all like Mr. Grin.
"Sam?" he said.
"The new body"s pretty much like the old body, don"t you think?"
It still looked like John Briggs to Jack but he guessed, with some scruff around the face and some longer hair, some time, he would actually look a little bit like Sam.
"I had a f.u.c.ked up trip you wouldn"t believe," Sam said. "I dreamed I was dead and then my soul left its body because it was all mangled and maybe even dead and then I found this one and then when I woke up, I looked like this. But I couldn"t even remember what I used to look like. f.u.c.ked up s.h.i.t. Hey, babes," he said to Gina, coming over and giving her a kiss on the cheek.
Jack couldn"t help the small tremor that ran up his spine.
Sam grinned at Jack and told him he was glad everything worked out okay.
Jack patted him on the arm and said, "I don"t think you should ever smile around me again."
About the Author.
Andersen Prunty lives in Dayton, Ohio. He is also the author of The Overwhelming Urge, Zerostrata, Market Adjustment and Other Tales of Avarice, and The Sorrow King (forthcoming). Visit him on the web at www.andersenprunty.com.