Short Stories

First published in the September 2016 issue of Abstract Jam.

by Peter Ryan

The bar was tucked inside the Redwood Inn, but there weren’t any redwoods in Tucson, just cacti and subdivisions. As he entered from the lobby, Stephen tipped up his red and white baseball cap so that it was no longer shielding his eyes.

“What do you have on tap?” he asked.

“Well,” she said looking at the names on the handles, “Budweiser, Miller Lite, Fat Tire…” She raised her eyebrows, as if to say: are you really going to make me run through the list?

The bartender was in her forties. She wore her red hair in a careless bun. Her nose was narrow and sharp, which Stephen didn’t like, but her breasts were enormous.

“Fat Tire,” he said.

“Great.” She poured him a pint.

Daylight poked in through the cracks in the blinds. Neon beer logos had been mounted to the walls, along with six flat screen TVs. Two men narrated a golf tournament in whispers that were oddly intimate.

A man settled into the stool next to Stephen’s, dropping his suitcase beside him on the floor. He already smelled like booze.

Picking up a menu, he skimmed it, flipping it over and over again, as if he might have missed something.

“Do you have Coke?” he asked.

“Pepsi,” she said.

“It’s not a Jack ‘n Coke,” he said, “without Coke. I’ll have a Jack ‘n Pepsi.”

She scooped some ice into a cup and mixed in the rest.

“Grazie,” he said, immediately chugging a third of the glass.

She left the bar to wipe down tables, and the man leaned into Stephen’s side so that, for a moment, they were shoulder to shoulder.

“Oi, oi,” he whispered, “the tits on that.”

Stephen glared at him. The man was speaking in a low voice, but not so low that she for sure couldn’t hear.

“Just saying,” he said. “You could do worse. You could do much, much worse.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Getting there.”

When the bartender returned, the man demanded: “What’s your name, what’s your name?”

“Clarissa,” she said. Somehow it didn’t seem to fit.

“My friend here,” he said with a wink, “wanted me to ask you.”

Stephen glanced up at the TV. A white ball launched up into the air, too small for the camera to capture against the clear blue sky. It landed and rolled noiselessly down a patch of smooth green grass.

The man reached out both hands over the counter and pushed up his digits, wriggling them softly in the dim light.

“Hold on,” he said. “Hold the phone.”

He stared at them with a mixture of horror and admiration.

“What’s happened to my fingers?”

Stephen looked up. As far as he could tell, all ten were accounted for.

The man got to his feet. He leaned from side to side, as if he were stepping off a boat onto shore. Then he stumbled out of the room in a hurry.

There was light applause as a man tapped the ball into a hole from the edge of the green.

Stephen glanced down at the briefcase the man had left behind, and then he turned to the door. He waited for the man to realize his mistake and come stumbling back in.

The TV cut to commercials. A scene of a woman jogging alongside her dog was overlaid with an announcer rattling off a litany of side effects—eye pain, bleeding ulcers, paranoia, memory loss, tooth decay, thoughts of harming oneself or others.

Stephen had a second beer and then a third. By that time, curiosity and impulsiveness had the better of him.

“I’m cashing out,” he said, leaving a five-dollar bill on the counter.

Then he picked up the briefcase and walked out the door.

---

His palms were greased with sweat when he lifted the case up onto the bed. It wasn’t heavy, but Stephen was nervous.

Originally, he’d assumed that the man had stumbled back to his room and passed out. He had an image of him laying flat on the mattress, clothes and bedcovers still on. This would have left him plenty of time to rifle through the contents before inquiring at the front desk about a lost and found.

For the first time, the possibility occurred to him its owner had simply stepped out to go to the men’s room. If so, he might already be back at the bar. He could see him there now: retracing his steps, falling on all fours to check under the tables and chairs—

There was a knock at the door.

Stephen froze. Every muscle in his body tightened.

The taps on the door were repeated—this time with greater urgency.

After a minute, Stephen heard a bit of shuffling in the hallway. Then silence.

There was no turning back now. Might as well see what he had “won.” He popped open the briefcase.

Four large plastic bags had been strapped to the bottom interior with duct tape. Each contained a powder of a different color: one orange, one yellow, one red, and one blue. Drugs—they could only be drugs. Cocaine with food coloring? Maybe. If so, there was many thousands of dollars worth.

The phone by the bed rang and Stephen jumped back, nearly knocking the briefcase to the floor.

When he was eight, he had grabbed a pen from the South Bend mayor’s office on a class field trip. When he was sixteen, he’d snatched a bag of food off the counter at a McDonald’s. Just picked up an order that wasn’t his and waltzed right out the door, digging to the bottom of the bag for fries. He didn’t steal for money. And he wasn’t compulsive about it. It wasn’t like he stuffed a candy bar into his pocket every time we wandered into a store.

The phone rang again, and he panicked. He kicked open the door to the bathroom. Then he tore open one of the bags, dumping it out into the toilet. There was enough powder that he was worried about clogs, so he only emptied half of it before the first flush.

As the rosy red water circled the drain, it bubbled and spit out a thick black smoke, glittering with bright red specks. Stephen coughed, lifting his shirt to shield his mouth.

Then he heard a noise. It was a combination of two sounds: a baby bird crying out for its mother and a man violently gurgling water in the back of his throat.

Something not entirely dissimilar to a fetus, but much larger, pulled itself out of the bowl and into the black air that swirled around the room. Its skin was red—as if it had no skin at all. And though its head and hands were fetus-like, with eyes that could not yet open because they were not fully formed, it was easily the size of a large dog.

Instinctively, Stephen took the suitcase from the bed and began smashing in the creature’s skull. It was his body, rather than his mind, that was processing the situation. And his body had chosen violence.

When the red, fleshy thing was not just dead, but thoroughly dead, its brains bashed into the tile and its head deflated like a sad balloon, he sank to the floor and cried.

He was drowsy. He could barely keep his eyes open. His last thought before falling asleep was that he should probably buy garbage bags.

---

When he woke, the man from the bar was sitting in the chair beside him. He looked sober.

“Oh good,” he said, “you’re awake.”

Stephen sat up. He was under the sheets, but he realized suddenly that, other than his boxers, he wasn’t wearing any clothes.

“What’re you doing here?”

“You let me in,” the man said.

Stephen couldn’t remember.

“You’re sleepy,” he said. “That’s the red powder. You’ve started the sequence.”

“The sequence,” Stephen repeated.

“Red, Orange,” the man said, “Yellow, Blue. You take Red without Orange, you sleep and don’t wake up. You take Orange without Yellow, you have a heart attack. You take Yellow without Blue… well, at least you die happy. But there isn’t really anything left of you.”

Stephen stared over at the bathroom. The creature was still there, its brains and guts oozing over the tile.

“Yeah man,” he laughed, “you fucked ‘er up.”

“What the hell is it?” He wanted to leap out of bed, put on some pants, and get out of there as fast as he could, but he was so tired that even sitting was an effort.

The man frowned.

“So there’s magic,” he said, stretching out his left hand all the way to the left as if to say magic is over here, “and there are drugs.” He stretched out his right hand all the way to the right, and then slowly brought the two together. “Then there’s a very teeny, tiny overlap. If you’re a wizard that uses drugs, you keep it secret from other wizards. If you’re an addict that uses magic, you keep it a secret from other addicts. It pays to be discrete, and I’m the one who gets paid for that discretion.”

Stephen leaned back onto the pillow.

“I can’t sell this shit to just anybody,” he said. “Plenty of mundanes would love the high, but the Dark Council would fuck me if it got on the news. I mean, so would the Council of Light, but they can suck a dick. I mean, sorry, no offense, but it’s true.”

The man took a drag from his cigarette. Stephen hadn’t even realized he’d been holding one.

“Point being: I only sell to wizards. And even then, I have to be careful. I surround myself with people who don’t snitch. You see where I’m going with this?’

“I won’t say anything.”

Stephen closed his eyes. He could feel himself drifting off to sleep.

The man grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled up and down, as if trying to shake down an apple from a tree.

“Not yet!” he shouted. “Not yet!”

Stephen roused.

“Red,” the man said. “How do I explain Red? It makes you a double. Your ideal self. Pure vanity trip, if you ask me. Lasts about an hour.”

He glanced to the bathroom and then back again.

“Real short. You didn’t miss much. Brings you down seeing your own flesh melt back into a puddle. Worst part of the trip. Orange smacks you up again. You don’t sleep for three, four days. You get a chance to hit things hard. You’ve got time to organize the garage. Finish that novel.”

He paused and smiled. There was a gleam in his eye that almost made Stephen believe he intended to write the next great American bestseller.

“They call it ‘the muse,’ right? Except the shadows are hot on your heels. They think you’re dying, but they can’t touch you—like a lion trying to pounce on a tourist but slamming into the glass wall of the cage, right? Like they get real mad about it.”

He laughed.

“Yellow gives you that one-with-the-earth feeling. That’s the good stuff. That’s cloud nine, classic high. Blue brings you back to okie dokie and you can’t remember any of the shit that just happened. I mean your memory is wiped.”

“People pay for this?”

“It’s the whole damn thing,” he said, “Life. Ego. Inspiration. Mortality. Then you go all one with the universe, say fuck it and start it over again. But it kind of drives you nuts. Our brains can’t process that shit. Hence the wipe.”

“People do this more than once?”

He laughed. “Oh yeah. I mean, it’s hard because you forget. I had to write it down. I was like: Harold! That shit is good! You’ll like it! One more time! Just trust me!” His laugh devolved into a cackle.

“You don’t cold turkey this shit. You just don’t. Right now you’re tired. You’ll sleep, sleep, and sleep. That’s cause of the Red. If you don’t move on to Orange, you’ll sleep forever.”

Stephen thought about reaching for the phone and calling 911. Then he thought about the dog-sized fetus in his bathroom.

“You’ll die,” Harold explained. “I mean: coma. But basically dead.”

Stephen sighed. “How much do I take?”

“Just a pinch,” he said. “I mean you went all-in with Red, I mean half of the fucking bag all-in, so we might want to up your dose.”

“How much will it cost me?”

Harold smiled. “You’re gonna work for what you owe.”

“I’d rather pay cash.”

The man shifted in his chair uncomfortably. He grimaced. “Now you know too much,” he said. “When you make it to Blue, you can forget this whole thing ever happened. Then you’re free. Meanwhile, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

He took another drag from his cigarette. In his other hand, Stephen realized, he was holding a gun.

---

“This heat’s the worst,” Harold cried, even though the air-conditioning had been cranked up to the max and it was actually a bit chilly inside. They had been driving for three hours. For some reason, they had taken Stephen’s car, an old Chevy, and Harold had left his Buick back at the hotel. Stephen was at the wheel—he got the impression he would be the whole way there.

When he had dissolved some Orange in a plastic cup in the hotel bathroom, he hadn’t just felt wide awake; he felt a sense of urgency. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something in his blind spot, following the car, and he wanted to get away from it. Harold had to tell him three times to slow down.

Harold tilted his seat back. “The fucking worst, man.”

Stephen pulled his baseball cap down, shielding his eyes from the sun.

He thought he saw a shadow in his rearview mirror, but when he turned his head it was gone.

---

They pulled into a trailer park a few hours outside of Salt Lake.

“Okay, little bird,” Harold said, “time to earn your seed.”

“I’m ready.”

“Here.” He handed him a small ziplock bag. It was full of what looked like tealeaves. “He gets this for three faeries. Make sure they’re alive. Man’s name is Ephraim.”

It took a second for this to sink in. “You’re not coming?”

Harold shook his head. “Never done business with this one before. So you go. Everything pans out, next time he’ll get the real deal.”

Everything pans out was clearly code for nobody gets shot in the face.

“I’m not going in there.”

Harold was still holding the gun in his lap.

“What the fuck do you think this is? You’re on Orange. You’re gonna go faster and faster until your heart bursts. Unless, that is, you top it off with Yellow at the peak. Those are my fucking drugs you’re taking. Go earn it.”

Stephen’s heart really was beating fast. Even just sitting there talking it out was making him anxious. He was having trouble sitting still. And in the afternoon sun, the shadows were long. He couldn’t help but think that they were waiting, watching.

He snatched the bag from Harold’s hand and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. Then he burst out of the Chevy, hopping up the steps to the trailer. He knocked on the door, and Harold gave him a thumbs up from the car.

An older man answered. He had a full head of white hair and a trim beard. He was wearing an XXLarge shirt with a picture of the Grand Canyon on it, but he was really a medium.

“Whose your friend?” he asked, immediately spotting the car.

“That’s, uh, my associate.”

“Does your associate drink coffee?”

“I’ve only ever seen him drink jack and cokes.”

The man snorted and waved him inside.

---

The trailer was filled with heat lamps and small metal cages scattered across newsprint that had been flattened over counters, couches, and the floor. It smelled like wet dog, but there didn’t seem to be one around.

Ephraim poured Stephen a cup of coffee.

“All I have is mason jars,” he said, handing it to him with an oven mitt around the glass.

“Thanks.”

“Well,” he said, “You can have your pick really.”

He brought out a shoebox. It had tiny holes that had been punched into the lid. Stephen opened it. A dozen or so yellowish-gray bodies squirmed over some paper-thin tissue. They had tiny butterfly wings that didn’t look big enough to lift them up from the ground. They had no eyes or distinguishing features. In fact, they almost looked like they were made from putty. Some of them were stuck to the side of the box.

“They’re alive?”

Ephraim appraised him critically. “Well,” he said, “just look at ‘em!”

Stephen took another look. They were all moving—if only just.

“Do you have a—have a…?” Stephen wasn’t sure what he needed.

“I’ll get you something to put it in.”

He opened a cupboard and an entire collection of grocery bags floated to the floor. Stephen picked one up. Then he dropped in three faeries from the shoebox.

“You’re not pledged?” Ephraim’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“Not what?”

“You don’t belong,” he pressed, “to any of the guilds?”

“No,” Stephen said, “No sir.”

He nodded approvingly. Stephen pulled out the bag of tealeaves. Ephraim reached out to take it, but then hesitated.

“I need you to understand,” he said. “This is for my arthritis.”

“No judgment.”

“That’s the kind of thing a dealer would say to a junkie.”

Stephen shrugged. The man snatched the bag from his hand.

---

“How did he seem?” Harold asked. They were halfway to Iowa. He scratched an itch on the left side of his temple with the gun. “Like the kind of guy who pays his bills on time?”

Stephen had been on the wheel for seven hours, but he wasn’t tired.

There was a whistling as the wind hit the car, nearly pushing it out of the lane. He couldn’t help but think that beneath the wind, he heard someone laughing.

---

They drove down a gravel road through ten acres of corn before reaching a driveway.

It was really a mansion, not a house. There were two stories and at least seven windows on each level. In front sat a grand covered porch with room enough for a hundred rocking chairs. Instead of furniture, there had been collected there a vast assortment of statues of all types: naked men about to hurl discs, proud lions, women holding vases to their heads, men in robes, gargoyles, cherubs, unpainted gnomes, and abstract figures, with heads, arms, and legs but no features to distinguish one from the other. There were cobwebs bridging some of the gaps between marble, but not an excessive amount. The house was freshly painted blue with pink trim.

When they stepped out of the car, Stephen thought he heard something rustling in the corn.

The heavyset woman who greeted them at the door was wearing a checkered pink and white dress, white nylons, and an oven mitt. She had tattoos up both her arms and around her neck—all animals or mythical creatures: owls, foxes, bears, dragons, unicorns, and faeries woven together like patchwork. She wore dark purple lipstick and heavy eyeliner.

“Jo, this is Stephen,” Harold said. “Stephen, this is Jo.”

Jo nodded, but didn’t extend her hand. The house was even more impressive on the inside. There was a grand white staircase leading up to the second floor, allowing for an enormously high ceiling in the main hall. The walls were red with light oak trim, and there were floor-to-ceiling paintings of women in elegant white dresses and men wearing shredded black robes. There were a few objects here and there laid out on tables beneath glass, like in a museum.

“I hope neither of you is a vegetarian,” she said.

---

“I’m so grateful,” Harold said, polishing the last bit of pot roast from his plate, “so honored to know someone who can cook like that.”

“It was all really good,” Stephen agreed, wiping his mouth. “Really delicious.”

“I guess I’m supposed to deny it,” Jo said, “but what can I say? There are two or three things I do really well.”

Stephen half expected Harold to say something nasty. Maybe suggesting that “fucking” was one of the other two or three things. Instead, he just smiled and nodded.

“Well,” she said, “who’s getting high tonight? Just me?”

Harold laughed. “Stephen here is about to Yellow.”

“For fuck’s sake,” she said, “you started without me.”

“He’s on Orange,” he said. “Right now.”

Her eyes lit up. “Yeah? How’s it feel?”

Stephen chose his next words carefully. “Like I’m a wounded fox being chased by dogs.”

She laughed. “Fear is a drug.”

“Love is a drug,” Harold suggested. “Food is a drug.”

“Only the good stuff,” she reminded him.

Stephen stared down at his hands. They were trembling. “I just don’t like feeling like I’m not in control.”

For a long moment, the table was silent.

“Who is this guy?” Jo laughed. “Harold, this is your partner?”

“More of a friend,” he said. “More of a tag-along.”

She stacked their plates, putting her hand up when Harold stood from his chair, as if to say: no, I can handle it.

“I’ve never been in control of anything,” she said. “Not one moment of my whole damn life.”

---

Jo led them into a large attic. The ceiling was filled with skylights, and mosaic windows lined the wood-paneled walls. There were a number of antique dressers pushed to the corners, covered with candles and dried wax, but it was otherwise unfurnished. The entire floor was made from a chalkboard material, on which a number of large concentric circles had been drawn: some with solid edges and others with dotted lines; some with script from an alphabet Stephen didn’t recognize; and some with a centerpiece in the middle—a bowl of water filled with petals, a candle, a framed photograph, or a dead mouse still caught in its trap. There were hundreds of sealed bottles and glass jars scattered about the room.

“This is my workshop,” Jo said. She took a seat on the floor—not inside, but next to, one of the chalk circles.

“This place is famous, Stephen,” Harold said, “Watch your step.”

Jo laughed. “I’m laughing, but he’s right. Don’t fuck with my circles.”

Stephen crept through the room carefully and took a seat with his back against the far wall.

“Give me the stuff,” she said.

Harold handed her four ziplock bags, each with a small amount of the various powders. She took the red one and immediately dumped it into a bowl of water sitting at her feet. It bubbled and spit up a hissing black smoke.

“You can have three bottles.”

“We agreed on four!”

“Asshole,” she laughed, “I’m pulling your leg.”

Stephen watched as Harold collected four glass containers sitting around the room, choosing them seemingly at random.

“What’s in the bottles?” he asked.

“Jo’s a medium. She can talk to the dead.”

“They’re not ‘the dead,’” Jo explained. “They’re just echoes. They have no coherent sense of self.”

“Whatever, she talks to echoes. Then she traps them in these circles of protection and bottles ‘em up. You can use ‘em for all sorts of spells, but you can also ingest them directly. A powerful spirit will take over completely and never give you back, and that’s no good. But a weak one will take control just as long as you let it. It’s a weird sort of out-of-body rush. You can be out of control for a little while, someone else in the driver’s seat, but then snap back in whenever you want.”

“Even a weak spirit can take you over so you don’t come back,” Jo warned. “Just between friends, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

A small figure emerged from the water bowl, black smoke drifting off its flesh like steam after a hot bath. As the black, glistening cloud dissipated, its red skin pinkened and more distinctive features began to form.

“Oh my God,” Jo cried. “Oh my God.”

It grew quickly. It was thinner than Jo. It had blue eyes, but they were clearer somehow, like shallow pools. They glittered like rain in the sunlight. It had black hair, but it was jet-black with no trace of gray. Jo was completely entranced.

Stephen couldn’t take his eyes of it either, but he was sweating up a storm. He could feel his heart pounding in his throat. Every shadow in the room looked like it might pop out and clutch him by the throat.

“Time to Yellow,” Harold said. He reached into his pocket and dug out another plastic bag. Stephen headed to the kitchen downstairs. He poured himself a glass of water and then dumped the yellow powder in it, stirring with his finger. It didn’t bubble or boil. He sniffed it. The scent was lemony, like dish detergent. He poured it into his mouth with one quick flick of the wrist and then puckered his lips.

His heart slowed, but otherwise he didn’t feel any different. It only hit him when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

---

He looked down at the space between his hand and the rail. There was dust in the air, and it was catching the light of the windows. The voices all spoke at once—but softly, like the fluttering of a moth’s wings. Like a small creek pouring itself over a bed of stone. Like a candle-lit dinner where guests murmured only to their neighbors, no one so brash as to command the entire table’s attention at once. Only there were others—surrounding them in the dark—weeping, screaming, begging. Their voices, for all their added urgency, were no louder than idle chatter, and the party was not disturbed.

The next step was all steps. It was the barefooted march into tall grass. It was a lurch forward onto an airplane from the jet bridge.

The stairs were all stairs. They were the spiral steps of stone up a long tower. They were the mossy rocks placed in a trickling stream, leading across the water. They were the ladder upon which a man stood to change a light bulb, before falling and breaking a leg.

There was no reason to go up the stairs or down them, but there was also no reason to stand still, and Stephen’s legs pressed on.

He thought he heard Jo and Harold and tried to concentrate, to focus. He saw a rainbow form in the mist of a waterfall. He saw a woman eclipsed by a swarm of bees. He saw islands of plastic drifting in the ocean.

“Yeah,” Harold laughed, “he’s toasted.”

But she wasn’t paying any attention. She was still crying. Her double was dancing around the room—slow and elegant. Jo’s eyes were droopy, as if it had sapped the last ounce of her will just to keep them open.

Stephen thought: when the spider spins its web, does it think I better do this so I can catch some flies? Or does it do so regardless, some inner compulsion and propensity for geometric forms? He was watching a thousand spiders spin their silk, he was spinning it himself, he was in and out of their heads, but no closer to an answer.

Harold put the gun to Jo’s head and pulled the trigger. Her brains splattered over the walls like a can of Coke exploding in the microwave. Her double melted into a puddle on the floor.

On a mountain a man crouched behind a bush and took a shit. He wore a heavy “outdoor adventure” jacket that he had purchased from a catalogue. A woman woke up alone in the dark. Someone was hammering at the knob of her door. She screamed and screamed, but no help came.

“This is for you,” Harold said. He put the gun in Stephen’s hand, making sure that he got the finger around the trigger. He pushed Stephen towards the body, so that he tripped and fell onto the corpse, getting blood on his pants and shirt before he was able to lift himself up.

She dug her way up from the sand where her sisters had buried her. They had put seaweed on top of the mound, and the tide was becoming strong. He pulled himself up the rope and rung the bell, sliding back down. His hands and fingers burned. He lifted himself up on the kitchen counter and put his foot into the soft sponge cake. He was three years old. His mother was mortified.

He wasn’t just in the attic—he wasn’t in any one place. He was everywhere all at once.

“You have no idea,” Harold said, “what all this is worth. And the police won’t either. No one will notice a few missing bottles.”

There was a girl missing in Colorado. She had been locked in an attic. It was smaller and darker than this one. She had stacks and stacks of board games, but no one to play them with. At night, the man would come.

“I reported Ephraim to the Dark Council,” he continued. “You know—the guy you sold wyrm leaves to instead of me doing it? He’ll have no problem identifying you after a little coaxing. They won’t pin this on me either.”

In a small room, four women and three men spoke in hushed whispers. They were scared of themselves—scared of each other—but they expressed this in irritation and violence. They spoke of prophecies of their leader’s return. They dreaded it but worked tirelessly toward that end.

“My partner is coming for me,” he said. “He’s been following us this whole time. I’ll leave you this.” He dangled the bag of blue powder and dropped it on the floor. “So it can be your choice. You either wake up with no memory beside a dead body and holding a gun, your car parked out front, or you can ride the high, and scatter your atoms across the universe. I’ve got no beef with you personally, but that doesn’t mean I’m not fucking enjoying this.” He offered a grim smile as evidence of this fact. “You stupid piece of shit. God help you.”

The partner was already outside. He was a tall man. He wore jeans that were too tight. He was nervous. Stephen could feel the sweat creep through the pores. It was hot outside.

They took many trips up and down the stairs. There was no reason for Stephen to move. There was no reason to stand still. He shuffled around the room and found himself at the center of one of the circles that had been drawn in chalk on the floor. There were flower petals scattered there and a small pot containing either dirt or ash. As he stared down, a thin green mist seeped up out of the soil. It wrapped itself around his neck like a scarf, and then he inhaled it through his nostrils as he would a fine perfume. He felt a presence now—stronger than all the others.

You’ve got to do something, it said. The voice was loud, almost deafening.

Harold and his partner gathered up the last of the bottles. Stephen picked up the blue bag and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he followed them down the stairs.

You can’t let them leave.

As they pulled out of the driveway and into the cornfields, Stephen started his car.

He was driving the Indy 500. He was every single commuter on the 405 freeway. He was standing in a junkyard putting a new engine into an old metal frame.

You have to drive fast.

Fast or slow didn’t matter.

You have to run them off the road.

Life and death were continuous.

Stephen sped up when he turned the corner onto the highway. He swerved into the oncoming lane and hit Harold’s car from the right. The wheels screeched beneath him, and he wobbled, but he pulled the steering wheel tight and hit the other car again, running it off the road. It flipped and tumbled through the corn. There was the sound of scraping metal and the crunch of broken glass.

You have to give them your gun.

Stephen pulled over and pulled up the emergency brake. He walked over to the wreckage. There were bodies squirming inside.

Wipe it off first.

He wiped the gun with his shirt. Then he tossed it into the grass, as close to the car as he could get it.

Tell them to go fuck themselves.

“Go fuck yourselves,” he said, startled by the sound of his own voice.

In Vienna, a choir sang a mournful dirge. In Cape Town, men and women played clarinets and pounded on large drums in a performance hall. From space, a woman stared down at the blue Earth from the window of her shuttle, humming Don’t Think Twice It’ll Be Alright.

He stepped back into the Chevy and closed the door.

Go to Ephraim, the voice said, save him if you can.

---

Stephen was at the wheel. There was open road ahead of him, stretching far out into the horizon. There was an older man beside him that he had never seen before. He had a full head of white hair and a short beard.

The last thing he remembered was having a drink at the bar. His head throbbed. It hurt even more when he turned his neck to glance at his new companion.

His name is Ephraim. The voice in his head was crystal clear, as if the words were being sung softly into a microphone.

Tell him he’ll be fine.

“You’ll be fine,” Stephen said.

The man snorted in reply.

“I’ve only ever met three legitimate fortune tellers in my life,” he said, “and they were all still wrong half the time.”

They drove in silence for a while. Stephen had no idea where he was taking them, but he decided to stay on the highway.

Tell him Edith O’Dwyer sends her regards.

“Edith O’Dwyer…” he began, half mumbling it to himself, but then he stopped.

The man’s face soured.

“Why did you say that,” he demanded. “Who gave you that name?”

Tell him.

Stephen shook his head, like a horse shivering to dust off the flies.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t feel all that well.”

The man fumed. “How do you know the name Edith O’Dwyer?”

Tell him you met me at a meeting of the White Council. That I told you he was one of the people I most admired. Don’t tell him I’m dead.

“I don’t. I don’t know her. The name was just in my head.”

They drove for another hour before the man demanded to be let out. Stephen pulled off the highway and up to a gas station. The tank was low.

After the man stepped out he leaned back inside.

“Get yourself sober,” he said.

Then he slammed the door.

---

A few hours later, he was in the canyons, a few miles outside of Spanish Fork.

Pull over.

He turned off, following signs for the “scenic vista.” But it was almost like he wasn’t driving at all, like he was just watching it happen.

He stepped out, leaving the engine running. The dashboard offered a friendly reminder that his door was ajar.

The heat washed over his skin, pressing down. He crept out onto the edge, near the rail, and stared out into the horizon. The sun had begun to set. The rocks yellowed and lost some of their burning intensity. He adjusted his baseball cap so that it wasn’t blocking his view.

There was such a vastness, and Stephen was swept up in it. He was a part of it as much as he was an observer. The feeling he had now was sharp and clear—the first time he had been truly awake in days.

He lingered awhile, but soon a feeling crept over him that it was time to move on. Only his feet were somehow planted there. He couldn’t move them—couldn’t even avert his gaze. Something didn’t want to let go, didn’t want it all to end.

So he stayed. He watched and waited—long after the dark, and the stars had begun to fill the sky.

He wasn’t in control, but it didn’t matter. He was in good hands.

#