Baker's Dozen, page 3
We found nothing.
"Leave and come back tomorrow?" Darren said bleakly.
Ivolsky didn't want to come back, and neither did I. Our only hope was gone, probably now a particle of dust.
We did gather together the documents which we'd already read through and would later analyze in more detail. We were all tired and wanted to go back home. Darren led the way to the door, Ivolsky in second, and me third, holding the glass jar with the hand in it under my arm. I could not quit staring at it as I went to leave. It was still making that annoying siren sound.
"You coming or what?" Darren asked me.
I kept staring. I felt like I was putting a puzzle together. I felt that if I left now, no tomorrow would make up for today.
"Let’s go now, Jason," Ivolsky said.
The hand in the jar made a very tight fist.
I solved the puzzle instantly.
I turned and hurried over to the skeleton. The stock of the rifle was lying against what used to be the palm of that poor 19th century man ... but his other hand was clenched tightly, slightly hidden from view. And in that bony grip I removed the piece of that paper we could not find.
"You found it!" Ivolsky said, delighted.
Darren entered and went to my side. "What's it say?"
"'But my great grandfather did tell me of an incident involving a certain alchemy experiment gone wrong back when—'"
"'He discovered a new chemical drug that he believed could cure a contagious cancer-like disease at that time period. However, before his testing was complete, he incidentally discovered that this liquid substance was volatile when in contact with air. It dripped onto his feet, soaked into his skin, and became even more volatile beyond all reason.
"'This liquid changed all kinds of things in his body besides his feet, but not nearly as drastic. It had some kind of… metaphysical effect on him, to say frankly. That's why his feet attracted the hands. His feet became magnets into so many different planes of existence, that no human other than Christ could understand. He brought them from another world and into this one, mentally and metaphysically, and twisted their context from that realm into ours through the ground, since his feet were his main source of this underlying power. This drug, the Liquid of The Gods, I called it, has been lost until I was born and I inherited something my great, great, great, great, grandfather tried to forget. I write this to anyone in my family tree who may also inherit it. There is no way to stop it. I can no longer live anymore, even though I do know the facts now. Three minutes of truth cannot make up for a lifetime of lies and regrets.'"
-I finished reading it. We were shocked, appalled, thrilled, scared, upset, and happy all at once. There were no more black tunnels for me to be trapped in anymore. This curse was just an illness, no matter how strange. No cure, but for me, I could live with that.
Darren, Ivolsky and I exited the cabin moments after I read that, when the owls started to fill the woods with their hoos. Darren and Ivolsky walked toward the truck, but I stayed behind, turned and looked over at the pond.
"Wait, guys."
They stopped, turned.
I walked over to the pond with the goofiest smile I’d ever had on my face. They looked at me as if I had a straight-jacket wrapped around my body. I lifted my foot off the ground and hung it over the calm, smooth pond and said, "Before we go, let's do something fun."
They smiled—I would have known this without looking at them. Slowly but confidently, I leaned forward, and as my foot came down, I realized I was one of the only people in the world who could literally walk on water.
Inanimate Voices
Tori was a pack-rat. It looked as though a garbage truck had exploded in her very bedroom. Soda cans, clothes, plates (paper, plastic, and dishware), papers, magazines, old toys, empty cardboard boxes, cups, books, and more, cluttered her fifteen-by-twenty-foot room. The girl had no mental illness, nothing really wrong with her that doctors could find, in spite of her having been struck by lightning one night last month while playing in a puddle in an alley with her friends. Oddly enough, afterward, her mother began to notice that she would never throw anything away. She would even save food crumbs after a meal, for that matter. And she was only twelve. The entire house reeked because of that one room. When her mother asked her to throw something in the trash, she wouldn't, and if her mother insisted, Tori would scream and scratch herself. Something had seriously altered her way of thinking, and her mother was determined to figure out the cause.
She had scheduled the in-house appointment with Doctor Nelson on Friday, the thirteenth, to talk with her daughter, who had not left the house since the incident. Needless to say, Tori feared storms now, and strangely, certain objects. Sometimes she even reacted very peculiarly to certain meals her mother brought home to her. Tori's articulation, or use of words, had changed since, also. At times, she talked as eloquently as Shakespeare; at other times, she talked as unintelligibly as a preschooler.
Doctor David Nelson arrived on a grim-looking afternoon. He parked on the side of the house, stepped out, and looked up. Clouds blanketed the sky like oil-soaked cotton balls. A storm wasn't approaching, it was already here.
An intelligent-looking man with a little something to hide, David knocked on the door.
When Tori's mother welcomed him in, he almost flat-out vomited from the stench.
"I know, I know. I'm so sorry, Doctor. It's terrible."
"Is she?"
"Right upstairs. Take a left, then a right. I really appreciate you coming."
Coughing and gagging, David treaded reluctantly up the steps and to the room where the raw collection of gross smells permeated.
After knocking, then entering, he coughed harder. The reek of disposal was as bad as a food-filled refrigerator that had been unplugged for the better half of a week. His hand jerked up to his face where it tried to block the odor.
The sight of the room was almost as bad. Mounds of garbage, clothes, and dirty dishes stretched from wall to wall. One corner was stacked so high with soda cans that they actually touched the ceiling. Flies were buzzing around everywhere. The walls were colored a bright pink, which really contrasted with the rest of the scene. Posters of Christina Aguilera hung on the wall over her bed, where Tori sat very still. She was a cute girl, slightly chunky, with pretty green eyes. Her hair was in pigtails, blond, and very long. She sat formally, spine-straight, hands cupped together, half lost and half afraid.
"Tori?" Doctor Nelson said.
"That's my name, don't wear it out," she said, exhausted. Too exhausted. Doctor Nelson knew adults who had more liveliness than this little girl. She just stared forward.
Nelson shut the door.
"You want to talk to me? That's what my mom brought you here for, huh?"
"Uh, yeah, that's right. Would you care if we did talk for a few moments?" he said, lying on the charm.
Without even moving her eyes, she said: "Take a seat right there on that pile of clothes."
He looked down at the old, dirty clothes, and sat on them. "Your mom says you haven't been feeling well lately ..."
"I'm all right. What's your name?" she asked.
"Uh, David."
"You can call me Maron," she blurted out. David lowered his eyebrows in question; he thought it was some sort of joke.
Tori responded, "That's what something I knew was called."
"Something you knew?"
"Yes. A reincarnated soldier."
David was already beginning to think that this girl had some from of mental illness. But he kept going, anyway.
"Do you see dead people, Tori?" he asked very gently.
"See? No. Dead things don't stay dead. It's not that they won't, but that they can't." She was extremely serious.
"What do you see, Tori?"
"It's not what I see, it's what I hear."
She didn't shift yet, David noticed. "What do you hear, then? Voices?"
"You might say that. You see, they won't let me go now. They know that I can hear them talk."
"Who?"
"Everything. It all started when I was hit by lightning. I went to the emergency room and all was okay ... until I came home. It was night—late—and I was in bed, asleep. Then I heard a noise. I didn't know what it was or where it was coming from, but I got out of bed to check it out because it was bugging me. I walked down the stairs and it got louder. I thought it was a gurgling sound, like someone choking. It just kept getting louder and louder and louder. I was kinda scared, but I felt like I couldn't tell my mommy or daddy. I felt like the gurgling sound was telling me that if I did, something real bad would happen. I felt like the gurgling was telling me to go into the laundry room. So I did."
"What was there?"
"It ... was liquid laundry detergent stuff," she said, looking down very quickly, then back up again.
"And that was where the gurgling sound was coming from?"
She nodded, a little scared. "Yes, it—he was in it, himself."
"Who?"
"A very very bad man who killed a bunch of people a long time ago. In a war."
David, though sympathetic, knew this girl needed more than just his own help. It sounded like schizophrenia. "Do you know his name?"
"No, but I dumped him down the drain. My mom got real mad at me for doing that. That was one of the only ones I've killed."
"Tori, what do you think it was? The gurgling sound? Why do you keep this stuff in here—"
She interrupted: "The second one I heard made me cry real hard. When I woke up one morning, I fixed three waffles. I ate two, but I wasn't hungry enough for the last one, so I went to throw it away. But before I did, it actually cried. It was screaming at me not to throw it away, but to eat it, to please let it go to good use. It sounded like a scared baby and whimpered like a sad puppy dog. I couldn't help it. I wasn't hungry. I'm sorry for throwing that away. I killed it."
"Tori," he said gingerly, "they're inanimate objects, sweetie. They can't talk to you. It's your mind playing—"
"No, it's not!" she interrupted. "They have lives too, you know. That's why I don't throw things away—because I killed someone who was a waffle, and I can't do that again, no matter how loud they can be sometimes when they talk to each other."
"Who talks to each other?"
"Everything. From rocks to liquids to grass to paper. Everything talks. Only I can hear them."
David sighed. He didn't know how to respond. In all honesty, he couldn't.
"Just because they don't have a heart, or blood, or our kind of mind, doesn't make them fake or not alive. Don't you see, just because we're different doesn't mean we're apart. Everything you throw away is alive. Everything you drink can talk. Everything you use in your daily life has a soul, too."
"Who told you this?"
"One of them told me about it—" She pointed to the pile of soda cans. "They said it's called animism, and that even seemingly nonliving things are just like us, but somehow different."
David clasped his hands together and looked seriously into her eyes. "Look, Tori—"
"You look here, Doctor David Lee Nelson--" She finally looked up at him. David was shocked. There was no way she could have known his middle name. Maybe not even his last, for that matter.
"You believe what you want, but I know the truth. You don't know what it's like to not sleep because they threaten me and my mom and my dad. There are good ones and there are bad ones. Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and here it is. We shift from animate to inanimate, back and forth from one to the other. We are alive either way. You know that I have Napoleon made from the cardboard of a cereal box?"
"How did you know my name?" David demanded.
"One of the scarves on the floor was a psychic a long time ago. She just knew."
This was starting to scare David. Before it did any further, he got strong and said, "You need help, Tori. This isn't healthy for you to be this way and believe these things—"
She interrupted again: "You want me to prove it?"
He did but he didn't. She did anyway. "The Psychic Regina says you cheat on your wife. She says you have secrets no one knows about. She says your Grandmother Mary hated something you did when you were a kid. She says in your past life you were a molecule of glass."
David stood, terrified. It was all true. This girl had no way of knowing any of these things. The look in Tori's eyes was too powerful to be that of a child's.
"It's not possible!" he told her, voice trembling. She giggled strangely. Her whole manner appeared unearthly.
"You can't help me, Nelson. Nobody can help me. None of us are safe. Just remember this: when you feel a certain way or think a certain way, it may not be you feeling or thinking; it just might be something or someone telling you what to feel, or think, or do."
"You stop it, you little—you little—" He was on the verge of snapping.
"Say it," she demanded, her eyes big and horrible.
Suddenly, there was a huge clap of thunder that scared the hell out of Nelson. It scared Tori just as much, but she, unlike Nelson, was not the one to run from the room, down the stairs, out of the house, and into his car, determined to retire from child psychology earlier than expected.
During the drive home, David kept looking over and down at the briefcase he carried his important papers in, wondering if it was talking, wondering if he could hear it in some metaphysical way. Maybe it was even looking at him, too. Maybe it was telling him to swerve into the next lane every time another vehicle approached ...
Or maybe he was just overstressed.
David Nelson would never forget that little girl. Not a moment goes by when he doesn't see something—a sheet of paper, a slice of pizza, a coin, or his favorite t-shirt—and wonder whether it's living or not. And not a day goes by when he really considers becoming a monk and leaving behind all material possessions for good.
12 Feet Under
“12 feet under, man, 12 feet under! I know now!"
Ray had never, in the four years he'd known Ronnie, seen him this terribly afraid. Ronnie had been in fights with the toughest kids around, had once survived alcohol poisoning after drinking too much Vodka at a party, and had literally dodged the bullet from a .22 in a hunting accident with his Uncle Bob ... but this was an entirely new emotion for him, and for Ray to witness. Tears were almost in his eyes this night, fall of 2006. Ray had never once seen his best friend—who was nearly thirteen—cry. But, what he was thinking, and what he was trying to describe to him, seemed like a stretch of the impossible.
"Take your time, man. Nobody's gonna hurt you or anything," Ray comforted him.
Ronnie's hands were visibly shaking. His bottom lip quivered like a twitching bug. There was only one light on in the room—overhead—which made things look eerie.
"Nothing's going to happen to you."
Ronnie tried to respond, but couldn't. He'd been sitting here with Ray for an hour, trying to get the balls to explain the dream he had had last night. So far, all that came out were minute details, nothing concrete.
"Ray?" he asked, his voice tremulous. Ray looked at him seriously, curiously.
"I'm scared to go to sleep tonight, m-man. I might ta-take more No Dozes. I don't want to sleep."
Ray moistened his lips with his tongue. He watched as tears finally streamed down Ronnie's cheeks. "You're all right. It was just a dream, man. But you gotta tell me. I'm gonna stay up all night, too, unless you tell me what it was, ‘cause I'm freakin’ curious."
Ronnie laughed, but there was no joy in it.
"I don't know if I can say what my dream was. It wasn't what was in the dream, itself, though; it was the feeling I got from it. I woke up in a cold sweat. I was afraid to be alone all day today. The dream was in color, not black and white, like usual. And I remember everything. Every detail."
Ray's heart was pumping hard. He'd seen his friend in many predicaments, but never one such as this. Ronnie looked as if death had just knocked on his very door.
"Promise you won't tell anyone my dream? Man?"
Ray nodded and said, "You got my word. I promise I won't tell a soul."
Ronnie looked downward, tears still coming and going. The light in the room lit mostly Ray's face; Ronnie's face was mostly shrouded in darkness. Then he began ...
"In the dream ... I was at Brooke Hills Cemetery..." He froze up, too terrified to go on; then, as if someone had punched him from behind, he continued--"I was standing back in the distance by the woods, where the new graves were being dug; but in the dream, there was a burial taking place up the hill from me. I was just standing there by myself, watching as a whole bunch of people were grieving over some little dead girl in the coffin. I didn't see her, but somehow I knew it was a little girl. Everyone was crying, sad, the preacher was talking, reading from the bible, and the little girl's casket was slowly being lowered into the ground. As it was, I saw her spirit float out of the coffin, like some higher force was helping her out. She was white, glowing, like an angel in the movies. She didn't look at anyone but me. She looked sorry, as if she felt pity for me, and I got the sense from her that she was going to a better place—heaven, or something. Slowly, her spirit began floating up into the sky, and she looked happy. Real damn happy but sorry for me all at once. I felt good, too." He stopped and cried. Ray didn't know how to respond to this. This wasn't fear, this was bigger than that. Maybe even bigger than death, itself.
"She flew up into the clouds until she was gone, then BAM!" He slammed his fist down on the desk. "The girl's parents, the graveyard, and the sky with the white light, was gone—all gone. I saw earth all around me, as if I'd been yanked under the soil. I could see dirt, grass, and worms, as something pulled me down. That's when all the good feelings I felt for the girl were gone, and this feeling—this horrible feeling—just shot right into me. One minute she was going up to heaven, and the next, I was being pulled down."
