PAOLA OLSON.
Paola had no idea how long she had been trying to figure out where she was, but it felt like forever. Time had definitely gotten weird. So had everything else.
The world was familiar, but... soupy.
It was Daddy at the gas station, but something awful happened and he suddenly wasn"t Daddy. He did something bad to me... something to my thoughts... then he went away and left me... here.
She was lying on the ground of the gas station for a while, until her mom and Desmond came to get her. They drove her back to the hotel.
Why can"t they hear me? They just keep looking at me, worried.
She didn"t feel like a ghost, or like she imagined being a ghost would feel like. It felt more like she was standing on the other side of the looking gla.s.s in a Lewis Carol book. She could see her body, her mom, and Desmond in the vehicle, as if she were watching through a giant window which only she could see through. Paola pushed her hands hard against the world in front of her until the web of reality pushed back, seeping between her splayed fingers.
She gasped and fell a step back.
She looked around her again.
At the far end of the lobby was a giant oak door. It hand"t been there before, and couldn"t have been real since it was too tall to fit the lobby, with a small moat circling the front. A moat full of dead people.
That"s where the kitchen used to be.
The door turned into a drawbridge and the moat multiplied 20 times in size. Paola started walking toward it. That dark thing that had pretended to be Daddy had promised her answers. It was probably inside.
She stepped through the large oak door where the kitchen used to be, but no kitchen counters were on the other side. Just a black hallway with a small square of light at the center.
The hallway wasn"t long, but when Paola reached the far end and stepped into the light on the other side, she was obviously on some sort of never-ending road. And while it wasn"t yellow, it was made of brick. The walls around her had fallen away, replaced with flowing fields of gra.s.s for as far as she could see in every direction.
Above her was the clearest, bluest sky she"d ever seen - an endless canopy hanging over miles of neatly bricked road which winded through a meadow, across a flower-carpeted ground, then up into rolling knolls of emerald gra.s.s where it vanished at the horizon.
The road was a thing of fairytales, but something about it was scary. False like the thing that had pretended to be her daddy. She turned back around, but her opportunity to return to the hotel vanished, along with the door and the entire hotel. Nothing but gra.s.s. And the road.
She took a step forward, and then another.
Paola kept walking for what felt like years, in that way that time seemed to sometimes stretch in dreams. She desperately wanted to run into the thick, tall forests that had cropped up on either side of the meadow and see everything she could not see.
It was wonderful where she could not go; she just knew it. That"s where the Fantasy lived, all the make-believe her mind had ever made, frolicking free, away from the memories and hard textures of truth.
But I have to stay on the path. It would be terrible to get lost...here.
If she didn"t keep walking she would never get to the end of the road. And that"s where the answers were; her dream logic told her.
Without warning, the scenery changed, instantly shifting from rich, warm colors to a sea of grays. From Oz back to Kansas.
Flat landscape gave way to a tapestry of small gray hills at the front, larger ones in back, growing in size until they crashed into charcoal smeared mountains that stretched high and into churning gray clouds overhead.
Paola was walking for hours, or perhaps seconds, when she realized what the mountains were made of. At first they seemed like nothing more than ash-colored wedges of dull pulp, but as they grew in size, they sharpened in detail.
Piles and heaps and rivers of refuse were there; herculean hallways of nothing but garbage: cracked plastic, shredded paper, twisted metal.
The piles, along with the rising landscape getting closer to the clouds above, sent Paola into a cold claustrophobia. Paola saw a figure in the distance standing on the right side of the road, its shoulders slouched and its back to Paola. It looked like it was holding something close to its body as it swayed from side to side.
She inched toward the figure, and brushed against a gnarled root coming out of the ground. Only it wasn"t a root, but rather, more garbage. As she touched it, her mind flashed back to when she was six years old.
They"d been looking everywhere for her kitten, Doodles. But the cat had gotten out when Paola had accidentally left the front door open. Someone was at the front door. Their neighbor, Mr. Jerry. He said he"d found the kitten in the road. It had been hit by a car. He held it in his hands, its rear legs crushed. Paola cried both as a child, and now as she relived the memory.
That"s when she realized that each piece of the garbage was, in fact, made from her memories. She wasn"t sure how she knew it, but she was suddenly certain that the memories were painful and could swallow her whole, if given the chance. As if the memories were stripped of nutrients and only the bad stuff was left.
The stuff that made you cry or feel lonely; hide or want to die.
Paola gasped when she realized the person on the side of the road was her father. He was pushing a broom and clearing the road from any stray or dangerous memories. He turned to Paola. "Not quite safe to pa.s.s yet," he shook his head. "Been going as fast as I can, but they just keep piling up."
"What happened?"
"Something upset the apple cart. Plowed right through, fast as it could. Looks like it took everything with it." Paola"s dad pointed off the trail toward a black bricked spire rising from the ground and pointing toward the sky. "See that, that"s where he is."
"Who?"
"You know who," he said. "Same one who sent you inside here."
"Why is he inside me? I can feel him in me."
"He"s not whole. Most of him already left, but a part of him broke off. Like a snake."
"Do I have to go inside?" Paola asked, looking up at the black castle, and the dark memories surrounding her suddenly seemed less scary by comparison.
"No, sure don"t," he shook his head. You could wake right now if you want to. Everyone will see you and you"ll see them. But you won"t know who they are, no matter how hard you try. You won"t even know who you are, not ever again. Because all this," he waved his hand at the mountain of memories. "Every bit of it"s gonna be gone."
"What"s inside the castle?" Paola asked.
"I don"t know anything you don"t," he said, "but I can tell you what you"d probably guess anyway if you think it will help."
Paola smiled. The man who was only sort of a memory of her father had said that exactly like her real daddy would have.
"Okay," she said. "Then tell me that."
"That castle is the middle of you. It"s your soul. Inside, there"s something to fight or face, or team up with or tell off. I don"t think you can know until you get there, but you can expect it to get rough. Just make it through, and never forget what"s on the other side of the spire."
"What"s on the other side?"
"Me, your mom, the rest of your life, of course. But you can"t have it without this." He snapped his fingers and the warm colors of Oz flashed across the sky before going dim a second later.
"Are you still alive?" she asked.
"What do you think?"
Paola didn"t know how to answer the question.
"It"s time for me to go," he said. "Time for both of us to go."
Paola went to hug her father, but he disappeared just as she drew close. So did everything else, except the black castle, barely visible in the darkness. Paola couldn"t even see the ground, her feet vanishing in the clouds which flowed like thick, fast-moving fog blanketing the world.
Every step Paola took toward the castle caused it to move two steps farther away. She was walking a few minutes before deciding to try a step back. She was rewarded with the castle moving two steps closer toward her. Cold, wet wind whipped her and lashed at her hair, as she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.
Paola continued to walk slowly backward, a foot at a time, careful not to fall over the edge of a narrow road, which was now high in the air with nothing but endless empty on either side.
Each step sent her back into another awful memory.
Small memories seemed ma.s.sive, each one an attacker in the dark at her most unarmed. She longed to turn, run toward the barren land behind her, then keep running until her dying breath. It would be better than this.
But she couldn"t.
The blackness swam over her face, threatening to swallow her.
She was going to die.
The dark memories were in her mind, her lungs, her body.
Every step back was another cool blade warmed by her blood, but she kept pushing forward, knowing that the icy black of a starless universe was better than the hollow void of a doused existence.
I"m supposed to be in bed, but Mom and Dad are asleep. And the movie I"m not supposed to be watching has horrible monsters and terrible screaming. And fires. Lots and lots of fires. When a mouse scurries across the floor, my screams bring my parents running into the room.
I"m eight, saying b.l.o.o.d.y Mary into the bathroom mirror. I know it"s just my mind playing tricks, and not something staring back at me with red eyes through the gla.s.s, but my heart feels like it"s going to explode and no one can hear me scream.
I"m in Grandma"s room, just after she died. I"ve fallen asleep on the bed facing the mirror. I wake up slowly and can hear Grandma"s whisper behind me. Her image shimmers in the gla.s.s and I"m sure there is more than one reality.
No more.
Paola peeled the black from her body, yanked it from her throat, then stepped outside her memories, letting terror drop to the road like an empty wetsuit. Paola found herself standing in front of the open castle door. A dim red light bathed the walls inside the castle, making it seem almost warm. While she was so cold.
A booming voice thundered through the black.
"Very good," it said. "You"re almost here. Just a few more steps."
Paola crossed the bridge then stepped into a huge room with ma.s.sive ceilings which she couldn"t see through the clouds. The floor was carpeted in plush black, with threads so deep and thick they looked like colonies of crawling worms.
Across the room was another open door. Paola stepped inside. It was a small room with nothing in it. She expected a throne room with evil claiming his castle seat, but fear and evil often thrived in whisper.
"What do you want from me?" she asked the empty room.
Except the room wasn"t empty. The voice was everywhere. And when it spoke, its waves rolled through Paola.
"Nothing," it said. "I"ve taken everything I need already. The only thing I want now is to give something back to you."
"You don"t want to give me anything."
"Oh, that"s not true," the voice soothed, flowing through her and making her feel almost... good. "I"ve taken so much, now I long to ease your pain."
"By taking my memories until there"s nothing left of me?" Paola shook her head. "No thanks. Tell me how to get my memories back and how to leave. You"re inside me, that means I know what you do, and you have to tell me."
Something screeched inside the walls.
"You can leave whenever you want," it hissed. "I"m not holding you here."
"Yes you are."
The door where she entered disappeared and a new one opened on the other side of the room, slowly widening to Oz-colored meadows. "See," the voice said. "What are you waiting for?"
Paola looked out the window then shook her head.
The voice started to rumble as the walls began to shake and the red light within them grew brighter, hotter.
She closed her eyes and started slowly rocking back and forth, chanting to herself to keep the voice"s long strings of nasty words away.
"LEAVE!" the voice thundered.
Thick smoke smoldered through the room. It was what was left of the creature.
Paola smiled. Its anger was making her stronger.
The Oz-colored meadows outside flickered with ash, then turned warm again.
"Looks like your lie is wearing off," she said.
The voice bellowed. "I"ll kill everyone left in the world, starting with your mother." The black smoke swirled through the room, then added, "Your father"s next."
Something collapsed inside Paola. The evil had found her single biggest creeping fear. She tried to keep the whimper inside, but lost it anyway.
The voice went still and every inch of her world was quickly turning to black, the red walls of the castle now cold and dark. Wind howled through the room, wet and so cold.
She squeezed her eyes shut, bit her lip and started murmuring.
You"re not here. You left because you"re an empty disease and I was too good for you. You can"t hurt my mother and you can"t hurt my father. You want me to leave because then you can take over.
"But I won"t let you," she said, standing up and opening her eyes as the smoke swirled, gathering strength from the wind, growing thicker, and louder.
"Gooooooooooooooo!" it shouted, its voice an almost mechanical echo.
"You go!" she yelled, "YOU GO!"
The clouds above met the swirling smoke around her, spiraling into a funnel cloud of chaos that picked her up and lifted her toward the unseen ceiling. Sc.r.a.ps of memories slammed into her from all sides, coming and going so fast they blurred into one another, causing her to cry, fear, panic, rage, and scream all at once.
I won"t go.