EVERYTHING IS MAKE-BELIEVE

DISTRACTION ONE

2011-03-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

As part of my blog housecleaning, I've decided to insert the short stories in-between the chapters of the novel, mostly because I couldn't think of anything better, and partly because it seemed like a nice opportunity for a bit of a breather.

EDITED TO ADD: Looks like the inserting of anything is an Epic Fail—changing the order of links in the sidebar doesn't change the order the blog wants to see them, which makes thing REALLY CONFUSING. The short stories will have to wait until I learn how to do things the right way.

EDITED AGAIN TO ADD: The best way to navigate is to click through the sidebar to the right. Hitting "Older Post" or "Newer Post" (at the bottom) will take you through the order in which I posted everything, which is unfortunately The Most Backwards and Convoluted Way Possible.

Eh, the best laid plans of mice and... well.. all the other electronic peripherals.

None of these shorts are new—this is just a bit of reorganizing.

I'm sure I'm going about this the absolute longest way possible; someone with any kind of coding experience probably knows a far easier way for me to go about all this... but until I bother to recruit some help, bear with the clumsy assembly of the pieces.

MILES: Chapter Six, pt. 7

2011-03-22T11:32:00.002-07:00

“A man lay here,” said Erik. “Or an extraordinarily tall woman. He washed his face; those appear to be his whiskers in the sink. The woman’s attire implies that of a prostitute, but there’s no evidence of sexual contact, especially sexual violence. There’s blood on the sheets; the man entered this room after the murder. By why would two men leave while one stays behind to take a nap?”

“But attention to detail is,” concluded Davis.

Erik moved through the rooms, retracing the path Davis Holden had just traversed, mumbling to himself. James looked over his shoulder, pulled out a notepad, and began documenting the necessary information.

“Broken glass under the table – judging by the fall it wasn’t done intentionally. Knocked over by the woman? And the wine, or whatever that is – get a chemical analysis done on that. It’s too sticky, and it doesn’t smell right.

“The bed’s a mess; either he’s a real uneasy sleeper or there was a struggle. But it would appear that he was the only one who slept here, so that–” Erik gestured to the main room “–must have occurred before he came in here.

“Bloody fingerprints on the doorway and floor – he stood here and fell to his knees. Observing his own work – or coming to grips with it?” Erik knelt by the door. “Then he leaves – there’s blood on the door handle. And no other sloppy handprints. There are other fingerprints, sure, but no one else was this messy. Wonder why…”

Davis Holden stared at Erik in startled awe. James watched the detective with mild amusement.

“Yeah,” said James. “He does that.”

* * * * *

Outside, James Mathus and Davis Holden clutched steaming mugs of coffee. Erik Strand stood a few feet away – seemingly oblivious to his surroundings – and stared out across the street, making the remaining Police officers curious and uncomfortable. They bustled around him as he stood, unmoving. The ambulance pulled away, carrying away the corpse. The crime scene was slowly losing fervor. Davis had made his official statement to the press, and had wandered back, eyeing the two Federal Agents suspiciously.

“You mentioned circumstances,” Holden said warily.

“If this is an isolated incident, then Erik and I shake everyone’s hand and go home,” said James. “But we’ll examine the evidence and determine if this is a federal matter.”

“We’ve been contacted by someone locally who we believe has information about the series of homicides,” Erik chimed in.

James rolled his eyes. “Remember what I told you about discretion?”

“The suspect in the earlier cases,” Davis asked carefully. “Was he ever identified?”

“Yes,” James nodded. “Oh, yes.”

“Arrested?”

James was silent.

“You have his whereabouts?”

James pursed his lips. “He has been dead nearly ten years.”

“So you believe this is a copycat killer?” Davis cocked his head to one side.

James had no answer.

MILES: Chapter Six, pt. 6

2011-03-22T11:32:00.001-07:00

He felt the man’s eyes on his back as he looked under the bed, pushing the comforter aside with a pen as to not contaminate the scene with his own hair or fingerprints. He paused for a moment longer than necessary before standing, then he rose to his full height and looked the heavy man in the eye.

“Detective Davis Holden?” the man asked. He pulled back his trench coat and revealed his badge, a red and white flag across the blue and goal seal – the standard FBI insignia. Davis shook his head in disbelief.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Davis said. “I guess if you’re here I can just go home.”

“Not so fast, Detective,” said the Agent. “Let’s get introductions out of the way first, then you decide. I’m Special Agent James Mathus, and my guest is Special Agent Erik Strand.”

“Well, I can give you the tour,” said Davis. “Is this still my crime scene, or should I just hand everything over and let you figure it out?”

“We’re not enemies yet, Detective. We’re here strictly to observe,” said James. “For the time being.”

Davis looked over the two men. Agent James Mathus was red-faced and tired, an Agent here out of obligation rather than his own impetus, but the other Agent – Strand – he couldn’t get a read on. Strand was young, but was meticulously observing his surroundings. Holden knew a professional eye when he saw one in action.

James finally broke the silence. “Why don’t you show us around? It’s a nice place you’ve got here.” James chuckled to himself; the detective didn’t appear to appreciate the joke.

“You know almost as much as we do, I’m afraid,” said Davis. “Single homicide – yet unidentified woman – ritualistic or spiritual in nature. No indication of sexual assault. Language of the symbols yet unidentified – looks like Aramaic, but I can’t say for sure. Beyond that, there’s a surprising amount of evidence – fingerprints everywhere, at least three sets. That, with the three decanters, implies a group brought her here.”

“You sound surprised,” James said.

“Usually when someone – or a group of someones – commits murder, they work a little harder to cover up their identity. But as you can see, there’s a lot here, we just have to go through it. So grab a coffee and a bagel, or whatever it is you secret agents do when real Police are working, and we’ll get back to you.” Davis was being unnecessarily rude and he knew it, but his position as lead detective was not one he took lightly. His experience with the Intelligence community was that they expected the unreasonable but offered very little in return.

“I see you’ve worked with us before,” said James with a smile, not wanted to rise to the insult. “But you’re just going to have to trust that we want this crime solved as badly as you. We’re not here because we want to steal your collar. We truly are here to observe, lend our assistance where we can, until circumstances require us to do otherwise.”

“Until circumstances require otherwise,” Davis grumbled.

“Indeed,” said James, matter-of-factly.

“You’re going to have to be a little forthcoming,” Davis said. He had no patience for mind games. “If we are to communicate.”

“Actually, Detective, we really don’t.” said James. He sighed. It was clear Davis was not easily swayed – this could either be a great boon or a hindrance. “We need to determine if there’s a connection between this and similar murders.”

“This has happened before?” asked Davis.

“Yes,” said Erik from the doorway. Davis raised one eyebrow –he had not heard Erik walk in, nor had he yet heard the Agent speak. “Years ago. An incident in New Orleans. A series of incidents, actually. Similar to this.”

James grimaced. “Agent Erik Strand, this is Detective Davis Holden. Discretion is not one of Erik’s strong suits.” Erik looked at him, not comprehending the comment, and then smiled a little too widely and continued to examine the room. He nodded stiffly at Davis, not bothering to greet him.

MILES: Chapter Six, pt. 5

2011-03-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I I I

* * * * *

The investigation was simple enough, all things considered. The crime scene was horrific, naturally – a woman had been ritualistically murdered – but the perpetrators had not been careful; there were fingerprints abound, hair and saliva in the sink. What was interesting, in particular, was that no care had been put into covering or destroying evidence. Great lengths had been put into the ceremony – that much was obvious, the girl had been cut up and decorated for something very specific – but once the ritual was finished whomever orchestrated this seemed to have packed and left. Little physical evidence from the ceremony itself was left; the murder weapon was missing, for one, but the room was awash with information. It wouldn’t be hard to place someone in that room, with a little investigation.

The maid had discovered the woman the next morning; the Police had arrived, prints were lifted, forensics took photographs, the tiny cogs of the machine known as Justice began to turn. Once the initial shock over the nature of the crime had diminished, the officers-on-duty began to trust the system, and believed amongst themselves that this crime would piece itself together rather easily.

Detective Davis Holden didn’t trust anything that came easily. Forensics was taking boot prints from the ash and melted wax when he arrived. His immediate thoughts were as such: Someone came here with a purpose. This wasn’t a crime of passion; someone was methodical and careful with the murder. The process was far too ceremonial; the woman was part of the process, but not essential to the process – it was possible that the woman was chosen arbitrarily. Someone didn’t care if there was evidence; too much was left behind to be an accident. Even when the perpetrator was caught – and there was little doubt in Detective Holden’s mind that suspects would be arrested – there was more to this murder than immediately met the eye.

He noticed the two men in long coats almost immediately. He had been keeping an eye out the window – the crime scene was on the first floor of the hotel, and the press were having a field day outside the line of yellow police tape – and he saw them approach, flash their identification, and then take their time making their way inside. He saw them speak briefly with the Chief of Police, and was mildly surprised that the Chief did not immediately escort them inside. He saw the Chief gesture, and the larger of the two men shook his head.

They would come inside on their own time; Holden would get his answers then. He continued his examination of the room, making his way slowly through the crime scene, soaking it all in. Holden was a thorough man and a methodical man, or an infuriatingly slow and deliberate man, depending on the perspective. He had made his way to the bedroom – someone slept there, a man by the looks of it – when the two men came in. They were quiet at first, and Davis was content allowing them to play their hand first. His gut told him who they were, but he waited, taking mental notes and directing his officers to examine and photograph what he found.

MILES: Chapter Six, pt. 4

2011-03-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

Rosalyn found herself, to her surprise, quite cognizant of the fact that she was in a dream. She looked around, bewildered, and was quite startled to find herself in a bedroom. An antique vanity sat across from a four poster bed, flowers bloomed in the bay window, and outside everything was so brilliant: the oranges and reds and browns of early fall seemed so vibrant. The arching branch of a maple tree cut though the horizon, and Rosalyn began to remember. This was her room, but it seemed unfamiliar somehow, it seemed so bright and warm – not the drab and lonely bedroom she returned home to each night.

As if guided by an invisible hand, she crossed the room and sat before the vanity, noting the expanse of makeup and jewelry, trinkets she recognized but hadn’t seen in years. She looked up at her reflection and froze. Her hair was dark brown, with vibrant red highlights, and not a hint of gray.

She was getting ready for a date, she remembered. She was going out that evening. She had met a man, a wonderful and handsome man, and she was joining him for coffee – a simple act that would resonate in both of them for years.

And suddenly she was years older and miles away, wearing a magnificent blue gown, her favorite pearl necklace around her throat. Her husband was across from her, looking dapper in his back suit and complimentary blue shirt. They were out to dinner with a family he knew. He joked and laughed with the couple next to him. She remembered where she was, and when, and a feeling of dread passed through her, a cold shiver, a breeze that cut through to her bones. This was the very last time they were out together; the evening where suddenly he collapsed and never stood up again.

In her dream she knew how it happened; she anticipated his movements. She fell asleep thinking about that moment, she relived it every morning that she woke and he was not next to her. She could picture in her head with chilling detail how he stood without warning and clutched at his chest, tearing at his tie as if it were choking him, how he suddenly turned and stared at her, a look of sad resignation in his eyes, and collapsed without a sound.

But this time was different. He stood, his back arching in pain, clutching his chest, tearing at his tie. The patrons of the restaurant gasped, scattered, and in her dream she was frozen – intensely aware of everyone else in the room, aware of their thoughts and their fears, the startled expressions – but this time he turned, he reached out a grasped her arm – and in the dream it felt so real, more real than anything she had felt in a long time. He dug his fingers into her arms until she cried out in pain. His mouth moved, trying to form words, he was so close she could feel his hot breath on her face. Finally, finally a sound escaped his lips.

“You must find him,” he said, his voice throaty and hoarse, carrying a sadness and regret so unlike him. He stared deep into her eyes and she felt open, naked, somehow completely exposed. She started to respond but found she couldn’t speak.

“You must find my son,” he finally said. He looked at her as though she was no longer there; she realized he was looking through her, looking at someone else far, far away. His eyes relaxed, a look of recognition crossed his face.

“He will find you,” he said.

She woke with a start, sure she had been dreaming but uncertain of what, if anything, she had seen. Fragments of the dream seemed to surface, like fish breaching a pond and disappearing underneath rippling waves, and she felt a sudden desolate loneliness, a frantic desperate need to remember. There was something she was trying to grasp hold of, something she needed to know, but the dream was lost. She looked over at her husband, watched his deep, rhythmic breathing, and for reasons she could not explain, she began to cry.

MILES: Chapter Six, pt. 3

2011-03-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I I

* * * * *

Rosalyn Price sat at the foot of the hospital bed, with a copy of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park open in her lap. She brought the book, as she did every day, with the intention of reading but she rarely finished more than a few pages. Instead she sat lost in thought, or stared longingly at her husband’s pale body, still and tranquil. He looked peaceful most days, but sometimes would shiver and stir, as if uncomfortable or restless. The doctors assured her it was natural, but could never seem to provide a satisfactory explanation as to the cause.

Her husband was permanently comatose, they explained, and there was little to do but wait and see if he recovered on his own. Three weeks she had been there; three weeks of patiently waiting by his side; three weeks of reading interesting bits from the newspaper or reciting letters from her grandchildren. Sometimes she would sleep, restless and uneasy in the bedside chair, with troubling, disjointed dreams. She would wake with a start each time, never quite sure what her dreams had meant, never quite able to remember them.

“If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory.” She read the line again, blinking her heavy eyes. She may have dozed off again, she wasn’t sure, and she traced her finger along the page, trying to find her place. She felt herself growing tired again, her eyes began to lose focus, her shoulders began to slump.

Her husband stirred, trembled and Rosalyn bolted awake. His mouth seemed to move, but she was never sure anymore what was real and what was her imagination, her desperate anticipation, willing him to wake up. Air moved across his lips, and for a moment Rosalyn thought, believed, dared hope beyond desperate hope that he was trying to speak; that he would form words, any words at all, and she would know that he was still there, trapping inside a fragile body, but still there. She touched his hand, gently squeezed it, looking for some sign that he acknowledged her presence, recognized where he was, understood she was waiting for him. He did not move again and she slumped over, deflated, and turned back to her book.

“The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.” There was something about that phrase that suddenly seemed so profound, so distinct and potent that she stared at the book in shock.

She sat for a moment, motionless, clutching the book, and then her husband seemed to relax. His face regained its calm; the tension seemed to dissipate from the room. Rosalyn smiled and allowed herself also to relax.

As if on cue her head fell heavily against her chest, and her heavy eyes drooped and finally closed. Rosalyn slept, and almost immediately, began to dream.

MILES: Chapter Six, pt. 2

2011-03-22T11:25:00.001-07:00

Vladimir stopped. The bright light hurt his eyes, and for a moment he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He stood in the bedroom doorway, a sudden shock, a paralyzing fear glued his feet to the floor. Bile rose in his throat; his head spun.

The first thing he saw was the woman. A table had been pulled to the middle of the room, a large round table with ornately carved legs, and the woman was strewn across it, completely naked, her arms and legs splayed out as though she’d been crucified. Elaborate patterns had been carved into her skin; concentric circles across her arms and shoulders and strange symbols – what looked like some ancient language – across her breasts and abdomen. The wounds were still fresh; blood welled up and dripped from her body to the floor. Her head lolled to one side, her eyes stared up and out into nothing. Her mouth was open, but her ample breasts were still; no breath escaped her lips.

He could tell within a glance that she was dead.

Around the room were the remains of an elaborate ceremony. Black candles on the floor circled the table; several had been knocked over, all were extinguished. Ash and soot was everywhere – somehow smeared across the walls and covering the countertops in the attached kitchenette. The hotel paintings had been torn down and something had been written on the walls, some great symbol or map or chart. It looked as though it had been drawn by hand, some horrific finger-painting with red paint or wine or…

Vladimir felt his knees go weak, felt himself fall, but he was disconnected. His mind was slowly giving up, unable to process his surroundings. His hand reached out on its own accord to catch him, but he did not feel it. His fingers reached out but did not grasp, and he fell to his knees. Memories came flooding back to him, images flashed before his eyes like sparks from a flame. He lurched and twisted, the shock to his mind was like a physical blow. His arms stretched out before him, barely holding him off the floor and finally he saw, above his forearms where he’d washed minutes earlier, crimson stains across his elbows and upper arms. He looked down at himself in horror. He was covered in blood: fresh wet blood was splattered across his clothes; two bloody prints were pressed on his shirt where he’d wiped off his hands. His stomach lurched; panic exploded in him like shattering glass.

He had another momentary flash of memory: an image of the three of them – the two men and himself – circling the woman, raising ornamental glasses and drinking deeply something that resembled wine, but was thicker and darker and tasted mildly of salt. One of the men held a knife, and he cut the woman as they chanted. But Vladimir was not himself; he was but he wasn’t, as if he was looking through someone else’s eyes, as if he’d taken a step back and was watching it all happen from a distance. His arms moved on their own accord; someone laughed with his voice; he spoke words he did not recognize. The woman was alive, albeit just barely, and her eyes rolled back in her head and she moaned nonsensically; her mouth shaped words and phrases he did not understand. One arm flailed out – one apparently not secured to the table – and struck him, knocking the decanter from his grasp. The glass tumbled and time seemed to slow; he watched the glass twist and turn, striking the table and spinning on end, shattering on the floor, spilling its content in a messy red puddle.

Then Vladimir was back in his own head, his body a heap on the floor, his stomach retching and his head pounding while the fragmented pieces of memory forced their way to the surface.

He fumbled with the door, leaning heavily on the frame while one hand clutched at his chest, and staggered into the hallway. The door clicked closed behind him. Down the hallway and outside he stumbled, into the disorienting light of the late morning.

Vladimir ran.

MILES: Chapter Six, pt. 1

2011-03-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

VLADIMIR VESCO WOKE and didn’t know where he was. His mouth was dry, his head ached. Am I hungover? he thought. Have I been drinking? He reached instinctively to rub his shoulders – something was wrong, some deep muscle pain wracked and twisted across his neck to his arms and down through his back as well. He sat up, the pain momentarily distracting from the disorienting feeling of waking someplace unfamiliar. He head felt several sizes too small, and he squinted into the painful light emanating from a bedside lamp. He reached out clumsily, nearly knocking the lamp over, and fumbled until he found a switch, a tiny button hidden under the base of the bulb.

That light extinguished, he looked around the room. There was a low glow coming from the blinds; he could still see in the blue half-light. An article of clothing had been abandoned at the foot of the bed – a shirt or a blouse – something definitely female. A woman’s room, he thought. I’m in a woman’s bedroom. No, that wasn’t right, either – the room had no feeling, no personality. The single painting above the bed was bland; there were no photos on the walls, no bookshelves, nothing to indicate that anyone actually lived here. I’m a hotel room, he realized. With a woman? Is this her room? Did we get it together? He stood, unsteadily. He was shaky, dizzy. Drinking like this was out of character for Vladimir – like most Russians he loved fine Vodkas, but he rarely drank so much to feel like this, and never so much to black out completely. That was for teenagers, he thought, chuckling to himself. That action he found surprisingly painful; his throat was raw and his voice hoarse.

On the floor across the room was another article of clothing – something dark, a skirt perhaps? It was hard to tell in the low light. Vladimir looked down on himself; he was fully clothed. Strange, he thought, that he would still be dressed. Something was on his hands, something sticky. He wiped them on his shirt, which was moist with sweat anyway, and found his shirt was also covered in the same dark, sticky mess. Perhaps we were drinking wine, he wondered, and we spilled it. He briefly toyed with the idea of turning the light back on, but his head still hurt and his eyes stung, and he quickly rejected that idea.

Water – he needed water first, then answers. He could hear the faucet on in the bathroom; water steadily splashed and a light was visible under the partially open door. He stumbled toward the bathroom. This room must have been expensive, he thought. A master bedroom and bath, with a sitting room through the door. More clothes were strewn on the floor: nylons, a high-heeled shoe and a black lace-lined bra.

He pushed open the bathroom door, not caring if anyone was inside or not, but still surprised to find that it was empty. He turned the light off before allowing himself to enter; the fluorescent glow was too much for his aching head. The water still ran in the sink, a steady gush, and he felt his way across the bathroom, navigating with his hands. He washed his hands, scrubbing off the sticky mess, and rinsed until his hands no longer smelled of soap. He did this almost entirely without looking, for even the low light from the bedroom burned his eyes, and he kept them mostly closed. He leaned over, cupping his hands and lapping up the water, gulping it down, almost choking. Finally satisfied, he splashed water onto his face, ran his fingers through his hair. His head still hurt and his muscles still ached, but at least he was no longer thirsty. He turned off the water, and the room fell silent, eerie in its stillness. Something was wrong, he thought. He still had no memory of the previous night. This bothered Vladimir. He still had no sense of where he was.

He had a momentary flash of recollection – a brief image of two men approaching him, men in suits. Did he know them? He could not remember. There was a sense of familiarity about them; they had met before. They must have gone for drinks, and then he met someone and…

Nothing. He was drawing a blank – everything else was merely conjecture, supposition. The memory was gone, and with it any rational explanation as to what he was doing in a strange woman’s hotel room.

She must be in the main room, he thought. He started toward the door and nearly tripped – the other shoe was on the floor of the bathroom: black, heeled and strapless. He tried to think of something to say. Was this someone he knew? Doubtful. He braced himself, tried to steady his nerves, and wracked his brain for something charming, something gracious or polite or disarming. Perhaps he should start with an apology, explain that he couldn’t even remember her–

MILES: Chapter Five, pt. 6

2011-03-22T11:21:00.001-07:00

Something caught his attention; he realized the bartender was talking about him to the girls down the bar. He looked up and half-smiled.

“I was just saying I don’t usually see you during the week,” said the bartender, and the dark-skinned girl – maybe she was Pakistani or Indian or something – smiled for him, a wide smile of perfectly white teeth. He smiled back, though the effort seemed insincere.

“Came in unexpected-like,” he replied, trying to conceal how intoxicated he was feeling. “Family business.”

“How’s your mom?” asked the bartender, expecting another bizarre tale. Before she was home ridden, Franklin’s mother was prone to wander away from the minimum-security wing of the asylum whenever someone failed to keep a watchful eye, and Franklin loved to weave a good yarn. “She’s hilarious. Listen to this guy.”

Franklin’s face fell. “She’s dead, mate,” he said. “The wake’s tomorrow.”

The bartender froze and stared at Franklin, waiting for a punch line that didn’t come. Then an uncomfortable look a realization crossed his face. “Oh Jesus, Frank. I’m so sorry.”

The girls stared at the bartender and the Englishman with open astonishment, not entirely sure how to react. The shorter, dark-skinned one broke into mortified laughter until her blonde friend elbowed her, and she fell awkwardly silent. Both girls gazed intently at their drinks, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.

“S’Alright, mate,” said Franklin, ignoring the outburst. “It ‘appens to the best. Things ‘ave jus’ been… complicated.”

“When, uh…” the bartender stammered. He fumbled with how to end his question, and finally gave up, repeating what he’d started to say. “When?”

“Monday night. I flew in two weeks ago,” Franklin said. “Got to see her before the end, you know. Guess she was waiting for me or… somefing.”

“Christ, Franklin,” said the bartender, trying to find the words. “How you holding up?”

Franklin was starting to feel a little uncomfortable with all the attention. His trip to the pub had been planned as an escape, but now he was disoriented and drunk and desperately wanted to disappear, to lie down and sleep until it was all over. He paused a moment before answering, trying to find the balance between honesty and tact. The girls nearby were clearly trying not to openly stare, and quickly looked elsewhere when Franklin cast a glance their way.

“I’ll be alright, mate. You know, someday.” The bartender nodded, his attention completely withdrawn from the young women nearby, who Franklin noticed were trying hard to disappear themselves. “Look, um… should be prolly be making my way.” He fumbled for his wallet, but the bartender stopped him with a dismissive wave.

“Tonight’s on me,” he said offering a handshake instead. Franklin accepted, grateful that his unwieldy hands were still steady after all the alcohol.

“Thanks.” Franklin stood slowly, glad he had walked instead of driving. “See you again.”

He felt their eyes follow him as he left, the sullen face of the bartender and the terrified faces of the two pretty girls.

Outside, the cold surprised him. He tugged his heavy coat around him as a gust of wind whipped past; the sky had turned as ominous grey and clouds were bearing down. The first few droplets of rain started to fall, and Franklin shuddered – not because of the cold and wet, but because for the first time he realized that life as he knew it had dropped out from under him, and it would be a long while before he stopped falling.

The halogen streetlights above him shimmered, and threatened to go out, and as Franklin trudged out into the street he noticed a beautiful blue convertible pull into the parking lot behind him. Franklin could not claim to be an expert on classic cars, but the vehicle was stunning nonetheless. And, Franklin noticed, behind the wheel was a strikingly beautiful woman as well. Long dark hair, big brown eyes. He couldn’t make out the other passenger. Franklin allowed himself a brief smile, and disappeared into the night.

MILES: Chapter Five, pt. 5

2011-03-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

“Funny fing about this state,” Franklin said to no one in particular. The bartender looked up with vague disinterest. “The funny fing is that iss chopped right in two.” He waved his arms about to illustrate how someone might chop a state in half, specifically a state the size of Colorado. “Like they took a big bloody Rototiller to ‘alf the state, dug it all up, and never came back to finish the job.”

In his intoxication his accent was near indecipherable, but he continued speaking with the enthusiasm of someone addressing a large crowd. “I mean, iss got all these mountains, roight, but when I first come to Denver, an’ I step offa the plane, I swear could jump up on the back of a pickup and stare across the whole fing, straight down into – wassit – New Mexico or somefing.”

“Another beer, then?” said the bartender, already pouring a fresh glass, the brown foam cascading down the heavy, dark stout. Franklin drank exclusively Guinness, as Englishmen were prone to, and was no stranger to consuming copious amounts of alcohol. But the burly Englishman, who frequented the pub with longwinded and often hilarious stories of his homeland, his marriage or his mentally unstable mother, amused the bartender, and anyone else sitting within earshot.

Their attention was quickly drawn to the entryway where two lovely young women had just walked in and were approaching the bar. Franklin graciously accepted the fresh glass and winked at the bartender with a not-particularly-subtle nod to the women.

“Noice night for it,” said Franklin. “Enjoying the scenery, I mean.”

The two girls ordered Manhattans and chatted gaily with the bartender. Franklin ignored them, his attention focused on recent events rather than the rather bizarre game of cat-and-mouse being played by the two girls. Franklin was vaguely aware of the bartender flirting with the young women, which they clearly enjoyed. Whenever he would step away though, the shorter one with dark skin and dark hair would giggle and nudge her taller blonde friend, who apparently was attracted to the bartender, but was too shy, and quickly growing too drunk, to articulate her interest.

Franklin drank his Guinness and ordered a fourth, drinking it more slowly this time. The alcohol was starting to affect his mood, to take him back into recent memory rather than allow him to forget. The dark stout weighed heavily in his stomach, and he was starting to regret consuming so much.

Speaking with the funeral home had been surprisingly easy; Franklin found if he pretended he was handling this for someone else, it was much easier to stomach. He arranged for an old family friend to handle the phone calls; their family doctor had also volunteered to help with paperwork and logistical needs. There were still more plans to be made, though, and more complicated arrangements to handle; he knew his week would not be free of painful tedium. The will and the estate – those he knew would be the most difficult. Gathering his mother’s things. Selling the house. He knew there was a life insurance policy waiting for him – he had asked her not to take one out but she had insisted – so he assumed there was some money, and more paperwork. Before her illness became unmanageable she had married well, and when her husband left her a widow, she found she could survive for a very long time without work. When she needed hospitalization, it fell on his shoulders to arrange things then. He had a sister – Beverly – back home; she had moved to Yorkshire when she married and started a family. They had lost touch when he’d moved stateside to take care of their mum. He was the only family his mother had, really – it was unlikely his sister would fly in for the funeral. The phone call had been awkward enough. Beverly seemed to barely care – she seemed distant and detached; her family in England was her real family now. Franklin hung up the phone feeling more alone than he had before.

MILES: Chapter Five, pt. 4

2011-03-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I V

* * * * *

The phone rang again. Melody tried to ignore it; she pushed the pillow over her ears and rolled over but the sound was insistent. Finally, the machine took it, and she heard her own grainy and distant voice say, “I’m not home. Please leave a message,” followed by the traditional sound.

There was an eerie silence, then the caller hung up. Melody lifted her head from the pillow in surprise, blinked heavily at the now pulsing red light, and nearly jumped out of her skin when the phone began to ring again.

She stared at it now, as it rang and rang, the body of the telephone vibrating slightly as the hammer rattled the bell inside. She reached for the handset but stopped midair, uncertain now.

The machine took the call, and she heard her prerecorded message again. After the shrill sound there was silence again, followed by a sharp breath that left Melody’s blood cold. Then a voice, calm and poisonous.

“Now this is just silly, Melody. Pick up the phone. I know you’re there.”

The faucet in Melody’s arteries turned from cold to hot, she felt her face flush with rage. She grabbed the handset.

“Whatthefuckdoyouwant?!” she said in a single breath. Then after a pause, “You know what? I don’t even care. Don’t call here again.”

She had just about hung up the phone when Mark’s voice stopped her.

“Wait,” he said. “There’s no reason for this. Just listen.”

She paused, and brought the phone back to her ear.

“I’m going home, Melody. And I’m inviting you to join me.”

Her head began to pound again. Talking to Mark was like talking to a machine – he’d say what he wanted to say regardless of who was listening, and her only options were to hear him out or shut him off. Morbid curiosity kept her on the phone, at least that’s what she told herself, but some part of her knew that her curiosity was laced with a certain sense of responsibility as well.

“I thought you said you’d met somebody. Did she leave you al–”

“I did meet someone,” he interrupted. “He’s amazing. I’d like for you to meet him.”

Silence, while Melody tried to process this last datum. When in doubt, substitute with sarcasm.

“Well, I’m really sorry I can’t make it to the wedding, but I really do wish the best for you both.” Her voice was thick and syrupy, and she allowed herself half a hope that he’d take a hint and leave her alone, but she knew well enough that Mark understood subtlety about as well as he understood piloting a spaceship.

“We’re going to change the world, Melody. I really wish you could be a part of this, but if the distance between us is really that…” he was choosing his words carefully. “…insurmountable, then I guess you’ll be… left behind. This is the last time I’ll call you, Melody. But you’ll know how to find me if you experience a sudden change in heart. Au Revoir.”

He hung up. Melody’s mouth was suddenly dry. Her phone had hummed, chirped, and finally a woman’s voice was telling her that if she’d ‘like to make a call, please hang up and try again’ before it occurred to her to put the handset back in the cradle. It was then she realized she was shaking. She closed her eyes. There was a shudder along the white corridor; something was happening out there, and Melody was scared.

MILES: Chapter Five, pt. 3

2011-03-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I I I

* * * * *

The worst had come and gone, and Franklin was alone. Two weeks he’d stayed in the hospital, going home only for the occasional shower – and subsequent marathon of drinking where he woke on the couch with a terrible headache, wishing to a God he didn’t believe in that he was someone else with an entirely different set of problems.

Then his mother had died, as every doctor had predicted she would, with her withered hand in his, her morphine drip cranked so high she barely knew who he was.

“Promises,” she’d whispered, in a surprising moment of cognizance. “There are so many promises we never keep. I promised I’d see him again, before the end.” Who she’d promised to see, Franklin did not know. But that was two days earlier, and she’d been barely able to mouth Franklin’s name, let alone form complete sentences, in the time that remained.

His mother had died as he sat in silence. A shiver trembled through her; a shiver that started in her body and traveled down her arm and up into Franklin’s, trapping itself somewhere in his spine where it vibrated and hummed, slowly sucking the warmth from his body. She gasped, turned to look at him – her eyes unable to focus – and her hand gently squeezed his. Then she was still, her grip relaxed, and Franklin sat alone and cold in the dim hospital room, sensations and feelings creeping up on his conscious mind and quickly fleeing, leaving him empty and unsteady.

The worst had come and gone, yet the worse was yet to come. The great weight had not lifted from him, but it had shifted. A lifetime of illness had come to an end, but Franklin felt no relief – in fact, he felt very little at all. The numb detachment had not come all at once, but in pieces; over next few days, it seemed, he had been drifting away from himself, like a sandcastle under the slowly lapping tide. Bits and pieces fell away, undetected, until he realized one day there was nothing left.

He thought he should miss his mother, he was sure he should worry for his children, he was certain there was a terrible, overwhelming sense of grief he should be wallowing in, but nothing came.

The funeral arrangement had been made – Franklin politely aloof throughout the process. Phone calls had been made, checks had been written. Franklin McGaffy would bury his mother in two days, but in the meantime he felt nothing at all. On his answering machine, messages were left asking about work; he should take all the time he needed, they said, but did he know when he’d be back? There were a few messages of consolation, of which he ignored. Franklin allowed himself few close friends, but many acquaintances, but the voices on the machine sounded foreign and insincere. He sat in silence, soaking in the Gin and Vodka and whatever else was handy, half-heartedly wondering if there was something else he should be feeling. The phone began to ring, and so he unplugged it, preferring the absence of sound to any more pity or consolation.

His mother, though, she had been a social woman and, in a past life, an actress of some notoriety. The wake he did not look forward to, but it was impending and he was vaguely aware of the headache that would become. A small army would descend on his home in the morning: the catering and the church group and the funeral staff – Franklin was more than happy to delegate the entire event to other people. If he could, he would have skipped the whole ordeal. A six-pack and a drive to the country sounded like a much more appealing use of his time. Instead, he expected a day of unwanted socializing; his house would full of producers long since put to pasture, actors no one had ever heard of.

He had tried calling his sister the day before, but she was no longer interested. Beverly had a new family, and new responsibilities, and the death of a parent she hadn’t spoken to in nearly a decade was not a concern. The conversation was brief and mildly uncomfortable; Beverly seemed tolerant and patient and wholly unattached.

“Promises,” she had said.

“Promises.”

Franklin was tired, and a little drunk, but mostly he was restless. The answering machine was quickly filling up with messages for him to ignore; his apartment was bleak and uninviting. Plus, he was hungry, and the cupboards were more than bare, they were dusty and abandoned.

Franklin stood up, capped the gin he’d been nursing, and walked to the pub.

MILES: Chapter Five, pt. 2

2011-03-22T11:16:00.001-07:00

* * * * *

I I

* * * * *

“This came for you,” the woman’s voice said. Erik Strand looked up, surprised. Molly Pritcher – daytime security officer – towered over him. She was an awkwardly shaped woman in her forties, with short cropped red hair, and her blue SecureTech uniform fit her strangely: too big in places and uncomfortably snug in others. She held a large manila envelope in her hands. “I signed for it. I was just punching off – thought I’d bring it over in person.”

Erik stared at her like he hadn’t understood a word she’d spoken. She gestured with the envelope again, thrusting it at him. “Hello? Ground Control to Space Station Strand? This just arrived. It’s got your name on it.”

He took the envelope without saying a word, staring up at her with a bewildered look on his face.

“No need to thank me,” she said as she turned with a huff. She walked with a slight limp and her Billy-Club thwapped gently against her thigh with each step. “Probably your subscription to Wallflowers Monthly. Probably an invitation to the Agoraphobics annual barbecue in there as well.”

He eyed the manila envelope suspiciously; he wasn’t expecting any mail. There was no name of the sender, and the return address was a post office box he didn’t recognize.

He opened the envelope with his small letter opener and reached inside. A stack of file folders fell out, scattering across his desk. The folders looked like crime scene files: 8x10 glossy photos and carbon copies of official documents. Depositions. Witness statements. Blood, and an awful lot of it, permeated the photos. Someone was tracking a murderer. A white mailing envelope, sealed. Erik peeled it open. Plane tickets, in his name, to Denver – his hometown. Erik’s pulse quickened. This had grown from curious to insidious. Someone wanted him back in Colorado.

Erik froze. Amongst the stack of folders and documents, a series of black & whites stood out among the rest. Erik was staring at himself – photos of himself – outside the watchtower pub, and several of him walking up the steps to his apartment.

He sat in stunned silence. Inside were crime scene photographs and official police documents illustrating a series of ritualistic murders, all similar in nature. All horribly familiar. The dates on the documents were recent, but there was no doubt that Erik recognized the handiwork.

* * * * *

He knocked on the office door of James Mathus – a formality, as the door was already open – and James gestured for him to come inside.

“This just came in the mail,” he said, holding a stack of files in his arms. “Addressed to me personally. Someone wanted me to see these.”

“Who?” asked James.

“Don’t know,” said Erik. “Just look.”

He handed James the folder he’d just received. Erik had left the tickets and the photos of himself on his desk; he was uncomfortable with the sense of familiarity the anonymous sender obviously had with him, and he wanted to wait before sharing that with his supervisor. James opened it slowly and his eyes grew wide as the photos spilled out. He rifled through the documents quickly, his lips pursed, glancing over the Police Reports, news clippings.

“What do these–” James began, but Erik handed him another folder, clearly labeled from the archives files. The crime scene photos were nearly identical; men and women had been ritualistically murdered, with strange decorations carved into their bodies – apparently while they were still alive. James quickly counted the cases in his head – over a dozen homicides, all with the same method of killing.

James recognized the name on the folder: Cain, Lucius.

“That case was closed almost a decade ago,” James said. “Lucius Cain is dead. His body was identified in the wreckage.”

Erik nodded, his face stoic. James sat in silence a moment; Erik shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

“I want to fly to Denver,” said Erik. “Observational status only. I need to know who’s doing this.”

James pondered this, and then with a look of tired resignation he nodded.

“I’m going with you,” he said.

MILES: Chapter Five, pt. 1

2011-03-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

FRANKLIN MCGAFFY had been drinking since early afternoon, and he had no intention of stopping anytime in the foreseeable future. He had booked an emergency flight for the morning, but he hated flying and had no desire to remain sober for that either. There were few things in life worth experiencing sober.

Franklin sat in an overstuffed recliner, his immense frame taking up most of the chair, glass half full of ice in his hands and a near-empty bottle of Beefeater Gin on the table next to him. He looked around his sparse hotel room. His life, for the past few weeks, had been small enough to pack in a suitcase, and for a while that had suited him just fine. He traveled for weeks at a time, and a few days a month he’d come home to his two sons, fight with his ex-wife, and then head back out on the road.

How many moments of his life, he wondered, had been spent waiting for the next? Each day he traveled was a day he spent waiting to go home to his children, and each day he spent home he wished he were back on the road. He loved his kids – god, he loved his kids – but when he was at home in his small and terrifyingly messy apartment or out fighting with his ex he wished he were somewhere, anywhere else. Franklin was struck by a near paralyzing fear that somehow he was a dreadful failure just waiting to occur – that somehow the responsibility for other living creatures would prove to be too much, that he would realize with unnerving certainty that he was never designed to be a parent, and his children would turn out far too much like he had: directionless, listless, and wholly unhappy. Franklin was jovial, charming and wild, which earned him more than a few friends, and a few lovers, at that – but knew far too well how quickly he became the drunken buffoon, the caricature of himself, and he knew as well how much of his light-hearted nature was an act, a method of coping, a means to disguise the hollow, unfulfilled feeling that hung about him like stale air in a deserted house. And so he maintained his routine, and kept with a dissatisfying career, because the sheer impulsive notion of optimism unvaryingly led to failure. Franklin was far too familiar with feelings of failure, and the unfathomable depths of depression that followed. Traveling was a way of not existing, of stepping outside of normal responsibility. Fly. Sleep. Work. Drink. Repeat.

He poured himself another glass, the clear liquid popping and sparkling over the ice cubes and reflecting against the bright light of the evening sun – a contrast to his dark and somber mood. He squinted into the window; evening had fallen quickly as he sat alone, drinking and mumbling to himself. He reached out and snapped shut the blinds; darkness quickly swept across the room.

The phone call had come that afternoon. His doctor – his family’s doctor – had called his hotel while he was out. There was a message at the front desk: “Please call immediately. Your mother is unwell.”

Unwell was relative, he thought. She’d been fighting cancer for a year now; she’d been fighting mental illness for thirty years. Well, fighting was relative too, he supposed. More like drifting listlessly along, hoping for the best.

But she’d taken a turn for the worst, and there was little more anyone could do.

He lifted the glass to his lips and swallowed another large mouthful.

He was going home.

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 10

2011-03-22T11:09:00.001-07:00

* * * * *

V I

* * * * *

Karen tried to sleep. Miles had quickly passed out on the couch, the irritating hiss of the television droning on the background. She was grateful it was only barely audible from the back bedroom where she lay, eyes wide open. She had managed to sleep for about an hour, before a series of disturbing dreams jolted her awake. The window was open, but the desert was deadly quiet, not a sound drifted in from the empty horizon. The sky outside the window was pure black, even the stars seemed to have abandoned her.

Her conversation with Miles earlier in the evening haunted her. Of course life had purpose. Of course God had a plan. She found she was deeply and profoundly disturbed by the idea; she tried to dismiss his philosophy as the rant of a lonely and intoxicated man, but here she was – alone and tired and stripped of her illusion. Here she was, with the one man she thought could provide her with answers, and he was pushing her away. Here was a man with a gift she didn’t fully understand, and he had no intention of helping her.

The only man, perhaps, with answers – but not the only one: God still stood by her. But even that notion seemed hollow. Where had God been when her husband’s spine was crushed and he bled out in the street? Where was God when her children were trapped in the van, scared and injured and alone, only to both die in the hospital? When she was pinned behind the steering wheel, hurt and unable to help, unable to save her children, unable to…

Why was she spared?

The man – Miles, she corrected herself. He has a name. The man’s name is Miles. Miles knew his would happen. No, she thought, he knew something else. He told her she would die. But something had changed, hadn’t it? She had changed something.

God’s plan is infallible. He is in all things; His will be done – on earth as it is in heaven.

What did that even mean?

Still, she had purpose. She had a place in God’s world.

She was…

She stopped. Everything she was had been taken away. She was a wife and a mother, and now…

Karen began to cry again, quiet sobs, not letting herself think any more. She would try and sleep. In the morning she would go home. Her trip had been a wasted effort, a journey to nowhere to find someone uninterested in being found. Miles would not help her. He was right, there was little he could do. And everyone else was right as well: the nurses, her sister-in-law, the therapist she had seen for the weeks following the accident. There was nothing she could have done, they said. It wasn’t her fault. There was nothing she could have done. His kingdom come. His will be done.

She had taken the wheel, she thought. She had changed something.

She had taken the wheel – the realization hit her like a blow to the chest, knocked her breathless. Gasping, she clutched her breast, and the memory of the trip flooded back.

She had taken the wheel. She had asked to drive. When she saw the highway marker, after meeting Miles in the bar. Paradise, he had said. She thought she’d be safer. She thought she’d be able to protect her husband and her children. The thought had been fleeting; the feeling of danger had been dismissed. But she had known. She had tried, and she had failed. She wouldn’t make it to Paradise.

She was supposed to die. Miles knew; he tried to warn her, and she wasn’t ready to listen, wasn’t able to understand. John was supposed to live – John, the caring and handsome man she’d loved her whole adult life. She was supposed to die with her children, and John was supposed to survive the accident. He was the strong one, he’d find a way to carry on. He’d know how to bear the grief, how to live a normal life, how to stand against the angry tides of time. She needed him. Without John she was lost. Without Michael and Gabriel, there was no reason.

She couldn’t bring herself to pray; she couldn’t bear the thought that no one would answer. A cold wind drifted in from outside – finally she stood, crossed the room, and closed the window with a decisive heave.

A course of events had been set in motion, an intended sequence that she had interrupted. She, in her fallible human way, had thought herself able to steer the course if history, but had only succeeded in leaving herself alone, in casing herself out of the light that was God’s intended plan.

Slowly the idea crept in, soaking her like water in the parched desert. Slowly, the idea took her, rising her up above the tangibility of her grief until she could barely feel anything. She had no place here. God had not intended her to survive.

His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 9

2011-03-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

“You can stay here if you like,” Miles offered, but it was less a question than a statement of fact.

“How do you I need–” she began, but Miles cut her off.

“I know you have no where else to go. If you did, you’d have gone there first instead of bothering me in the middle of the night. I don’t what possessed you to find me, but I know you don’t have a plan, much less a place to stay. So it looks like you’re spending the night here.”

Karen was silent a moment, and considered a number of retorts, but came up dry.

“Bedroom’s down the back. Left side. Sheets are clean. I never sleep there.”

Karen reached for the bottle, resigned. She poured herself another slug, and grimaced again as it went down. Miles looked momentarily amused; this was the first emotion Karen had seen since the terror and surprise outside had melted away into cool indifference.

“Do you mind if I just talk to you for a while?” she asked. Miles shrugged. “I’ve prayed ever night, Miles. I’ve asked God for answers. I’ve prayed and I’ve begged and I’ve bargained and I’ve pleaded for a reason for all this.” She trailed off. Her words were falling on uninterested ears.

“And?” He looked at her with pity, and she felt anger rise up in her. She accepted pity graciously, but his pity was laced with scorn. “What did God say?”

“God has been quiet of late,” she said quietly, trying to suppress the anger that bubbled dangerously and held her on the verge of angry tears, and then her words gained momentum and she spoke as though reciting from memory. “But God took my children, and He’ll make His reasons clear in time.” Those words brought her strength.

“God,” Miles scoffed. “God had little to do with this. Brake failure is a human invention. God didn’t cause the accident, any more than God… clipped your fingernails for you. A person took your children’s life – a person backed by a thousand pounds of steel and machinery – but a person nonetheless. A man killed your family. Not God.”

“But that must be a reason. God has His reasons. There must be intention or meaning or a higher purpose, otherwise what’s the point in even—”

“There is no reason!” Miles slammed his glass down on the table as he spat out the words. “There is no purpose. There is life, and it is followed very shortly by death. The only purpose we serve is the purpose we give ourselves. They say a life without purpose is meaningless and that’s bullshit – a life without purpose is just life. There is nothing else. We have no reason to be; we just are.”

Miles half rose from his seat in frustration – but the violent outburst seemed to drain what little strength he had left. He looked hopelessly at the empty glass, seemed to consider momentarily pouring himself another, but instead pushed the empty glass away and stumbled to his feet. He stood, unsteadily, staring down at Karen, who had backed away from the table in startled surprise. Suddenly very unsure of himself, Miles picked up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and gestured towards her in offering. She shook her head.

Karen looked at him for a long time. “What are you going to do to me?”

Miles looked surprised, almost amused. “To you? Nothing. I am, however, going to continue drinking until I fall down somewhere and I am going to try my damnedest to forget all about you.”

Miles crossed the room and pulled the knob on the television. Violent static filled the air. Miles sat down, bottle in his hand, rocking unsteadily. His body seemed to move with the noise from the television, shaking and shivering with the bursts of sound.

Karen stood tall, clutching herself, feeling very much alone. After a moment she spoke, her voice barely enough to be heard over the television.

“Can you really forget all about this?”

His face fell.

“…No. I never can.”

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 8

2011-03-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

A noise from the kitchen drew her attention – a small clatter, like something falling. She peered around the corner. “Miles? That is your name, right? I’m sorry… I’m sorry I attacked you, I just—”

Miles sat at his kitchen table, a towel of ice pressed against his forehead. He didn’t appear to be bleeding anymore. A rocks glass sat near his free hand, the amber liquid sparkling over ice. An empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s lay on its side; Miles made no move to pick it up. He looked tired and sad, like a hungry and beaten dog. A deep purple bruise was welling up on his face where Karen had struck him.

“—are you okay?” she asked, recognizing the irony of the question. Karen bit her lip, near tears again as she bore witness to the product of her wrath. Miles looked up at her briefly, a near unreadable expression – perhaps tired resignation, she couldn’t quite tell – across his heavy face. Deep lines cut into his brow, dark circles hung under his eyes. He was nearly unrecognizable – a completely different man than the one she’d met months earlier – like he’d aged thirty years since she last saw his face.

“I’m so sorry,” she began again, not knowing anything else to say, but he waved her away. He didn’t seem angry, which surprised Karen, only distracted or perhaps merely disinterested. He raised the glass to his lips and drank, sucking down the remains of the liquor in one mighty swallow.

She stood in the doorway, a timid animal, curious and afraid and yet full of wonder at this creature who looked so harmless across from her, slumped over the table and peering up at her in a peculiar manner. He studied her for a moment and without speaking gestured into the kitchen, waved his empty glass at something out of sight. She tried to walk quietly but her shoes clicked on the wood floor as before, the only sound in the quiet house. A paper sack – presumably more alcohol – stood upright on an otherwise empty counter. She reached inside and pulled out another bottle of the amber Tennessee whiskey. She spied an empty glass in the drying rack next to the sink.

“Do you mind if I…” she trailed off. Miles shrugged, and broke his gaze, staring off into the distance. She broke the seal on the bottle, poured herself a few ounces, and returned to the table with the bottle. She pulled up a chair, the scratching of the chair leg on the floor an abrasive sound in the silence, and she sat, holding the bottle as an offering. He held his glass out and she poured in complete silence. She stopped halfway and he gestured with the glass again, impatiently, and she filled it to the rim, nearly spilling.

She sipped her drink, the whiskey coursing violently down her throat. She held back a grimace. He raised the glass, but didn’t bring it to his lips; he just sat there with his hand held high in an unsteady salute, his body swaying gently, the whiskey lapping against the sides of the glass – but never quite over. She stared at him inquisitively. He swallowed another mouthful, not meeting her eyes. He didn’t register her presence; he seemed to have forgotten she was even there. He looked so lonely, she thought, in this big house – this beautiful house – like a ghost who barely existed, that just moved slowly from room to room, as every moment faded a little more into memory and dust.

She forced down another swallow before she was brave enough to speak. “Who are you?”

He looked up at her, barely interested. At least he knows I’m here, she thought. Better that than remain a ghost. She tried again. “I know you remember me. My husband – my children – they…” She stopped. She still couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “I lost them when the truck hit us. But you know that, don’t you?”

Miles narrowed his eyes. He finally spoke.

“What are you doing here?” His voice sounded like gravel, hoarse and deep.

“My family,” she said, a hint of desperation bubbling into her voice. “You know things, Miles. You knew this would happen.”

“I saw something. I thought I could help you. I couldn’t. Nothing changed. Only traded one death for another.”

“My husband…” she trailed off, the realization slowly dawning on her. “You thought he… but my children? What about them?”

“Didn’t meet them,” he said, the alcohol slowing his speech. “Don’t know about the children.”

Karen stared at him, trying to glean something – anything – from this stranger, but he had nothing to give, and she wondered why she had come, what had driven her from her home to pursue a man she did not know. Miles shifted uneasily. He was clearly uncomfortable, but made no move to extract her; he just sat, sipping his whiskey, trying his best to ignore her.

Her eyes drifted around the room, soaking in the strange conflict in atmosphere. The cabinetry was certainly hand-made; the wood was unfinished but delicately carved, and clearly neglected – like a carpenter had been halfway through the remodel before disappearing, and the house had been untouched for years since. The rooms were gloomy, poorly lit, and an unnerving weight hung in the air, like the very walls were soaked in misery and despair. Miles sat, unmoving still, and Karen wondered momentarily if it was Miles that created these feelings, and the house was merely a reflection of his mood. The house was beautiful, but at the same time murky and bleak. Miles seemed that same way, she noted – his face would have been handsome without the heaviness under his eyes, and the days of unkempt stubble that wasn’t quite a beard, more just a mess.

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 7

2011-03-22T11:04:00.001-07:00

* * * * *

I V

* * * * *

Karen cried, softly and alone, clutching herself protectively on the great wicker chair that creaked quietly under her gently rocking weight. She was cold, it was after dusk, and the temperature was dropping rapidly. She found her misery couldn’t sustain itself, outside and alone, so she stood, uncertain, and hobbled to the door. She had no strength left, no will to stand, like a balloon animal slowly losing air. But she had nowhere else to go.

She reached for the handle, paused, and knocked on the door. The door had not latched; it creaked open when she touched it. She stepped inside, hesitant and timid, and stood in the doorway, not seeing her mysterious companion but instead soaking in the strange house she had just entered.

The interior was beautiful, though sparsely furnished and poorly maintained. Ornately carved bookshelves lined the walls, even the windowsills seemed custom made. The woodwork was stained with dark cherry tones, which seemed oddly rich against the egg white walls. Two unmatched couches faced the only other piece of furniture, an old-fashioned television in a great decorative frame buzzing with static. The rabbit ears hung loosely from the back of the television, but it was not tuned to any discernible channel – horizontal lines danced up and down the screen across the snowy, indistinct images. The sound was turned up to an unpleasant volume – the television hissed and moaned with a ghostly warble, the noise fading and fluctuating in a disorienting chorus of indeterminate sound.

“Hello?” she called, but she could barely hear herself over the noise. Karen walked across the room, her heels clicking on the wood floor, and she clicked off the power. The room fell completely still, and Karen considered turning the television back on just to dispel the silence, the eerie sense of despair that seemed to fill the empty air.

“Hello?’she tried again, but she heard no one. “I was… I just… It’s cold outside.”

She stepped farther inside the room. To her right a hallway stretched into what was perhaps a bedroom, or a couple of bedrooms, and to her left an archway led into a dining room, with presumably a kitchen behind it. Books – hundreds of books – lined the walls. She noted books on Philosophy, books on Psychology, books on Human Sexuality, a great number of books on Geography and American History. Miles was clearly a well-read man, alone in this empty house. The Holy Bible, the Torah, the Koran… she found herself inexplicably smiling. This house was occupied by someone searching for something, delving deep for answers. A small voice in her head warned her that she was in a strange man’s house, rummaging through a strange man’s things – she could be in danger. She shook that voice away – the man was twice her size, if he was going to hurt her, he would have outside while she was attacking him. He was more afraid of her than she of him. She looked around the room again, but stopped herself before creeping down the back hallway, into the shadows. Something was hidden back there, in the dark corners of the house, of that she was certain.

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 6

2011-03-22T11:03:00.001-07:00

* * * * *

I I I

* * * * *

She was alive.

Miles could hardly believe what he was seeing. He tried to focus, to force his mind into a tunnel, a narrow beam of concentrated thought. He failed; the exercise was futile in such a disorienting hurricane of sensation. The whiskey sloshed through his brain, rocking him like a ship in unsteady waters. He was confused, disoriented, struggling for balance. But he knew this was real – this was more real than anything Miles had felt in a long time. She was alive.

Yet he could fathom no reason why she would be here. But he was drunk; he knew he was drunk. Reason was not something coming easily.

For a moment he swelled with hope – a desperate hope that somehow he’d prevented the accident – but she lashed out with such violet anger, and as she struck him he saw her memory: he felt her weeks alone in the hospital, felt the panic and disbelief as the painful sinking realization that her husband and her children were gone was and were never coming back, felt the boiling rage that collapsed into bleak depression when she realized that she was completely alone and her life had fallen apart. Each blow was a burst of new memory, still fresh like a recent burn.

He could feel the anger boiling up in her; the terror and desperation and despair pummeled him in great bursts, like heaving, violent waves crashing on a beach. He was barely aware that she was striking him. She had abandoned the bottle when he collapsed; she was beating him with her tiny fists, a near futile effort if not fueled by her venom and fury. She clawed his face, her fingernails leaving a surprisingly deep cut that welled up and dripped bright red blood down his cheek. She kicked him, hard, and he doubled over in pain. He made no move to defend himself; he just lay there, limp, and finally her will was exhausted, her fury abated. Karen looked down at him, deflated, looked at the pitiful heap of a man, and slumped over in the ragged wicker chair on his front porch. She began to cry, quiet sobs, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She clutched herself, rocking back and forth, her chest heaving under her frail arms.

Miles waited a moment, then gently pulled himself to his feet, glancing once at Karen before limping inside.

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 5

2011-03-22T11:02:00.001-07:00

* * * * *

I I

* * * * *

Miles ran, the erratic rhythm of his feet into the poorly paved road matched only by the pounding of his heart, thundering in his ears like the beating of mighty drums. The whiskey sloshed through his head, throwing his balance, and he swayed like a pendulum — swinging this way and that but never quite falling.

A memory ricocheted through his head like a bullet from a gun, making its presence known by the impact it created but moving too fast to be recognized. A sense that was beyond his understanding of senses shook him; Miles was propelled by an undefined fear. Danger, the voice said without really speaking. Run the fuck away - do it now. And as he was running he remembered, remembered something he had never seen but knew as though he had seen it with his own two eyes.

There was a woman and she died in the road. But something was wrong with that. For a moment Miles doubted the painful feeling of loss, began to wonder if he’d made some mistake. But she had died. He had seen it. She had been violently torn from this world, suddenly and without mercy. He had seen it.

Miles ran. As drunk as he was, Miles ran.

And behind him, a baby blue Chevy Impala turned the corner from Baron to Del Ray, tires growling in the loose gravel like a beast in pursuit of prey. And the driver, a beautiful brunette, squinted her big brown eyes into the night, the darkness that seemed to more than just an absence of light, but an absence of life as well. The headlights did very little to dispel the darkness; the night air seemed to suck at the light like the desert floor sucked at the rare rain.

The glare of the headlights caught him, and her big brown eyes widened at the sight of him. Miles felt her gaze, even as he was too drunk to notice the sound of wheels slowly overtaking him, even as he was too drunk see feel the halo of light slowly overtaking him he felt that he was being watched, he felt that he was being hunted.

Above him the porch light flickered and hummed, distorting his unsteady vision even more. Miles scrambled up the steps on his hands and knees, still convinced he could escape, until her shadow fell over him and he paused, a collision of fear and wonder. A scattered collection of empty bottles clacked and tingled between his arms and legs. The night air seemed to still for a moment, if only to accent the sudden clatter of a bottle bouncing down the short steps and spinning slowly to a halt in the dirt below the porch. Miles turned, and the alcohol-fueled world spun upside down and sideways. The woman stood above him, the lamp-light flickering just behind her head, and between the flutter of the faulty bulb from one direction and the shimmer of the moon from the other, her cascading curls glowed with a supernatural light, and for a moment Miles thought he was looking into the face of an angel.

“You’re alive,” he whispered, not believing the words as he said them. He stared up at her beautiful face, as hope intersected fear and both were derailed by complete and utter disbelief.

“Karen,” he said. “You’re alive.”

Then the bottle came down across his brow, knocking him senseless, and anything else he might have said was lost. The bottle came down again, and her face was a mask of unrestrained anger as she beat him, blow after blow, until the glass bottle ran thick with his blood.

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 4

2011-03-22T11:01:00.001-07:00

“Fine lookin’ woman in there.” Willie wasn’t really asking, nor was he expecting a response, he just lacked the complex vocabulary to find anything else to say.

Patterson lit his cigarette with a decorative Zippo and mumbled something unintelligible as a reply.

“Damn, if that don’t beat all,” Willie added, admiring the womanly curves now visible from his vantage point behind her.

Through the picture windows the three – really the two, since Patterson Malone didn’t gives two shits about what was going on inside – could see the woman talking to Doc Brown, and they could hear bits of the conversation. That’s when Del noticed a distinct lack of presence at the far the end of the bar.

“Where the hell is Miles?” asked Del.

“He left,” mumbled Patterson, not looking up. “He ran out of there like he heard his house was on fire.”

“Sonuva bitch,” said Del settling into a chair on the porch and lighting a cigarette. Willie allowed himself one more longing glance through the window at the bar before sitting down and lighting a cigarette as well.

“Well, yer choices are a bit limited tonight,” said Doc Brown. “But I’d be happy tah give you the nickel tour.”

“I was here three months ago,” she said, annoyed. “With my family. There was a man here, he… he had a seizure of some kind. You can’t have forgotten him.”

Doc Brown turns away and continues drying dishes. “Sorry, miss, he ain’t been here since. And if’n you ain’t gon’ order nothin’ then I got nothing for ya.”

“Could you tell me where he lives?” she asked. “Where I can find him?”

Doc Brown looked down, unable to meet her gaze. “It ain’t mah place to say,” he replied. “Doctor-patience privilege, ‘n all that.”

Doc shuffled away, focused intently on drying glasses. The few remaining men in the bar refuse to make eye contact. Karen looked around, desperately.

“Please, it’s important,” she said. “I need to find him. Can’t anybody here tell me anything?”

Still outside smoking, Willie and Del could hear the woman’s raised voice.

“Please, anybody! Somebody here knows him! I need to know where he is! I need to know what he knows!”

Doc Brown leaned in and addressed the woman quietly.

“Best just leave that man alone, y’hear? He ain’t right inna head. But if’n you just gonna make a fuss, I’m canna do nothing for ya.”

The woman’s face fell. She turned for the door, deflated and dejected.

“Sorry to bother you. I’m sorry…”

The woman walked outside. Patterson watched her leave, then ground his cigarette butt under his heel and walked back inside. Del and Willie sat and watched her, smoking in silence. Del scowled and Willie shook his head in disbelief.

Karen was halfway to her car when Del shouted to her.

“Lady,” he cried. “Hey, Lady!”

Karen stopped and turned around.

“You looking for that sonuvabitch Miles? Yeah, he was just here. Bolted with his tail between his yellow legs.”

Karen’s eyes grew wide. “Miles?”

“Lives next the abandoned Auto Parts store on Del Ray,” Del continued. “Big goddamn sign.”

Karen bolted for her car as Del continued to shout, his arms flailing wildly.

“You tell him he’s in for a beatin’! That boy’s gonna wish he was never born!”

The wheels on the blue Impala spun in the gravel, spitting rocks and dirt as the woman peeled out of the lot.

“There goes one well-built chassis,” said Del.

“The car was pretty nice-looking, too,” said Willie, and they both chuckled.

The dust settled in the parking lot as they both sat in silence, absorbing the excitement of the evening, cigarettes dangling from their mouths. After a minute, Willie turned to his brother.

“Del, you alright to drive?”

Del shook his head. “Nope. You?”

“Nope.”

Willie pondered this a moment. “You wanna git another round?”

A slow smile crossed Del’s face.

“Yup.”

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 3

2011-03-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

The low growl of an engine cut through the quiet night. Willie looked up, surprised to see an unfamiliar car, a beautifully maintained baby blue Chevrolet Impala – a 58’, by the looks of it – with a soft convertible top, pulling into the gravel parking lot. He was even more surprised when the door opened and out emerged a slender and beautiful woman with stunning eyes and long brunette curls that fell about her shoulders.

Del stopped his pacing and stared as well, his cigarette nearly falling from his mouth. She walked up to the porch and passed between them. She glanced up at the two men and her eyes flitted back and forth, not quite meeting their unabashed gawking. She looked scared, but not scared of them; she walked in the bar with a look of a newborn kitten, something naïve and curious and in wholly out of her depth.

Miles had not moved from his spot at the end of the bar when the car pulled in. He could hear the rumble of the engine outside, the sound of gravel kicked up into the underbelly. There was a buzzing in the back of his skull, a nagging feeling that he couldn’t shake, some unpleasant sensation that the whiskey had failed to wash away. Something’s wrong, said the voice inside his head. You shouldn’t be here. He sat up sharply when the he heard the door slam, and the blood drained completely from his face. He stood, unsteady on his feet, and grasped at the bar for support. His head was suddenly pounding. Danger, said the voice. Escape. Escape.

Doc Brown shuffled over. “You all right, Miles?” he asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Miles looked up at Doc Brown, a panicked and desperate expression on his face. “You keep my tab open until tomorrow?” he asked.

“Sure thing, Miles. What’s–”

Before Doc Brown could finish forming the words Miles had bolted to the back of the pub. There was an exit near the bathrooms, and Miles was through it and into the cold air outside in seconds. The room fell silent as he left. Doc Brown stared at the door with a glass and a towel in his hands, completely unmoving. The only motion was Patterson Malone, who stood from his booth and tapped out a cigarette from a fresh pack.

The pub was still quiet as the woman entered through the front, the slam of the door behind her a startling sound in the eerie silence. Doc Brown looked up her, and one by one so did every other head in the room. She hesitated in the doorway, her soft eyes nervously scanning her unexpected audience. Patterson gently brushed past her, cigarette behind his ear, and he nodded politely to her as he exited to the front porch. She stood for a moment longer, clutching her purse to herself in a protective stance, before timidly approached the bar.

“Hello,” she said to Doc Brown. “I’m looking for a man.”

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 2

2011-03-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

“Well, how ‘bout you, Miles? You don’t look like you have much goin’ on. Care to join us for a round o’ pool?”

“Leave off, Del,” said Willie from the far side of the pool table. “He ain’t hurtin’ nobody.” Del dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

“You jus’ sit here every night, drinkin’ by yo’self. Don’choo got any friends, bud?”

“You leave him alone,” said Willie, insistently. “He’s crazy.”

“I’m just havin’ a little fun,” said Del, ignoring his brother, “Whatsa matter, boy? You really crazy, that it?”

Miles turned to stare into Willie’s face, his pale eyes blazing. His face was thin and hollow, and in the darkness he resembled a jack-o-lantern, with two burning candles shimmering from inside.

“If I’m crazy,” Miles said slowly, deliberately. “What’s that say about a grown man who fantasizes about little boys?”

Del stiffened, like an unseen puppet-master had just yanked several strings and pulled him upright. “Hey, fuck you!” he snapped.

“Fuck me?” asked Miles, eyes ablaze. “Aren’t I a little old for your tastes?”

Del regained his composure and leaned towards Miles in a menacing stare. “I will fuck you up six ways to Sunday, boy,” he growled under his breath.

Miles stared back, his face showing no signs of intimidation.

“Careful,” said Miles. “I bite.”

Del steadied his gaze against Miles, and the two of them stood locked in a battle of willpower: a wiry viper against an overweight sewer rat. Miles slowly opened his mouth into a toothy grin and hissed – a wet, guttural sound.

Del broke their gaze with a shake of his head, crossed the room and threw the pool cue onto the table with a crash.

“Fuck this action, Willie. That boy’s outta his mind,” he said with a snort. “Settle our tab. We’re the fuck out of here.” Del stormed out, leaving his brother to look uncomfortably around the bar before pulling a wad of bills from his pocket and handing them to Doc Brown. Willie looked over at Miles nervously, but Miles had turned his attention back to his drink, staring back to an empty spot in space, and he did not acknowledge Willie’s furtive glance. Willie pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, tapped it in his hand and left the bar and joined his brother.

Doc Brown worked his way down the bar with a towel, wiping down the surface of the counter. He picked up the half-poured pint, and sipped it as he cleaned. He paused when he reached Miles. “One of these days, boy, you gonna start something you won’t be able to finish.”

Miles looked up at him, unconcerned. “Another double,” he said. “And mind your business.”

Doc Brown wandered away, continuing to wipe down the counter, and reached for a fresh rocks glass. He looked around at the near empty bar. “This is my business,” he said under his breath.

Outside, Del paced angrily, sucking frantically on his cigarette. Next to him on the porch, Willie sat lost in thought, taking deliberate drags off his, exhaling the smoke slowly into the cool night air.

“That sonuvabitch,” said Del, his voice laced with venom. “That sonuvabitch, I’ll kill ‘im. You heard what he said. I’ll fucking kill ‘im.”

“Don’t pay him no mind,” said Willie. “He don’t know nothing.”

MILES: Chapter Four, pt. 1

2011-03-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

DEL AND HIS BROTHER WILLIE were playing pool. It was a Wednesday night, and Doc Brown’s Pub and Eatery was nearly empty. Patterson Malone sat alone in a booth, nursing a whiskey. Martin Fletcher and his wife sat at a table, laughing and joking over dinner. Janine Milner had wandered through earlier with her girlfriends, but they had quickly left when it was clear there were no boys to chat up, no free drinks to be had. Theodore and Pontius sat at one end of the bar, arguing like old men do. And, of course, Miles Braeburn sat at the far end of the bar, alone and away from the other patrons, his finger securely wrapped around a Jack Daniels and ice. The room had gone quiet when he walked in, but Miles had sat down in the same spot he always sat and ordered his whiskey, and the room had quickly returned to its normal volume. Miles wanted to be ignored, and soon he was.

Del lined up his cue, and the table exploded with sound and motion, balls scattering across the table. The seven ball shot across the table and dropped cleanly in the corner pocket.

“Willie,” said Del, obviously pleased with himself. “You gotta learn to play more defensively, else I’m gonna run you right off of this table.”

Del was a physical opposite of his brother: Del was extremely fat while Willie was rail thin; Del was short while Willie was uncomfortably tall; Del’s face looked like someone has mashed it in when he was a child while Willie’s face was bony and angular, his nose long and hooked like a bird’s. Beyond those differences, they were unmistakably brothers; they shared the same pale skin, the same dark and beady eyes, the same greasy brown hair. They even sported the same baseball cap with the logo of the shipping company for which they both worked.

“I ain’t playing for the sake of winning,” said Willie. “I’m jus’ playing for the sake of playing.”

“Seems you is playing for the sake of losing,” said Del, sinking another ball. “Now git us another couple drinks.”

“I got these last couple,” said Willie, frowning as Del lined up against the nine. “B’sides, the Doc’ll be around in another minute; he’ll get us then.”

The cue ball shot across the table and made fierce contact with the nine, which rattled momentarily in the pocket before dropping into the hole and clattering through the mechanisms under the table. Del looked at the table smugly, and then across the room, his eyes falling on Miles, still sitting in the shadows at the end of the bar. A crooked, wicked grin crept across his face.

“Yeah, I’ll git it,” said Del. He crossed the room to the bar, a slow swagger that more closely resembled the waddle of a penguin than anything else. He nestled in between two barstools a few feet from Miles and, still holding the pool cue, flagged down Doc Brown.

“Mr. Brown,” Del said. “Another round for my brother and myself.” Doc Brown grabbed two fresh glasses, eyeing Del suspiciously. “It seems my brother is an unworthy opponent, and grows weary of my kicking his backside every night. I can’t help but wonder if there’s anyone here willing or able to provide me with a bit more of a challenge.”

Doc Brown marked two tallies on their running tab and drifted to the taps, saying nothing. He tilted a pint glass against the spout and pulled the handle without looking at it, his deep-set eyes still watching the two men at the bar. Del turned to Miles with a flourish.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 8

2011-03-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I V

* * * * *

Erik Strand headed for the break room and poured himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t particularly like coffee, but it’s what his coworkers did, and Erik was trying to act at ease; coffee was the prop that supported social interaction at work. Erik would pour in enough cream and sugar to make the beverage palatable, and would nurse a cup for hours, or leave it on his desk until it was cold. Sometimes, feeling brave, he would get himself a ‘warm up’as an excuse to leave his desk again and move around.

“So, how was the game?” asked Erik, with enough enthusiasm to surprise even himself. James Mathus looked up from his newspaper, confused. James was a heavyset man in his late forties, with short-cropped gray hair, a company man who had spent enough time as a field agent to be content behind a desk, counting the years until his government pension kicked in. He had a warm, confident manner about him, a soft gentleness to his face. He was Erik’s immediate supervisor; he was also the only man at the office Erik considered a friend.

“Uh, which game?” he asked.

“Don’t care; baseball, football, some other sport. Anything. Underwater basket weaving. How was the big weekend?” Erik paused, visibly flailing. “I’m just trying to make conversation here.”

“Okay, well baseball season has been over for months.” James looked amused. “I caught part of the Jets game – that’s football – but I think they were stomped pretty hard. I didn’t catch the end, though. Went out to dinner with the wife and this couple that she knows from work. Umm… that was pretty much the weekend, Erik.”

“I went out,” Erik blurted out. “And I met a girl.”

“You finally get laid? Congratulations–”

Erik cut him off. “No, no. I just, you know, met. A girl.”

“Well, first things first, I guess,” James said with a smile. “You chatted someone pretty up at a pub? You get her number?”

Erik looked confused. “No… I, uh…”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with striking out your first time at bat. You get her name, at least? You think you might run into her again?” Talking to Erik Strand was sometimes like talking to a small child.

“She asked me for a cigarette.”

“But you don’t smoke.”

“No.”

James furrowed his brow as he considered this. “So, really, you met a girl in a bar; she said ‘hey’and you said ‘hey’back, and that was about the extent of the conversation.”

Erik pursed his lips. He looked momentarily disoriented, like all of his momentum had inexplicably vanished.

“Well, Romeo, sounds like you’ve got a ways to go before she’ll be riding the ol’sausage train, but good luck anyway.” James stood and folded his newspaper, and looked as though he was about to leave the break room, but appeared to change his mind. He leaned in towards Erik as if sharing a secret. “Look, uh… No real eloquent way to say this, so… Erik, everybody here already thinks you’re sort of nuts. So take it easy, okay? I mean, anytime you want to talk about doing absolutely nothing over the weekend, you can come to me, but you maybe shouldn’t expect anyone else to understand how exciting that is for you.”

Erik nodded, trying to make sense of the advice.

“Alright, then.” James patted Erik on the shoulder. “Get back to work,” he said with a smile.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 7

2011-03-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Instead of catching the next bus home, she walked out onto the avenue, down past the frozen trees of the park, and down the hill into the heart of the city. It was dark, and cold, and she tugged her long coat tighter. She needed a change in atmosphere. She crossed a glass sky-bridge, colored lights twinkling in the frozen air, and the open sky made her feel a little better.

Mark wanted something, but she had no idea what. Even when they were together, he had been enigmatic at best, and often deliberately misleading. And so, like a seed caught between her back teeth that she couldn’t dislodge, a feeling of dread rooted itself into the back of her mind and slowly began to spread.

Now Melody needed something to eat, and a chance to relax. Downtown was surprisingly busy for the season. She was rounding a corner when she noticed she was being followed, but not by anything dangerous. She stopped, and peered down an empty alley. Amidst the garbage and discarded furniture, several sets of yellow eyes peered up at her. She grinned.

“Hey, babies,” she called into the alley, and three alley cats appeared from the shadows. “I wish I had some food for you.” The cats mewed their agreement with that sentiment. Two of them – an orange tabby and a fat Siamese – approached Melody fearlessly, butting up against her. They had only been abandoned recently, she knew, and still hung onto their domestic nature. The third was a wild-eyed tom, thin and feral, and took his time trusting her. He stared her down, perched atop a stack of broken wooden pallets.

“I’m sorry, sweethearts,” she said, and the orange cat at her feet mewed sadly, nearly breaking Melody’s heart. “I’m going inside for a while, where it’s warm. No, you can’t come with me. I have to get some people food first, but if you find me later, I’ll get you something to eat.”

The orange cat turned her head to one side, licked her lips and with a leap and a scuffle, vanished into the shadows. The Siamese wasn’t so graceful, but wandered off as well, leaving the tom still perched, roughly the height of Melody’s head, glaring at her.

“You too, you big meanie,” she said, and stuck out her tongue. “But you have to be nice to Francis. He’s not good with strangers.”

The black cat yawned wide, his pink tongue flicked out, and he leapt down from the pallets into the darkness.

Down the street, she passed Frond’s – the dance club that throbbed uncomfortably and radiated much more sexual energy than Melody was entirely comfortable with – and the Watchtower Pub. Something trickled through her as she passed the Watchtower; someone inside made her curious. She peeked through a window, and caught a glimpse of a handsome man in a starched white dress shirt sitting by himself at the bar. She stared another moment, trying to glean what was so interesting about him, but scurried away quickly when he turned to look outside.

In a nearby Greek restaurant she ordered a falafel and a coffee and sat alone, just inside the window. An untended fire slowly burned away in a fireplace across the room, providing little heat. With no other customers, the proprietor wandered into the back where Melody presumed his wife was cooking, as snippets of an argument trickled back to her. She didn’t understand the language, but the anger that filled the air needed little translation. Melody began to feel a little uncomfortable. The argument quickly escalated; the man and woman began shouting and stomping about, oblivious to the business they may have been scaring off. Grateful that she’d paid her bill when she ordered, Melody wrapped up her pita and trudged outside to a covered bus stop, soaking in the bitter cold. A few minutes later, a curious meow and a bundle of orange fur joined her on the bench.

“Where are your friends?” she asked. “Not as brave as you?” Melody offered some falafel but after a sniff the cat turned away and sneezed in disgust. “I guess you’re not a vegetarian.”

She finished her dinner in silence, and sipped her coffee while the cat made herself comfortable in Melody’s lap, quickly falling asleep. Her turtleneck was warm enough, she thought, and the night was beautiful, if cold. She amused herself by watching her breath waft away in the frozen air.

And, though she rarely indulged herself, she decided what she really wanted was a cigarette.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 6

2011-03-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

The phone rang.

Melody opened her eyes, squinting against the bright sun shining through an open window. She stretched, shook her head and blinked heavily a few times, and plodded into the bedroom where the phone jangled insistently. Scattered images from the hallucination still worried her, and she tried in vain to let them go.

“‘allo?”

Silence on the other end of the line. Melody’s brow furrowed. Something didn’t feel right.

“Hello?” she said again, more insistently.

“It is you,” a male voice finally spoke. “It’s been a long time, my dear.”

“Goddammit, Mark,” she said. “What do you want?”

“What does anyone really want?” he said. “Someone who understands them, perhaps? Someone who believes in them?”

“Don’t do this, Mark. It’s over – it’s been over for a long time. I have to go–”

“You’ll be happy to know,” he interrupted her. “That I’ve met someone.”

“Congratu-fucking-lations.” Melody massaged the bridge of her nose with her free hand. Whatever relief had come from her meditation was swiftly negated. She could feel a headache building already. “When she figures out who you really are and dumps your ass, please please don’t come running back.”

“I’m disappointed, dear.” His voice oozed like slime over the phone. Melody felt dirty just speaking to him. But still he kept talking. “I thought you of all people would pleased for me.”

“I’m tired of this bullshit, Mark.” Melody was exasperated. “I’m hanging up the phone now.”

“A man rises from the earth,” Mark droned on, now sounding like he was quoting from some unfamiliar scripture. “And he says to the world: Join me, my flock, and I shall show you the light and the love and the glory never before known.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve found religion,” Melody sighed heavily. “You of all people–”

“But the flock rose against the shepherd, and the Shepherd grew angry,” Mark continued to monotone. “For his will was mighty, and his vengeance swift!” Mark finished with a flourish, as though he expected applause, or perhaps a hallelujah.

“This is a bit much coming from the guy who told me he was a god among men, and was above mortal judgment,” Melody said, cursing herself for rising to his bait.

“I am a god, Melody. But many gods walk this earth.” She could hear the smile in his voice, the wicked smile that she knew better than to trust. “I’ll see you soon.”

Melody exploded. “You son of a bitch! If you’ve been following me...” she hesitated, not entirely sure how to appropriately threaten him. “I’ll have you fucking arrested!” She slammed down the phone, nearly knocking it off her bedside table. Her pulse raced, her face was flushed with anger. She shouldn’t have let him get under her skin, she thought. She was embarrassed; she knew she had provided him some twisted satisfaction when she lost her temper.

And now she was late. Melody worked part-time at a veterinary hospital, after hours. Melody rushed out the door, bag swinging behind her, barely missing the bus as it pulled away from her stop. It wasn’t far, maybe 16 blocks, and so she ran – trying not to cry as her bag thumped uncomfortably on her shoulder. The winter sun was already low in the horizon, not so much setting as escaping, and the temperature was dropping rapidly. She stopped, breathless, on the steps outside the clinic. She pulled out her compact and made sure no stray tears had mussed her eyeliner, tried unsuccessfully to mash her now windblown hair back into place, and trudged up the stairs.

Her supervisor raised a curious eyebrow in her direction when she arrived, but thankfully left her alone. For the next four hours Melody was distracted, unable to focus. A wall of animal emotion hit her: hunger, loneliness, fear – her center was off, she was completely unbalanced, and the more she tried to reach out and calm the menagerie, the more it opened her up to the barrage of discomfort and displeasure the animals of the shelter were experiencing. Mark had rattled her far more than she wanted to admit.

The creatures under her care were restless; the cats fussed and scratched at her when she tried to bathe them, a beautiful golden lab refused to sit still as she tried to provide much-needed antibiotics. The dog jumped out of her arms and tore off down the hallway before one of the other lab assistants intervened and coaxed the dog back into a kennel. The dog paced and snuffled impatiently, glaring at Melody.

“I’ll get her later, okay?” the assistant offered graciously. “You look like you could use a break.”

Melody busied herself filing paperwork instead, angry that she was unable to pull herself together. Evening came, and by the end she’d managed to let little of the day’s stress go. She was walking out into the cold air when she realized she hadn’t eaten all day – her unplanned phone call had left her little time to grab lunch. There had been nothing in the break room but cold coffee and stale popcorn.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 5

2011-03-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I I I

* * * * *

Melody’s apartment was on the top corner of three-story building, with sprawling windows looking out over the city. Her floor was the only one that directly overlooked the adjoining building, allowing her a unique rooftop access to the next-door warehouse. The building was near abandoned, which left her the freedom to scatter planters and mount hanging pots on the flat roof, a veritable jungle for her two cats.

Francis and Butterfly were outside, stalking something unseen through the ferns and creeping vines.

She chose the apartment in part because of the spectacular view, but also because it existed on a fault line, a cusp of raw power. The web surrounded her here, soaked her with emotion, and she loved the connection to other living things. The web brought her comfort, an easy connection to the White Corridor. She was a part of something greater here; she breathed in life as well as air.

In the center of the room was her meditation pillow, a blue throw with a golden Chinese dragon sewn into it. Ten minutes of meditation, she thought. A connection to the web and some simple reassurance. She would feel better.

She sat, closed her eyes, and tried to relax. She concentrated on her breathing, focused her mind. She let her conscious mind go, let go of her clients and her phone bill and the muck inside the fridge... all the things that would otherwise have her attention. Still, the shadow in the street haunted her. She struggled to dislodge him from her mind. It wasn’t easy. He had dug in deep, and was taking root. She expanded herself outward, let the web take her up – up and out. Her breathing slowed and she began to see –

Nothing at first, just a sea of white, but then the white became solid and she was looking down at the city, and then the city was all blue. Calm. Safe.

Better.

She floated down, nearly weightless, onto the empty street, and as her toes touched down her skin began to tingle, warm at first, then sharp and aggravating. She looked around, disoriented, as the feeling grew worse. She felt eyes on her and she spun around, but there was no one, nothing, but –

There was something in the air, a crack, a break in the calm. A streak of violent, fire engine red cut across the blue, like blood trickling through water, and Melody tried to step back but the red was filling the very air she breathed. The paranoia filled her again, not just a passing feeling as it was on the bus, but a tangible, physical sensation. It pressed against her chest, suffocating her, and she stumbled, afraid, gasping for air where there was none.

She tried to pull back, to return to herself sitting in the third story apartment, but the connection was slow, and she heard a voice in the distance, calling out a warning.

It took her a moment to remember that here there was no air; without her body she didn’t need to breathe, but the physical instincts were hard to break, and it was a few seconds before her pulse slowed and her head stopped pounding.

But the overwhelming sense of paranoia and fear was still there. Something was out there – something watched her from a distance, something she could not place.

Melody pushed herself to another place on the psychic plane. Uncomfortable with what tumbled downstream, she elevated herself to her private place, an isolated area for her extended consciousness to take a breather. Someone would have to consciously follow her there to give her more grief, rather than just send negative energy down the pipeline. No one did. She counted her breaths until she finally calmed down, and slowly let herself fall back into her own body.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 4

2011-03-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

Erik felt a little drunk. The tips of his fingers tingled, and he found himself staring at them, as if there was something touching them that he yet couldn’t identify. When he and Sharon were together, they often drank wine with dinner, but he was never a social drinker; he didn’t like the feeling of losing control. But the other patrons in the bar seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely; perhaps there was a secret to drinking that he was unaware of. He began to feel unbalanced again, alone and unarmed. Perhaps this excursion was a mistake.

He paid the bill, left a fair tip, pulled his pea coat tightly around him, and stepped out into the cold air.

“Excuse me?” The woman’s voice behind him startled him. “Do you have a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke,” he said, almost apologetically, and turned to face the source of the question.

The woman was young, maybe mid-twenties, with bright brown eyes and bright red hair, which was propped up on the top of her head by a pair of oversized sunglasses and billowed across the shoulders of her turtleneck sweater. She wore a short black coat, which stopped at her waist and accented plaid pants, snug against her long legs. She exhaled sharply, her breath condensing into an almost pure white cloud, and she rubbed her hands together briskly in an attempt to warm them.

“S’alright. It’s a filthy habit anyway. Francis gives me grief about it all the time.”

“Sorry, who?” he asked.

The woman looked momentarily embarrassed, and then quickly smiled. “Oh, no one. I was just being silly.”

Erik began to wonder if the girl was flirting or just making fun of him, like perhaps there was some inside joke that he was blissfully unaware of, and if he tried chatting up this girl she would only laugh and point out his folly.

“It’s a bit cold, isn’t it?” he said, pointing out the painfully obvious. He felt foolish the moment he said the words. She smiled wide nonetheless, a warm and forgiving smile, and he felt suddenly at ease. He felt like he should say something else, like he should introduce himself or comment on something, anything other than the weather. Instead he stood there, uncomfortable, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, blowing warm breath into the cold air.

“You have a good way about you,” she said. “You take care, alright?”

She turned and walked down the sidewalk, her long red hair bouncing and rippling with each footstep. He stood for an unusually long time, watching her walk. Yes, she was undoubtedly attractive – strikingly beautiful, even – but that wasn’t why Erik stared. There were beautiful women everywhere, several in his office in fact, but Erik was a man of tact, not one for outright gawking. Erik stared because he seemed to have no choice; there was something unusually alluring, something so unexpectedly inviting and compassionate about the woman, that he could not break his gaze.

But there was something odd and almost unnerving about the woman as well, something mysterious and inhuman – no, perhaps more than human was more appropriate. Her hips twisted and curved with such raw sexuality, almost animal in its intensity, but she moved with a certain feline grace.

He realized a moment later what was also so strange about her: as she walked down the alley, she was being followed by a surprising number of feral cats. It seemed as though all the stray cats of the neighborhood were drawn to her like moths to a light; they stalked her, silent and agile. They stuck mostly to the shadows, flitting in and out of dark pockets like shadows themselves. She seemed not to notice, and by the time she crossed the street, the cats were nowhere to be seen.

Cats, he thought. How funny. Cats.

Perhaps if not for the distraction of the red-haired woman, perhaps if not for the several gin martinis, Erik would have noticed the large black sedan with tinted windows slowly following him down the street. Perhaps he would have noticed the driver’s side window roll down halfway as a man in sunglasses and a dark suit took several snapshots with a small digital camera. But Erik kept walking, stumbling slightly as the last of the alcohol settled in, and he pulled himself clumsily up the stairs to his apartment.

Cats.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 3

2011-03-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

The Watchtower was a pub not quite eight blocks down from Erik’s apartment, and he walked down the city sidewalk towards it, soaking in the sounds and colors of the busy Friday nightlife. Frond’s – the dance club across the street – throbbed with heavy bass; flashing lights accompanied the sound. The lights reflected in the surrounding businesses, creating an eerie glow against the mannequins in the nearby department store windows.

Erik could see his own breath rising through the air before him, but even in the cold people bustled about, clutching their coats or clinging tenaciously to each other for warmth. A pair of girls up ahead, barely old enough to drink by the looks of it, scurried down the street in outfits that would have been sexy, were the girls not obviously freezing in their matching skirts and strapped heels.

Once inside, Erik ordered a sandwich at the bar and, upon consideration, a gin martini. Live a little, he thought to himself. Erik had found that he was uncomfortable in social situations; he could hold his own in any professional setting, he could easily speak in front of crowds, he held lectures and training sessions at the office several times a month, and his profession required him to interact with great numbers of people but here, alone at a bar in a low lit room with a crowd of maybe fifteen people, he felt ill-at-ease.

The pub was at about half-capacity, which meant plenty of room for Erik to breathe, and he stared into the low light as bits of conversation wafted through the air. Across the room, a waitress caught his gaze and smiled at him briefly before turning away and running a tray of dirty glasses to the kitchen. He tried to smile back, but he was slow to react and he wondered momentarily if he had offended her by not returning the expression.

The bartender mumbled something unintelligible and set down the martini. Erik nodded in response, but didn’t turn his head.

He found himself listening. Two men were arguing rules over a billiards table behind him, but their conflict was more jovial than malevolent; a mixture of friendly rivalry and intoxication. In a booth nearby a woman was scolding her husband over something he couldn’t quite make out, but the husband was clearly uninterested; instead he was nursing his beer while the woman soaked up Cosmopolitans like a dry sponge.

Erik at his sandwich in silence, and drank his martini quickly. The alcohol burned as it made its way down Erik’s throat. He must like me, Erik thought. Bartenders pour drinks stronger when they like a customer. From down the bar the bartender gestured toward Erik’s empty glass, and Erik nodded his consent. Another gin martini appeared without a word exchanged. He sipped it this time. He was beginning to feel a bit warm; the gin must be settling in. He wasn’t entirely sure he enjoyed the feeling, but this is what people did; they went to pubs and drank, and Erik had apparently needed to break his routine for an evening.

But something still bothered him; this wasn’t what he came to do. Drinking alone was definitely not his modus operandi, and although something had driven him to leave the apartment he had yet to find whatever it was.

He looked for the waitress who had smiled at him earlier, but she was nowhere to be seen. The bartender made his way towards Erik. He gestured his head towards a television across the bar, where two announcers were discussing an event that was clearly over.

“You catch the game?” he asked.

Erik shook his head.

“Oh.” He pointed towards Erik’s near empty martini glass. “Ready for number three?”

“Sure.” The bartender started to walk away. “And my tab.”

The bartender nodded.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 2

2011-03-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I I

* * * * *

Dr. Lucius Cain had been dead ten years, and his legacy had all but been forgotten, but Erik Strand still felt uneasy looking through the old files. He had been new to the Bureau at the time of the incident, having spent eight years in the military before turning Intelligence. Strand was not an easy man to rattle, but looking through old file photos sent shivers down his spine. The body count alone was enough to make anyone uneasy, but the fire, the horrific way the victims had died, the clear evidence of torture… Strand still had dreams of walking the site after the fire, finding the first of the many, many bodies, excavating and examining the ruins of what would be known only as the Engine.

Intelligence agencies are not known for being forthcoming with information, but as one of the primary agents in the investigation, one of the first agents to the site, Strand still had many, many unanswered questions.

Strand had learned quickly, though: sometimes it’s better to leave well enough alone. Sometime it’s better not to ask questions. When the doors close on a case, when everyone else shuts up and walks away, sometimes it’s best to follow suit.

But the dreams still came, still crept up on his subconscious mind, still nagged at his memory like a half-forgotten thought or an image through foggy glass.

He closed the file folder abruptly. Strand wasn’t even sure what he was doing digging through old records in the first place. What had inspired him to rifle through the Cain files again?

He looked up at the clock and was surprised to find that read 6:30. The floor was quiet, and had been for a while. He walked back to his desk, closed his briefcase, slid his laptop computer into his shoulder bag, and half-walked, half-jogged to the stairs.

He signed out with security, passed through the metal detectors, and loosened his tie on the way through the double doors. It was a Friday night, after all. He could afford to relax a little.

The cold air nipped at his face and hands as he stepped into the low light of the near empty parking lot, and he pulled up the collar on his pea coat. New Jersey winters, he thought. I’ll never be used to them.

Lights from the south end of the complex indicated that a skeleton crew was pulling the graveyard shift, but his end of the building was nearly deserted.

Strand chuckled quietly to himself at the thought of a skeleton crew working a graveyard shift, and blipped the remote attached to his keychain; across the parking lot his green MiniCooper flashed its lights as the doors unlocked. He loved his little car, though a few of the other Agents in his office teased him about it; most members of the intelligence community drove big luxury sedans with ominously tinted windows and government plates.

It was a short drive through the city to the downtown apartment where Strand lived alone. He hung his pea coat on the rack and discarded his tie, put some hot water on and fixed himself a cup of tea. A Friday night, and Strand had an evening of paperwork and late night television to look forward to. It wasn’t that he was antisocial, or at least he didn’t think of himself that way, he just didn’t understand people and people didn’t understand him, so he focused solely on his career. The other Agents has long since given up asking Strand to join them in their evening excursions (they called him ‘Books’ behind his back, and sometimes to his face); he would hear every Monday about the Football game over the weekend, or the girls that someone had met, and would likely never call again. None of that interested him.

He was an athletic man in his mid thirties, well dressed and well groomed, polite and intelligent, with sandy blonde hair and eyes that vaguely resembled seawater. His had broken up with Sharon, his last serious girlfriend, six years ago, a mutually agreed sense of incompatibility between them, and had since lost interest in dating. He hadn’t lost interest in women entirely, just in the game that was courtship. Relationships were clumsy and unpredictable, and so after a few years of awkward first dates, Strand has somehow unconsciously decided that his career was more important than his sex life, and had all but given up on the concept of romance.

He was a good agent; he took pride in the quality and consistency of his work. He was satisfied with that. But something bothered him this evening; something nudged and scratched at the back of his mind. Something about the old case had touched a nerve, a soft spot in his well-ordered world, and had thrown him off-balance.

He had watered the plants that lined his window sill – the only living things he allowed himself to be responsible for – and was about to open his laptop and spread his briefcase full of reports-to-file across the kitchen table when, for reasons he could not begin to explain, he grabbed his coat and gloves, locked the door behind him, and walked out into the cold.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 1

2011-03-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

MELODY WALKED through the stranger’s home. She liked new places; here was a condo, part of an expensive high-rise. She peeked around the corners, taking in her surroundings, evaluating today’s job. Everything was lavish to the point of looking a little ridiculous. The decor was deep burgundy against a white backdrop; the furniture looked like it was straight off a showroom floor. The spacious living room looked across through a breakfast bar to the kitchen; the gas stovetop was set in an island, the cabinetry was ornate white wood with pewter hardware.

She felt the animal before she saw it; a cat mewed and padded curiously around the corner. Melody smiled and bent down to pet the grey and white creature, which immediately sprang up into her arms, purring contently.

“Looks like you have a new friend,” the woman spoke, peering out at Melody from the kitchen. The woman’s face was trapped in a permanent scowl. “Ferdinand normally doesn’t like anybody. He’s Anton’s cat. Very particular.”

“Oh, he’s beautiful,” said Melody, as the cat nuzzled her neck. “Aren’t you just precious?”

The woman looked at her strangely. “I’ll be gone in a few minutes. I just have to finish… you know.” The woman disappeared into the hall bathroom, but her voice still carried. “Then I’ll be out of your hair and you can get to work.” The woman spoke as though housecleaning was something to be ashamed of. A few spritzes of perfume later and the woman pranced down the hall, her heels clicking on the wood floors. “My car is here. I’ll be back in a few hours. I expect you’ll be gone by then.” she paused, and added with forced consideration. “There’s sparkling water in the fridge, but please stay out of the bourbon. I know how much is left.”

Melody tried not to act insulted. Instead, she held out the cat in offering, who looked up at the woman and promptly sneezed. “Say goodbye to Ferdinand?”

“Oh, good gracious no,” said the woman, turning abruptly and exiting the condo. “Dreadful animal.”

Now alone in the house, Melody let herself relax. “Poor little thing. Anton’s her son, isn’t he? He must off at school.” She ran her fingers along a family photograph on the wall, one among many. A wife and husband and a son in his late teens, all sharply dressed and carefully posed. All the pictures looked roughly the same, all carefully postured – the parents looked stern and the boy wore a quirky half-smile, as though he constantly on the verge of a laugh. “I’d laugh too, boy, if I had to wear those clothes all the time.”

The cat sniffled and jumped out of her arms, and began grooming himself on the edge of the sofa. Melody busied herself first by opening every drape in the house and cracking a few windows. Light flooded in, and a cool breeze trickled through, dispelling the stillness in the air.

She gathered her bag of supplies. The condo was barely lived in; Melody wondered why on earth a family would need a maid when it was clear to her that no one ever touched anything. Still, a paycheck was a paycheck. And they had a nice cat.

She started in the kitchen, disinfecting countertops that looked like no one had even cooked on them, vacuuming immaculate floors. Only the furniture needed the slightest attention, and she cleaned off the residual fur with a lint brush and fluffed the pillows. The cat followed her, softly, from room to room – scattering whenever she turned on the vacuum or swept the broom, but returning quickly to her side when the dangerous appliance had been put away.

She was dusting the cabinetry, the cat perched in a windowsill, when she felt it – not quite something dangerous, but something unusual. A tingling crept up from the edges of her awareness. There was a shiver in the air, a dry crackle like all the moisture had suddenly been sucked away, and the atmosphere was trying to compensate for the vacuum. The cat hissed suddenly, and jumped down from the window, circling her leg and looking up at her anxiously. Melody looked out at the window, surprised. She was nine stories up – there couldn’t possibly be anything dangerous outside. Still, she crept toward the window like she anticipated something jumping out at her, and peered out into the street.

The street was as busy as expected. An afternoon in Newark: people milled about, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then she saw him, almost a shadow below her, dark skin and pale eyes, watching from across the street. Her blood ran cold as she stared down this dark figure, still against the constant motion of the city street. She did not know how this shadow could pick her out from a window ninety feet in the air, but she knew with absolute certainty that she was being watched. And even from that distance, she was somehow certain he was smiling.

She heard the cat skitter behind her; Ferdinand quickly hid under the sofa, somewhere out of sight.

Then the traffic lights changed color, the traffic began to move, and in an instant the shadow was gone. A shudder took her, racing up and down her spine. She exhaled involuntarily, and stepped back from the window, yanking the blinds closed behind her.

The cat butted up against her leg and she jumped, barely stifling a scream. Her pulse was racing. The cat mewed up at her curiously and she picked him up, absentmindedly petting his fur, trying to calm the electricity in her nerves.

The house she finished cleaning in absolute silence.

The bus ride home was cold and lonely, and Melody spent the hour reaching out to her surroundings with her mind, unable to shake the feeling that someone was following her – someone just beyond her reach.

MILES: Chapter Two, pt. 6

2011-03-21T21:04:00.001-07:00

She began to draw in the sand above the riverbed; she arced the dowsing rod in a slow spiral. Next to the spiral she carved several characters – symbols in language that Miles found somehow familiar, but he could not imagine why. The language disturbed him; it penetrated deeply through him and nuzzled a tender, uncomfortable part of his mind. The woman continued speaking, seemingly unaware of his growing unease.

“The ground began to swell and shake, and the sea began to boil. And one man rose above the tide, and lashed out with furious anger. ‘I have built a temple of worship; fall to your knees and praise me.’ And as he walked he gathered his flock – those who were not strong enough to fight him – and he poisoned the blood of the earth, and everything in his wake fell to bone and ash.”

The woman continued scratching madly as she rambled on, the shapes and symbols stretching out at her feet. Miles felt the blood drain from his face. A cold chill trembled down his spine.

“This city is unique in many ways. It was built in a still place’, in a place where no currents cross it. It is disconnected, completely free of the web, the network of energy. There are other cities like it, but the phenomenon is rare. This riverbed is the line between two places. It is called the grey, where one may look across the threshold into the light. But you must be cautious. How is the phrase: know that when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back.”

Through this monologue Miles remained silent, stunned by the woman who gracefully balanced the line between madness and sanity. Her color flickered while she spoke, red and orange as her voice rose, and then cold blue and back to white. He tried to calm his own racing mind, tried to bridge the gap between their minds and find out who she was and what she wanted. She was closed off to him, barricaded; either she was a veritable black hole or she was very, very powerful. Miles found he was surprisingly off-balance, uncertain of his own strength. Miles closed off his mind, forcing himself to focus, but the lines on his face betrayed his worried mind.

“Who are you?” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

He felt the smile in her voice before he saw it. “A nomad, like yourself. Someone looking for answers – only I’ve been looking for a very long time.” She paused. “I know you chose this place because it is quiet, because here you can pretend you are free.”

Something inside Miles snapped. He whirled around and faced the woman.

“I am tired of this. What the fuck do you–”

The woman was fast, much faster than Miles expected. She touched his temple and his head snapped back, jolted with a bolt of electric energy. He cried out in pain and stumbled, the wind knocked from him completely. “What... who are you?” he breathed heavily.

“I told you,” the woman said, but she was clearly affected by the exchange as well. She had a distant look about her, as though she was experiencing something neither of them could see. “I am much like you. I am a sensitive.”

“I am an old woman, and I have watched this world for a long time; watched, and waited. It is a cruel world, but it does not have to be. Men make it cruel; of this you are acutely aware. Men, and their greed for power. There is bad blood in the veins of the world, and it must be cut out. I am dying, Miles. I haven’t the strength to fight this battle. I wish I could fight by your side, but those days are long gone. You will not be alone, though. A man – a burly, clumsy man – will join you. He has a good heart.” She smiled at something Miles apparently could not see. “And the woman–” Her smiled widened, and her eyes twinkled.

“The woman?” Miles muttered curiously.

“The woman from your dreams. The pretty one. She is coming. She will find you here.”

“How do you–” he began, but the woman was not stopping. She spoke to him, but spoke as though she was dictating a message, as if Miles was not standing right in front of her. Her eyes lost their focus, and when she spoke she was breathless, as though delivering this message was sapping what energy she had left.

“He is rebuilding the engine, Miles. He is trying again. He cannot succeed. You must go home; you will learn of what you have lost, and what you have gained. Your father – he is waiting for you. And then…"

The woman stopped, her eyes regained their focus and locked onto Miles, paralyzing him. Her mouth dropped open. She was suddenly very visibly afraid.

“He already has you. I am too late. He is watching.” The woman looked near tears, then turned and ran. Her voice trembled as she fled. “You are beyond my help. God be with you, child! God be with us all.”

She scaled the embankment with surprising grace. The driver waited with the door open, and the car swiftly pulled away. Miles watched the two strangers leave, completely unmoving.

Miles was alone on the beach, and for reasons he could not quite explain, he was suddenly very afraid.

MILES: Chapter Two, pt. 5

2011-03-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

“You’re quite good at that.” The voice behind him was tinged with a French accent. Miles pretended not to hear her, hoping she would lose interest and leave him alone. She didn’t.

“Do you know what this is?”

He turned, only mildly curious. A thin grey face wrapped in a tightly wound scarf peered up at him. Her tiny frame was bundled in a heavy, multicolored coat and she held a tree branch, a forked rod that jutted from her tiny hands like an arrow. She continued without waiting for him to answer.

“It’s called a dowsing rod, or a diving rod, depending. Something used for seeking precious metals. Often used for seeking underground streams.”

“If you’re looking for water,” he said. “I don’t think you need a magic wand.” The river gurgled and splashed, not fifty feet from where they stood.

“Not magic,” the woman corrected him. “Just a focus. And you should learn to be more respectful. I’m an old woman, and I know when I’m being made fun of.”

“Sorry,” Miles mumbled, narrowing his eyes. The woman was silent a moment, so Miles turned back to the river. Skip, skip, splash.

“So... not many people just stop in Battle Mountain to look at the fucking river. Not exactly a tourist attraction.” The words escaped him before he realized he had started speaking. He immediately regretted saying anything that might encourage her. The whiskey tickled his fingertips and weighed heavily in the back of his head, and he desperately wanted to be left alone.

Though he could feel her color change as he spoke. The white light shifted and shimmered, changed in hue to a cold blue, and then corrected itself. White. Nothing.

“The river is a looking glass, a portrait of the future and the past. It is a precipice over a great chasm, a view from above, a balancing point between two worlds.”

“Look. lady. I’ve been drinking since about noon, so if that was supposed to make any sense–”

“The man builds a machine; it shakes the bowels of the earth. You can feel the tremor, the great earthquake that will swallow the world.”

He stopped skipping rocks. Something bothered him about the woman. He momentarily considered returning to the bottle of whiskey by his side; his buzz was slowly wearing away. There was a funny copper taste in his mouth, and a low thrum began to pound behind his eyes, and was slowly building.

“The bottle will not save you from drowning. Just because you cannot hear the voices does not mean they have ceased to speak.”

Miles glared at the woman. He picked up the bottle and – partly just to spite her – took a long pull. Licking his lips, he edged slowly away from the woman, looking for a polite opportunity to walk away. She stared at him, an uncomfortable, beady stare. He met her eyes a moment, then broke his gaze and stared again at the water.

“I know you have felt him; his eyes are ever watching. That is why you hide. You stand at the water’s edge, watching the sea boil and tumble around you, but you are afraid to swim. You are afraid to drown. But he watches, from the top of tower and from the bottom of his cave, and he would cut open the earth just to hear it scream.”

“Oh fuck, lady. You’re hurting my head.” He took another swing from the bottle. “Is there a reason you’re telling me all this? Or do you make a habit of accosting strangers?”

“Do you know why you are here?”

“Cos I fucking walked here. Is it a trick question? You going to guide me from my evil ways of sin? Bask me in the love of Jesus or some shit?”

“Neither.” Miles felt the smile in her voice, and it disturbed him. “But faith is as much a part of this as anything. Do you know what’s significant about this place? Why you chose this in particular to take your rest?”

“I came here for peace and quiet, not to play twenty goddamn questions.” Whatever had passed for curiosity awe was swiftly evolving into irritation; Miles was growing tired of the old woman and her bold sense of familiarity.

The old woman smiled again. “You came here for absolution; peace is a natural byproduct of that. But you found neither.”

Miles opened his mouth to speak, but found he had no words, and closed it again. He pursed his lips, not sure if he should be more startled or angry.

“When people used the dowsing rod they sought underground streams, not for drink but for fulfillment. They believed that the water a source of power, that currents flowed under the surface of the earth like currents of electricity, and that power could be drawn up from them. Someone with a particular gift, a sensitive, could seek out those underground currents and draw the power into themselves. It was also believed that these currents were connected, like a great net or web, joining the powers of the earth together.”

MILES: Chapter Two, pt. 4

2011-03-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

A car pulled up into the small lot above the riverbed; the sound of tires in the gravel drifted down along the wind. Miles sighed and closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind. An older woman, perhaps in her seventies; and a man, younger than her but not by much. Miles reached for more, but came up empty. A married couple on a lazy Sunday drive, perhaps. Something didn’t feel right about that. The woman was unusual; something radiated off her that unsettled Miles, that made the tips of his fingers tingle. There was nothing unusual about the man; Miles could sense very little, especially at this distance, but where the woman should have shimmered in his mind like a firefly she burst with the light and energy of a bonfire. Something gnawed at his mind; something crawled up from his spine and crept up to his temples. He shook his head, pushed the interference aside, tried ignore the intruders on his solitude, and returned his attention to the water. The half-empty bottle of whiskey hung heavily in his hand. Miles took a swig from the bottle, and let his mind relax.

Something was out there. The voice hummed; not a discernible word but a noise, a vibration. The feeling spread, the vibration took his entire body; small tremors shook his hands. He had to fight to stay balanced. Images flashed by, snapshots behind his closed eyes. A hospital room. A dying woman. A fire. A man dressed in nurse’s scrubs, eyeing Miles from behind a clipboard, his mouth peeling back into a cruel laugh.

Miles exhaled suddenly, as though he had been punched in the gut. The slideshow was over; Miles was back on the beach. He took a step back, his head spinning. He regained his composure, dizzy and frustrated. He put the bottle down and blinked his heavy eyelids. Something ominous hung on the horizon, some residue from the fleeting images.

The river was a borderland for Miles, not just a physical separation of land of water, but a threshold between worlds. There was something about the water’s edge – something he had never felt anywhere else – like staring through a window at a thunderstorm from the safety of the indoors. Everywhere else in the city the voice was quiet; he only felt the rush from individuals, and small town folk were easy to understand and easy to ignore. The river was the gateway, and on his strong days he would walk to the edge of the water and stare out while the tides washed past him, feel the energy ebb and flow, and try to understand what was out there, and what made him feel so distant, so different, so alone.

Miles walked a few more steps and the unease in the back of his mind settled. Distracted, Miles picked a few flat stones from the waterfront and threw them out into the water. They skipped: two, three, fours times before splashing under the surface.

He felt her as she approached; the woman joined him on the beach. She glowed, sparking like a flaming torch in the back of his mind, and he was annoyed to realize he felt nothing else. For most people he could feel something more on the emotional horizon, some kind of intent or purpose but her landscape was pure white and completely indecipherable. He ignored her, irritated, and continued throwing stones out into the water. Four, five skips, and splash. The man remained by the car, on the pavement above the beachhead, watching them.

MILES: Chapter Two, pt. 3

2011-03-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I I I

* * * * *

The motorcycle was named Molly. She was a 1974 Harley Sportster with a faded aquamarine body and chrome hardware. She sat in the back of the garage, having remained there, untouched, for weeks. The rest of the garage was cluttered, a disheveled mess of parts and tools, but the bike stood alone on a battered wooden pallet like a shrine, a memento of the long journey ahead, and the painful journey behind.

Beyond the clothes on his back and the money in his pocket, Molly was the only thing Miles brought with him when he arrived in Battle Mountain five years before.

For a while, Miles suspected he had already died, and the road was his own personal hell. The drinking helped a little, pushing the voice back, but the dreams still haunted him – dreams of death and dreams of failure, dreams of defeat and of horrible pain, dreams of everyone he had ever lost. Faces haunted him, just outside his peripheral vision, sorrow-filled faces that filled him regret.

The city was quiet; quiet to his ears and quiet to his mind. Miles had not chosen the city as much as he had just fallen into it; after months of hard riding, desperate to escape and start again, Miles had stumbled through northern Nevada, desperate and hopeless, and was startled to find that the farther he rode, the quieter the voice became, until it faded to almost nothing.

Miles landed, softly, in a small town where the people were quiet and left him alone. Miles drank; he settled in and tried to get comfortable. As a trade, his hands quickly remembered their way around an automobile; he found his father’s passion for fixing cars came naturally to him as well, and worked for Dick Maybury’s Auto. Dick Maybury was a veteran and an eccentric, a introverted widower who lived above the shop and who would not talk about his wife, would not talk about his time in the service, would not talk about his childhood – any questions not about automobiles would be met only with a dismissive wave of his hand. Miles kept quiet and did what he was told, and Miles and Dick Maybury forged what could not quite be called a friendship, instead perhaps a healthy respect for each other until Dick died peacefully in his sleep a year later, and – having no heirs – left the shop to Miles.

For years Miles continued to operate the shop, and spent the leftover hours in the day drinking. The voice faded into the background, the feelings of paranoia subsided and his breakdowns came less and less often. He drank, he waited for something he did not quite understand, and for another year he lived alone and lonely, haunted but no longer tortured. Miles waited, he drank, and the voice faded into near obscurity.

Until the woman, came – the dark-haired woman with the husband and two boys – and the cycle began again. The woman came – with her dark hair and eyes that sparkled like diamonds – and Miles watched her die in the road, her head crushed against a concrete pylon, her husband staring blankly at her, helpless and immobile. The headaches, the fear and paranoia, the overwhelming sense of failure; Miles was struggling to breathe, flailing and grasping at nothing, slipping under the surface: a man, drowning in the open air.

Miles paced around the attached garage of his house, unsettled and impatient. A battered sign hung above his head, swaying in the low breeze: Maybury Auto, Repair and Maintenance. Miles wore dirty overalls and a wrench stuck from his pocket. He had intended on servicing his bike, oiling her gaskets and topping off her fluids, but something weighed on the back of his mind, and he could not focus. The weather report predicted clear skies the following morning, perfect for a ride out into the mountains, perfect for Miles to clear his head, but he continued to pace. Something ate away at his thoughts; he was unable to center himself, unable to settle down.

The morning sun blossomed over the horizon, a great orange fireball against the low mountains.

Miles had disappeared into the bottle for three days, not leaving the house, hallucinating about the dark-haired woman and her two children. She was smiling at him; she was so kind, she had such light, until she was thrown from her vehicle and died in the road.

On the fourth day Miles woke, his head pounding, echoes of memories slipping through cracks in his conscious mind like water through his fingers.

Miles left the house at dawn, walking down the long dirt road to the river. He stood, overlooking the water, his mind awash with regret, feeling more alone than he had in years. He could connect at the river; the water was a conduit to the world he’d left behind.

MILES: Chapter Two, pt. 2

2011-03-21T20:58:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I I

* * * * *

Miles sat alone in his house. His house was cold, sparsely decorated, but clean. On his good days Miles was a talented carpenter and mechanic; he had built the ornate bookshelf and had repaired the furniture he found at the second-hand store. On his good days he was very good with his hands. The house had nearly fallen apart when Miles purchased it. Work helped him focus, helped keep the voice at bay and the feelings of fear at a low roar. On his good days he didn’t need to drink, didn’t have the headaches or the gnawing paranoia.

There hadn’t been many good days of late.

Miles sat alone in his house, lost in his thoughts, awash amidst the waves of regret, feelings of loss and emptiness. He saw her eyes, beautiful brown eyes, looking him over as she sat next to him at the pub. He saw them glaze over and roll back in her head; he saw her face relax, her features fall, like a marionette whose strings had just been cut. He saw blood slowly drip across her face, across her beautiful brown eyes, but she didn’t notice, she didn’t respond, she didn’t move.

His eyes fell on the bookshelf across the room; every book was neatly shelved save one. He crossed the room and he saw the book, the battered cover, the well-read pages of the Holy Bible. This belonged to his mother; she had sent it with him the last time they spoke. He didn’t remember pulling it out – he felt he should remember – but everything recently was a haze, a painfully disorienting gray. He reached out, picked up the bible and returned it to the shelf. It hurt him to touch it, it burned his hand and he felt the memories bubbling up in the back of his head. She revered the book, feared the book, loved the book with awe and wonder and terror. The momentary touch of her bible took him back to that place – that place he did not want to go – that place in the hospital, and the last time he saw his mother.

She left it with him, as if leaving a part of herself, as if leaving the book would leave him in the hands of God and He would somehow help heal Miles, somehow help ease the pain and quiet the trembling voice. She left him, then, and Miles knew it was the last he would see her, he somehow knew as a terrified fifteen-year-old boy, that his mother would not come back.

He shook his head, clearing it of the memory. The right side of his head hurt; sobriety brought him acute awareness to the aches and twinges of his body. The cut on his head was still tender, and a purple welt had swollen on his cheek where the man had struck him. Scratches on his arms burned as well, like acid under his skin, but they were a point of focus, an accumulation of pain. These wounds drew his attention from the book, and he shook his head, dazed. He slid the book back onto the shelf without a sound, his eyes wide open and his face perfectly still. His skin cooled, his mouth went dry, and the voice was momentarily still, like the electric calm before a breaking storm. His lip quivered a moment, a cascade of memories balanced precariously, waiting to collapse upon him.

Miles walked silently into the kitchen, turned on the sink and splashed cold water on his face. It was dark outside, and he could see his reflection in the kitchen window. His pale eyes glowed, his heavy brow furrowed and his cheeks looked sunken and hollow. His dark hair was greasy and matted against his head. His dark shirt brought contrast to his pale skin; he looked ashen, almost skeletal against the dark backdrop.

He pulled a small box from atop the refrigerator. He brought the box to the kitchen table and sat, the box in front of him. The voice was a low drone, more sounds than any discernible words. He withdrew a razor blade from the box and stared at it for a long time. He set the razor down and stripped off his shirt. Across his left right shoulder and down his back was a deep burn; something long ago had torn across his back, searing flesh and leaving battered and tortured skin in its wake. Across his left arm were scars, a dozen precise horizontal wounds cut across his bicep. He picked up the razor and drew a line across his arm just below the last wound. Miles closed his eyes, the pain was deep and sharp and he winced momentarily, and then the pain took him. Blood welled up on his arm, and Miles focused on the ritual; he buried himself in the pain, escaped into the pain. The voice was quiet; the voice could not overtake the deep and satisfying sting that started in his arm and flooded through him. He dug the blade in deep, deeper into his arm until he could feel nothing else. The blade enveloped him, encompassed him, embodied him, became him. Tears sprung up in his eyes, and he disappeared.

MILES: Chapter Two, pt. 1

2011-03-21T20:57:00.001-07:00

* * * * *

MILES WAS OUTSIDE, on the edge of a highway he didn’t recognize. The sun beat down, an orange orb low in the horizon. He squinted in the blinding light. He walked along the shoulder, kicking up dust on the lonely road, peering into the distance.

His head was pounding.

He heard the car’s engine before he saw it, a grey van approaching in the hazy low distance. With the glare of the low sunset the van was almost invisible, the metallic sheen of the vehicle off the metallic sheen of the road after a hard rain.

Then he was inside the van, sitting in the passenger seat, and there was a Man to his left, and he heard voices behind him – children’s voices – and there was a feeling of dread, of sickly anticipation.

He was aware of a woman’s voice, speaking to him from what seemed like a great deal away. “These are my boys,” she said.

He was sitting at the end of the bar in Doc Brown’s Pub and Eatery, and the brunette woman next to him, drinking a cup of coffee. She was happy, content, eagerly awaiting something. Then suddenly she was uncomfortable, alone, looking desperately around the bar for her husband. Doc was asking her a question; he stared down at her, a stern look on his face. Miles was taking money from his pocket, laying a few dollars down. Relief, gratitude washed over him. She smiled and he felt her smile and it eased his fears and the voice was quiet, but something was wrong something was wrong something was wrong.

He was standing on the desert highway watching the van, watching the approach of the Long Bed Semi-Ton, and everything began to slow.

She reached at and touched his arm.

“Well, aren’t you just the sweetest–” she began.

The voice screamed out, but it was too late. Before he could pull his arm away she had touched him, touched the bare part of his forearm between his wrist and his sleeve. He shrieked and jumped back; a white light flashed before his eyes like he’d been struck, and then there was blood, so much so much so much blood. The woman sat next to him at the bar, face curious and fearful, but her saw her also facedown in the road, bleeding from a gash across her face, her neck twisted too far. The blood soaked through her long dark hair, soaked and matted it, and her eyes were glazed over, staring into nothing.

But the woman was still there, still across from him in the bar and he pulled away from her, but the voice screamed out and the whiskey slowed his mind and he called to her but she didn’t understand. He knew he had to tell her had to warn her please just listen – the voice was screaming at him to run, get away but he didn’t listen, he couldn’t listen. He had to warn her; there was so much blood. He reached out grab hold please grab hold please hold on; he called to her and through a great distance he saw the word: Paradise.

“I think he’s having a seizure,” said the woman’s voice, but Miles did not know to whom she spoke. “We’ve got to hold his arms–”

He screamed and tried to back away – the woman closed in and tried to grab him – he stumbled and fell. His mind was racing, the voice was screaming – he felt himself screaming – but his arms flailed as though no longer connected to his body; great surges of pain and fear pounded him, struck through him like a hammer. He felt her pain: he felt the impact of the truck spin him around; he heard the scream of twisted metal; he felt the glass cut his face; he heard the terrified screams of Gabriel and Michael behind him; then the impact of something solid against the side of his head. Then he felt a great warmth wash over him followed by silence, vast and terrible silence.

And in the distance the word: Paradise.

But she was still there, in front of him but someone was holding him back, great arms were wrapped around him and he lunged out – her face was pale, and slowly turning blue as her lifeblood spilled out onto the road – but someone was there, a Man – a Man whom Miles did not see in his head, a Man whom Miles did not see die – and the Man struck Miles and Miles fell and there was a flash of pain and a soft wet collapse and Miles felt nothing else.

And Miles was alone in the desert. He walked along the gravel road, a near-empty bottle in his hand. Miles swayed and wavered and nearly fell, and Miles stumbled to his front porch and collapsed into the broken porch swing and the last of the alcohol finally swept the away the few remaining pieces. Miles slipped into unconsciousness, into bleak, dark, dreamless sleep.

MILES: Second Segue

2011-03-21T20:54:00.001-07:00

SEGUE 2

THE MAN RUNS. His breath falters, his muscles ache. His eyes stream with tears. He stumbles, his balance swept away from him, and he careens into the hard pavement. He hits his head on the ground, momentarily blind. He hears someone talking, someone shouting: a boy sees him, tugs on his mother’s arm. A pair of eyes upon him, and now two, three… People look, and when they look they can’t help but stare.

He is a mess, a disheveled tangle that resembles a man. His face is dirty, his hair dark and greasy, and his eyes glint and shimmer like cold steel. His eyes – the people are staring at his eyes. He feels their caution, is knocked breathless by their fear; the strangers on the street allow him wide berth. He looks crazy, his unshaven face and crumbled clothes.

He staggers to his feet, his equilibrium still failing him; he reels and lurches like a drunken buffoon, but the man is sober – or at least, it not under the influence of any alcohol. He searches for balance, lashes out in frustration, and then tries to steady his feet first, and then his mind. He tries and he fails.

He is hungry; he hasn’t eaten in days. He has money, but he has been losing control, unable to be near another living soul. The pounding has been worse, the headaches and the retching, violent panic and distrust.

As he seizes, the curious gather – a crowd around him, a cluster of prying eyes and inquisitive minds. Someone calls for help – someone suggests a doctor or police officer – and the man is pummeled by anxiety and fear – desperate, overwhelming fear. He wants them to go, he wills the crowd to disperse, to leave him along. He prays that they would forget ever seeing him. Please, he whispers, please make them go away. Just leave. Please leave please leave please leave.

He reaches out with his mind, a flailing tentacle of his conscious, and he touches them. He feels them, each in turn, but he falters and is afraid. He founders through the psychic sea before him, flounders like a drowning man, and wishes he could push their minds from him, push their curiosity to something else, anything else, just leave him alone.

Until he finds that he can.

Something changes; something clicks on and something in his mind relaxes. The throbbing in the back of his head eases for a moment, the intoxicating and disorienting swell diminishes. He feels them disconnect; he removes their interest. They see him, but he is no longer odd; he has disguised himself, sheltered himself, distracted them from him. He looks up, and the crowd is dispersing. He feels their indifference; he feels their apathy and disinterest. They notice him, but the curious, peering eyes no longer shadow him. He crawls away.

He is hungry, and finally able to recognize that specific need. Safe for the moment, and mostly ignored, he drifts like a shadow, heads towards to the light that is a business. He looks around suspiciously, a sinking feeling of dread as he opens the doors, but no one responds, no one reels in disgust. Whatever he broadcast, whatever feelings he transmitted seem to have diminished. He begins to understand; he begins to take control. His shuts down his own emitters, calms the random emotional radiation. He begins to trust himself; he breathes in, slow and deep.

He walks into the restaurant, stiff and uncomfortable, and is pleasantly surprised that no one stares, no one reacts. He orders at the counter and sits down. He makes certain not to touch anyone – no human contact – never let them touch you.

Someone brings him his meal – he barely tastes it. Food, and quiet, seem so foreign. He finishes quickly – he is very hungry – and leaves, keeping his head down, not allowing himself to make eye contact.

He is running – hiding – searching for someplace quiet. And as he leaves the city, heading north into Wyoming and west along the southern-most border, he learns to calm the voice, and as he hitchhikes farther and farther away the feeling of dread leaves him, the suffocating senses slip away. Finally, hundreds of miles from where he was a prisoner, he exits the strange vehicle with a thank you and stares off into the night.

The neon motel sign reads ‘vacancy,’ and so he rents a room – the elderly woman behind the counter pays little mind, and asks no questions as long as he pays in cash – and he settles in, calm and quiet and restful for the first time in years.

For nearly a month Mile stays, paying week by week in the sleepy southern Wyoming town, until one morning he wakes with a start and realizes the voice is back, and the paranoia and fear have crept into his consciousness like cockroaches, scattering in the light. In his dreams he is being followed; someone watches with dark, narrow eyes.

With the last of his money he makes the biggest purchase of his life: a motorcycle named Molly. Miles buys her from a local who swears he was the only owner, and Miles believes him. The bike feels safe; she was well-maintained and Miles knows when he runs his fingers along her chassis that the bike will treat him well.

And in the morning he leaves the city, traveling west, following the instinct more than anything else. The farther he travels, the more the feeling diminish; until he finds himself in a small town in northern Nevada where he feels almost nothing at all.

There Miles begins again; a stranger in a strange land, keeping his head down and warily avoiding any undue attention, but Battle Mountain is a small town, and people in small towns get curious. But Miles is quiet and doesn’t disturb anyone, and becomes a regular face at Doc Brown’s Pub and Eatery, soaking up whiskey like a drowning man sucking in much-needed air. The locals leave him be – they talk behind his back and watch him cautiously – but at least they leave him be.

And there Miles stays, alone and lonely, and wonders when it will all end.

MILES: Chapter One, pt. 8

2011-03-21T20:53:00.002-07:00

“Goddammit, John,” she cried out. “Put your seatbelt on!”

In front of her and to the left was a break in the meridian; the highway merged with a major arterial. Vehicles could wait at the posted stop sign and merge with traffic when an opening presented itself. A small part of her consciousness noticed the oncoming semi, noticed that it was careening towards the highway at an uncomfortable speed, and showed no signs of slowing down. Most of her attention was directed at her husband, and the rest was focused on the road, but a small part of her cried out in warning. John was still half out of his seat, removing crayons and action figures and shoveling them into the front passenger side; he paid her no attention. Then the semi was closer, and closer still, and her foot moved toward the brake, and then everything seemed to slow. She knew she was screaming, she could feel air moving past her lips, but she heard no sound. She felt the impact of the two vehicles, but the crash seemed to last minutes, hours, days. The van twisted, silent and almost graceful, and she found herself suddenly and for no obvious reason quite vividly picturing the broken faucet in the pub, the water dripping slowly, steadily. She could almost hear the water, tiny splashes in the sink. Drip. Drip. Drip. She could see every detail, the shine in the porcelain, the polished brass knobs. How strange, she thought, that the faucet would drip in such an otherwise immaculately kept establishment. Drip Drip. She felt herself suspended, gravity shifted and came at her from an unexpected angle, and suddenly John was no longer by her side. She was vaguely aware of glass – a lot of glass – shattering and exploding and cutting her face, getting in her mouth and nose, and then she fell sideways and her head made abrupt contact with something solid. There was a flash of white, a soft wet feeling on her skull, and the white light faded into nothing.

People forget that mechanical things fail all the time. Nothing designed by Man is designed to last forever: transformers spontaneously explode and entire cities lose power; hoses leak and valves burst, causing unexpected floods. Warranties are not a guarantee that something will last, more a promise that when something does fail – and everything manufactured will undoubtedly fail eventually – the manufacturer will provide the consumer with a suitable replacement.

Proper maintenance is one way to improve the longevity of a manufactured item; the examination and replacement of parts can extend the lifespan of the machine as a whole, but even the act of maintaining a product is fallible, because Man is ultimately fallible. A mechanic may look for obvious signs of wear, but less than obvious signs of degradation may also be a factor: hairline fractures in a piece of porcelain, belts without enough tension, or corrosion on a bit of plastic.

So when the air brakes on the long bed semi-ton inexplicably failed, both the Charlie Madson and Bill Houston were completely surprised, but perhaps they shouldn’t have been. Any number of a thousand different things could have gone wrong, but as the truck careened through the stop sign, neither of them could think of a one; as their grill collided with the rear section of the Econovan, twisting and flipping the van into the railing on the side of the highway, and as their trailer jackknifed and rolled, both of their minds were conveniently and completely blank.

There was the screech of grinding metal, the squeal of rubber dragged against concrete, and the resounding crash and subsequent rattle of the trailer turning on its side, and then the highway fell unnaturally still, and deadly silent.

Bill shook the cobwebs from his head, badly shaken and disoriented, and squinted into the low sun, the painful orange orb hanging directly in front of his cracked windshield. Next to him he heard a moan; Charlie stirred. Bill reached out and touched the driver’s shoulder, then shook it for good measure.

“F’koff,” Charlie said, and pushed Bill’s hand away.

Bill unsnapped his seatbelt, and nearly fell out of the passenger-side door. As he stretched out, nursing a pain in his back, he felt the wet squish between his legs and smelled the pungent odor wafting through the air.

“Aw, shit, boss,” he said, not expecting a response. “I think I pissed myself.”

His neck badly hurt – he tenderly examined himself for bruises and stumbled toward the wreckage that was once the Econovan. The van was on its side, and the rear half was completely destroyed, like some great hand had crushed it in on itself like an aluminum pop can.

There was a woman in the Driver’s Seat, a beautiful brunette, and Bill blinked, not sure if what he was seeing was real. She was bleeding from a wound somewhere beneath her heaps of dark hair, and there was a gash across the bridge of her nose. She didn’t appear to be conscious. For that matter, he had no way of knowing if she was still breathing.

“Lady,” he said instinctively. He cautiously approached the wreckage. “Hey lady, you okay?”

In front of the van he saw the man who must have been her husband, or at least, what was left of him. The man had been thrown completely from the vehicle, propelled through the windshield it would seem, and had slid roughly thirty feet before wrapping himself around a concrete pylon off the shoulder of the Interstate. His skull had collapsed, and his spine was twisted at an unnatural angle. There was an awful lot of blood. Bill felt queasy; he wasn’t a squeamish person by nature, but that man had literally been folded in two, like some horrible origami. The man’s eyes were open and he stared out into nothing, a look of surprise frozen on his pale face. Bill inched closer to the van, dropping to his knees for a better vantage point.

“Lady?” he called again.

It was then that he saw the children. Bill was turned away, dizzy, and was suddenly and violently sick.

MILES: Chapter One, pt. 7

2011-03-21T20:53:00.001-07:00

The backseat of the Econovan was covered in toys; Michael and Gabriel had unpacked every action figure and coloring book and plastic truck they could find and had scattered them in a menagerie of childhood fantasy. Horses galloped down armrests, stuffed bears battled plastic scuba divers and were rescued by helicopters with spinning rotors and flashing lights.

Michael perked up, amused at his father’s outburst as well.

“Daddy said a swear!”

Gabriel apparently hadn’t noticed the language, but was upset that he couldn’t a particular plastic toy. “Mommy, he took my dinosaur!

“Did not!” said Michael, obviously offended. “I’m playing with it!”

John grabbed the rearview mirror and twisted it to see the boys grabbing and pulling at each other.

“Learn to play nice, boys!” he said.

Playing nice was a concept that seemed to come in waves; the two boys would get along like kittens for days and without warning the slightest thing would set them off.

Karen held her hands at ten and two on the wheel, her forehead scrunched in stress. She didn’t like that John had adjusted her mirror out of focus, but she said nothing about it. She pushed her bangs out of her eyes – an instinctive maneuver – and rolled down the window. The cool breeze helped a little, but she couldn’t shake the heavy, distracting feeling that weighed down in the pit of her stomach. She wished her children would stop their screaming, would stop their fighting until the reached San Francisco. They could fight all they wanted once they reached Auntie Pearl’s house, she thought, but please, please let us get out of these empty foothills, this desolate countryside.

Gabriel didn’t stop. His brother had brazenly stolen one of his action figures, and he wanted justice. “Did, too! He’s got my monstermax, too!”

John was getting frustrated. He snapped off the radio. “I’m going to take the toys away in a minute, and then there won’t be any dinosaurs!”

“Mommy, I’m playing nice, but Michael took my stegosaurus and my scuba diver!” Gabriel insisted.

“He’s not sharing!” Michael cried out.

John snapped off his seatbelt and turned to face the boys, angry now and tired of listening to them.

“That’s it. Now nobody gets to play with them.”

“John, put your seatbelt back on,” Karen said quietly, her eyes still glued to the road, her knuckles white from gripping the wheel.

“He has all the coloring books!” Michael protested.

John leaned over the backseat, pushing Karen uncomfortably out of the way. He gathered as many of the action figures as he could grab in his big hands and pulled them away from the two upset boys.

“See! No more dinosaurs! No more coloring books! You need to be quiet until we get there, or there won’t be any Ice Cream, either!”

Michael pouted, fighting back tears, but Gabriel had no such qualms about throwing a fit. Gabriel began to cry, his wail like a siren in the already stressful situation. “Waaahh! I want Ice Cream!”

“John, please put your seatbelt on,” Karen said, her voice rising in desperation. All the while something pounded in the back of Karen’s head, a tiny, frightened voice cried out in warning but she couldn’t listen, she couldn’t pull her attention from the road and from her husband and from her children.

* * * * *

Bill started to look a little green. The motion of the cab was upsetting his already unsettled stomach. “I think we should have stopped, boss.”

Charles was nearly screaming now; something was wrong with his vehicle, but he was so adamantly against pulling over he convinced himself he could just will everything to be all right.

“Shut the fuck up, Bill!”

MILES: Chapter One, pt. 6

2011-03-21T20:52:00.001-07:00

Karen clutched the wheel, her eyes dead-set on the road ahead. She could hear her children fussing around in the back, but somehow they seemed far away. The radio hummed, John whistled along with the melody, but they too sounded far away, like Karen was somewhere else, and the voices she heard were merely echoes from a great distance. She could not shake the image in her head, the man with the pale blue eyes, so pale they were almost translucent, and feeling of fear and trepidation she felt radiating off him like heat from a lamp.

John’s voice jolted her back.

“You okay, Karen?” he asked. “You look a little pale…”

She continued to stare at the open road.

“I’m fine,” she flatly replied.

“You still thinking about that guy from the bar?” he asked hesitantly. John had many wonderful qualities, many talents and strengths, she thought, but empathy wasn’t always one of them.

“Leave it alone, John. Please.”

Gabriel piped up from the back, “I want an Ice Cream.”

John ignored his youngest son for a moment. “I’m just saying…”

Karen furrowed her brow. She was trying not to get angry, trying to fight off the overwhelming feeling of dread. She was on the verge of panic – the man from the bar had her so rattled she found she was fighting off tears – and focusing on the road was the only thing keeping her from collapsing into a heap of desperate sobs.

“Leave it alone,” she insisted.

Michael joined in the chorus. “I want an Ice Cream, too!

“Goddamnit, Michael,” John said under his breath.

Karen was startled by his outburst.

“John! Language!”

* * * * *

Charlie Madson took off his cap, wiped sweat off his brow.

“Colder’n shit, innit, Bill?

His attempt to make a joke didn’t sit well with Bill

“You say so, boss.”

Charlie looked over at Bill, irritated.

“Now don’tchoo go pissin on my parade jus’ cause you in a foul mood,” said Charlie. “You just mad cause you didn’t get no pussy back in Carson City.”

Bill sighed, “There weren’t none to get. You were chattin’ up the only pretty one in that whole town.”

Charlie chuckled as he thought back to the wild night of drinking that had ended up with Charlie waking up in a strange woman’s hotel room and Bill spending the night in the truck, sick than a dog.

“Beggars can’t be choosers, Bill,” said Charlie, egging Bill on. “You gotta take what ‘choo kin get.”

Bill continued to stare listlessly out the window, watching the countryside that never seemed to change.

“You say so, boss.”

Charlie was losing his patience, “I said stop it with that shit, Bill–”

Before Charlie could finish there was the distinct Chunk! of something popping free of its housing; the truck lurched suddenly and then righted itself.

“Fuck was that?” asked Bill.

“How the hell should I know?” shouted Charlie. “This ain’t my truck.”

Bill was genuinely concerned. “Think we should pull over an’ check it out?”

“Dammit, Bill, I told you we ain’t pullin’ over!” insisted Charlie. “Something probably moving around in the back.”

“I don’t know, boss–” started Bill, but Charlie cut him off.

“We’ll stop when we get to the city,” said Charlie. “I said it’s nothin’, so it’s nothin’. We can’t waste no more time just ‘cause you got your panties in a bunch.”

“You’re the boss, boss.”

MILES: Chapter One, pt. 5

2011-03-21T20:49:00.001-07:00

* * * * *

I V

* * * * *

“Who was the scary man, mommy?” Michael asked from the back seat.

Karen had hardly spoken since they left the pub. They had driven through Reno through the evening, the kids oohing and aahing at the flashing lights and wildly decorated hotels and casinos, and crossed the California state line an hour later. By then the rain had stopped, and the air was moist and sticky. They were stopped at a gas station just off the highway in northern California; mountains rose and fell behind them. Karen wished they’d stopped and spent the night, but John was insistent they drive through; they’d reach San Francisco late in the evening. The sun was low in the cloudless blue sky; it was still warm, and the evenings were long this time of year.

John returned from inside, a handful of snacks and beverages in his arms. Karen replaced the handle from the gas pump, and smiled at her children.

“No one, sweetie,” she said. “Don’t worry about him.”

“You haven’t said a word about him since we left that bar,” said John, placing the provisions in the back of the Econovan and slamming shut the hatch. He now had two bottles of water in his hand, one he kept and one he handed top Karen. “What happened in there? Who was he?”

“No one,” said Karen, and then she paused, thinking about the man at the bar, the man who had treated her with such familiarity before shouting nonsensical warnings. “He was no one. He was very sick, that’s all.”

“Your mother just likes picking up strays,” John made a silly face at Michael, and both Michael and Gabriel laughed. “Remember when we had all those cats?”

“Kitties!” said Gabriel, and proceeded to mew, wiggle his nose and make what he must have thought were perfect imitations of cat faces while pawing at the air.

“All right, gentlemen,” said John, tapping the window. “Ready for San Francisco?”

“Santa Frisco?” said Gabriel, and continued mewing.

“Can we have an Ice Cream, Mommy?” asked Michael.

The cat act instantly forgotten, Gabriel chimed in, “I wanna nice cream!”

“We’ll get one with Auntie Pearl, okay?” said Karen. She was distracted by something in the distance. Barely visible on the highway was a green road sign illustrating the distances to various major cities. She squinted; the letters were blurry at that distance. She could make out Sacramento near the middle of the sign; it must be 100 miles. Above it, somewhere closer to them was– if she shaded her eyes against the setting sun she could barely make out the letters: Paradise, CA, 130 miles.

Her stomach twisted in a knot, and a feeling of dread swept through her. She felt dizzy and anxious, and clutched the open door for support. John paid her no mind, or if he noticed he said nothing. Karen swallowed a mouthful of water, peering into the empty highway.

Suddenly and with surprising decisiveness she turned to her husband, reaching for the keys in his hand.

“Why don’t you let me drive a while, hon’?” she said.

John looked a little startled, then a little amused. “You sure, sweetheart? You still look a little shaken.”

“I’m fine,” she reassured him. “I just need something to keep my mind occupied. We’ll be fine, I promise.”

* * * * *

William “Bill” Houston was tired, cranky and desperately needed to urinate. He fidgeted in his seat; the cab seemed smaller and smaller the farther they drove. The music was too loud; the radio blared country music, and Charlie Madson sat in the driver’s seat, crooning along tunelessly with the stereo, bobbing his head to the throbbing bass and the twang of the tinny guitars. It wasn’t the music that bothered Bill – he liked a good, old-fashioned country song – it was the unreasonable volume at which it played. He leaned his head against the window, but the vibration of the cab only made his head hurt more. He was tired, his stomach hurt, and the caffeine in his system seemed to be doing little to wake him up.

Bill could see a gas station in the distance as they approached the Interstate.

“Think we should stop, boss?” Bill asked.

“What?” shouted Charlie over the music.

“I said, think we should stop?”

Annoyed, Charlie finally turned down the music. “Dammit, Bill, you wanna stop every time we see one o’ those.”

“Well, they call them truck stops for a reason,” said Bill. “Besides, I could use a chance to piss, myself.”

“We jus stopped tah piss half an hour ago,” said Charlie, wiping the sweat in his moustache on a greasy flannel sleeve.

“And drunk up a whole pot’ ah coffee in the meantime,” said Bill.

Charlie stared dead ahead at the windshield, glaring at the evening sun, “Look, we got a long haul ahead of us, Bill. Like it or lump it, we can’t stop every time a drop of water hits yo’ tiny dick.”

Bill stared listlessly out the window, sad and miserable. He pulled the brim of his baseball cap low over his eyes in an unsuccessful attempt to shade against the setting sun. “You’re the boss, boss.”

MILES: Chapter One, pt. 4

2011-03-21T20:48:00.000-07:00

She touched his hand and he jerked back, like a jolt of electricity had jumped through his arm, nearly knocking him off his barstool. Karen jumped, startled, scattering photos across the counter and onto the floor. Miles snapped again, his spine seized and he grasped and clawed desperately at the bar, his fingers gaining no purchase on the polished surface. She shrieked, but the startled sound of her own voice seemed to snap her back to the reality at hand, and she immediately reached out to help him.

The bar fell silent, save the desperate scramble of the man at the end of the bar. The couple at the other end of the bar quickly scurried to a booth, not wanting to be involved in the conflict. Doc Brown hustled around the bar, as fast as his frame would let him move, tearing off his apron as he rounded the corner.

“Goddammit Miles,” he said under his breath.

Miles jerked and lashed out, his eyes rolled around in his head, and Karen instinctively tried to steady him, but every time she reached out he seized again, like he was trying to fight his way away from her, trying to back himself against the corner to avoid any more contact. But he was intoxicated and clearly out of control, and finally he seized so violently that his legs gave way, and he buckled in two: first falling onto the barstool and then collapsing in a heap on the floor.

“Aaah!” he cried out, clutching at words that wouldn’t form. Karen followed him down, trying to secure his flailing arms, but he was a tangled bundle of furious energy, drunk and confused and disoriented, and he fought his way upright onto his knees. “K-K-K-Yeaaahh!” he shouted again.

“I think he’s having a seizure,” she said to no one in particular. “We’ve got to hold his arms–”

Their eyes locked for a moment, and his hand lashed out unnaturally fast, grabbing Karen’s sweater, digging his fingers into her arm so viciously that she cried out in pain.

“Where are you going?” he asked, finally able to form words, his voice harsh and desperate.

Miles squeezed again, and his eyes widened. Karen stared at him in disbelief.

“K-Karen. Where are you going?” he asked again, insistently. His voice was hollow and distant, it seemed to come from somewhere far away, and Karen realized that he wasn’t really looking at her, he was looking through her, at some distance place on some unseen horizon. Her grasped her with his other hand, and struggled against her to regain his footing. Doc Brown tried to intervene, tried to pull Miles back, but Miles seemed not to notice. Doc Brown was easily twice his size, but Miles twisted and convulsed, making him a difficult quarry to secure.

“San- San Francisco,” she stammered. “To see my sister-in-law.”

“You can’t,” said Miles. “You won’t–”

Doc Brown had finally wrestled himself behind Miles, had one arm wrapped around his chest and one around his waist, but Miles desperately pawed at Karen, who had backed away just out of reach, clutching her purse.

“You won’t make it to Paradise! You won’t make it to Paradise! There’s blood in the road. Twisted metal and broken bones! Anjie, I’ve failed you again.” His voice trailed off into nonsense – not quite words but angry sounds, violent and fearful.

Miles stared again off into the distance; he seemed to be responding and reacting to something no one else could see. He pointed and cried out, his head bounced and rolled. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He grasped frantically at Karen, throwing his weight forward and nearly pulling Doc Brown off balance, and she involuntarily stepped back. Miles began to speak again.

“John is driving, the kids are screaming. The road to Paradise, and now there’s so much blood! So much blood!” Some moments his voice was clear, but between his cries he mumbled unintelligibly, the words lost in his tears and violent sobs.

“What the hell is going on here?” John’s voice behind her made Karen jump. He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“He…” Karen started to explain, and found she had no words. “I don’t know.”

“Anjie died in the road!” he continued to cry. “I’m so sorry, baby. I couldn’t save you. They wouldn’t listen!”

With a sudden burst of strength Miles broke free of Doc Brown’s grasp and lunged at Karen. John instinctively stepped between them, pushing Miles back with a massive hand. Miles flailed and clawed at John’s face, screaming.

“I don’t know you! I don’t know, but Karen… Karen… she dies in the road!” Miles cried out.

“Oh, I’ve had just about enough of this,” John said gruffly, and as Miles tried to push past him he heaved Miles back and punched him square in the temple. Miles snapped back, his head knocking against the edge of the bar. He crumpled into a sobbing heap, blood dripping from a nasty wound on the side of his skull. Doc Brown rushed to his side and looked up at John, an unreadable expression on his face. Miles heaved quietly on the floor but did not speak.

“Take the boys, to the car, sweetheart,” said John, his eyes fixed on Miles.

“But he’s hurt,” she said. “He’s bleeding.”

“I said get in the car, Karen!”

Michael and Gabriel both clung to their mother’s leg, terrified, and she finally acquiesced, guiding the boys out the door, a mixed look of fear and pity on her face.

“Sorry about the mess,” said John pulling a wad of money from his pocket and slapping a twenty on the table. “And you,” he said, looking fiercely at Doc Brown but pointing to Miles. “You keep a handle on him!”

MILES: Chapter One, pt. 3

2011-03-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

“What do you think of this place, huh?” the woman asked. “It’s nice to be out of the rain. I wouldn’t want to be stuck out there.”

Doc Brown had made his way over unseen; even Miles had failed to notice his arrival. Doc Brown stood stoic and silent, a monolithic guardian, keeping a wary eye on Miles as if afraid he’d have to protect the woman from him somehow.

“You ain’t gon’ get much outta him,” said Doc Brown. “He’s been putting them away since three this afternoon.”

“You must like it here,” she said to Miles, ignoring Doc Brown’s comments.

“He practically lives here. I should be charging him rent.”

The couple at the end of the bar chuckled, the fell silent as Miles cast a glance their way.

“I can answer for myself, Doc,” said Miles finally breaking the uncomfortable quiet.

“It’s a beautiful countryside,” continued the woman, oblivious to the exchange between Miles, Doc Brown and the couple at the other end of the bar. “Reminds me a little of where I grew up.”

“It’s… away from everything.” Miles hesitated. Something about her made him want to continue the conversation, but he still fumbled. “I’m not so good… not so good with people.” The words tumbled out in a rush.

“That’s okay, honey.” Her voice was warm, reassuring. “I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Karen. Here.” She reached for her purse and pulled out an envelope stuffed with photos. “We’re just passing through. John and I are talking the boys to see their aunt.”

The voice began to creep back, slowly bubbling like oil in a warm saucepan, and Miles was struggling to ignore it. Something is wrong, it said. You don’t like strangers. Something is wrong something is wrong something is wrong.

She pushed the scattered stack of photos towards him; Miles retreated as she reached out.

“Something wrong, honey?”

“I just don’t like to be touched,” he said, and his voice took on a nervous tension.

“That’s all right,” Karen said. She spread the photos across the bar. “I thought I’d show you pictures from home. These are my boys.”

The photos were numerous, and obviously taken by someone who cared less about how to frame a shot than capturing the endless energy of her children. They were clearly a loving family; the array of images showed the boys pushing each other on a swing set, playing in heaps of raked leaves, wrestling with their father. Miles was surprised to realize he was smiling as he looked through the photos; he touched them all gently and found they carried they same compassion he felt from the woman. He felt as though he was in another world, soaking in the love and frantic energy these pictures carried. He could tell the woman spent time with these photos, carried them with her as if she feared she’d lose the memories, the moments suspended in the air, if she ever lost the photographs.

Doc Brown appeared with a near-empty coffee pot.

“More coffee, miss?” he asked.

“No, no thanks,” said Karen absentmindedly, not looking up.

“Dollar twenty-nine, then,” said Doc Brown.

“Oh,” said Karen, startled. She looked around but her husband was still in the bathroom with the boys. She fumbled with her purse. “Do you take credit cards?”

Doc Brown shot her a look and her face immediately fell, embarrassed and dismayed but Miles, entirely out of character and without really knowing why, spoke up and inserted himself between them.

“Let me get it,” he said, laying two dollars on the table.

Karen looked to him and her face was warm again.

“Well, aren’t you just the sweetest–” she began, and reached out to touch his hand in gratitude.

* * * * *

When later he remembered the incident, through the headaches that followed, between the flashes of disorienting light, Miles could clearly recall the voice crying out a warning in the seconds before she touched him. He could see, like the lights of a train barreling down a dark tunnel, something careening towards him, something that was more like fear and anger and regret and panic all stuffed together and somehow made tangible.

Something bad now, he thought. Something bad now. You don’t talk to strangers. You never let them touch you.

After that, everything else was a blur, a blizzard of sound and images that quickly dissipated into foggy memory. But the dreams didn’t stop. In his dreams he would remember.

MILES: Chapter One, pt. 2

2011-03-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

* * * * *

I I I

* * * * *

KAREN WAS THE ONE who insisted they drive. Long Sunday drives were something she missed from her childhood. John would much rather have flown; she knew that, but she missed the open air of a long country drive, and besides that airplanes made her nervous and uncomfortable.

South they drove, on highway 93 out of Idaho and into Northern Nevada, the cities becoming more and more sparse, the green underbrush trickling away until the horizon was nothing but desert. And, despite the summer heat, the sky above the great Nevada basin began to grey, the sky cracked open with a mighty thunderclap, and the rain began to pour.

* * * * *

The room was a bustle of energy, but it was a predictable energy, and Miles liked that. Doc Brown looked across the bar with a swelling sense of pride, as he did every evening, but there was a distance in his expression, a detachment, like he was somewhere else – years ago and miles away.

He could feel them before they came in, the family of four that tumbled in from the rain. A quick glance into the mirror behind the bar confirmed what he already knew: a father leading two rambunctious young boys, the mother was still in the entryway shaking out her umbrella, just out of sight. He saw Doc Brown look up, startled by the presence of young children.

“The boys need to–” the father started to say, and Doc Brown jerked his thumb towards the neon sign. “Thanks.”

“Kitchen’s closed,” said Doc Brown.

“That’s fine.” The woman took off her coat and hung it on the high backed barstool a few feet from Miles. He turned slightly and faced away from her, trying to garner as little attention as possible. “We just needed to get in out of the rain for a minute.”

Doc Brown stared at her.

“You gonna order something, or you jus’ gonna let your kids run up mah water bill?”

“Oh,” said the woman, a little embarrassed. “I’ll have a cup of coffee.”

“It ain’t fresh,” said Doc Brown, as if challenging her to ask for a fresh pot.

“That’s fine,” she said.

Doc Brown brought her a coffee and busied himself at the other end of the bar, chatting idly with a young couple. Their quiet laughter drifted through the bar, mingling with the sounds of clinking glasses, the scraping of chairs on the wood floor, the crash of balls across the billiards tables.

Miles tried not to pay any mind to the woman settling next to him, tried to silently wish her away, tried not to absorb the sensations she brought with her into the room.

The voice inside his head said stay away. You don’t like strangers, it said. Stay away. He focused all of his attention on his hands, clasped firmly around his rocks glass, and the caramel-colored contents, and willed her, concentrated every ounce of strength he had within him to make her go away. Make her go away. Make her go away.

She added cream and sugar and sipped the coffee, and after a moment’s consideration, added more sugar. Then, as though reading his mind, as if willfully subverting him, she turned to him and smiled.

“Hey, there,” she said.

He shouldn’t have looked at her; he knew he shouldn’t have looked at her, but the moment he looked up at her his face relaxed, his shoulder lost their tension, he was overcome by a feeling he could not at first explain. She was beautiful, a bit older than him, with curly dark hair that tumbled down her shoulders, still wet from the rain. She smiled again, wider, and he realized the sensation was an overwhelming sense of well-being. Here was a woman who truly appreciated life, who truly feared very little, who genuinely loved all things. Miles was caught for a moment, like a small creature frozen in oncoming headlights, and he felt disoriented, dizzy.

In an instant he felt her compassion; her adoration for her husband and her children, her love of the open road, the subtle sense of timid fascination from stepping into an unfamiliar place, and her genuine curiosity in Miles, a lonely creature drinking by himself.

Miles was awash with these unfamiliar sensations when the voice began again, but it was muted, like it was calling from far away, and it was lost in the rolling sea that was this strange and beautiful woman. But the voice was still there, murmuring in the dark; something in the back of his mind was crawling and gnawing and biting, trying to breach the surface of his subconscious.

Then the woman cocked her head to one side, mischievous twinkle in her eye, and the voice fell silent, and Miles was lost.

MILES: Chapter One, pt. 1

2011-03-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

MILES:

Chapter One

* * * * *

I

* * * * *

KAREN BAYER was thirty-six but looked and, most days, felt ten years younger. Even with two bouncing boys she had retained her athletic-yet-womanly figure; her legs were long and slender, and her dark eyes shined with a quiet wisdom, a peaceful sense of well-being, a love for all things. And when she smiled, and she smiled often, her eyes lit up with a look of mischief, like she held a secret she was eager to share.

Michael was six and Gabriel was four, and they both looked like their father. John Bayer was a tall, handsome man, with a dark tan and broad shoulders. He worked for City Water, a steady and well-paying job that afforded him evenings and weekends with his wife and children, and two weeks vacation every year.

His sister lived in San Francisco, and she had invited them to spend their annual excursion with her, so they packed their bags and left their quiet home in the sleepy corner of Twin Falls for the long drive into California.

That is how it began.

* * * * *

I I

* * * * *

DOC BROWN grabbed a wet washrag; someone had spilled on the counter. Doc Brown dragged the cloth across the smooth surface of the bar. There was something comforting about this action, this simple motion. This was his bar; he was the sole proprietor and the sole employee. Occasionally he would hire Drew Parker over the summer, when Drew was out of school and needed some money for the summer, but he paid Drew under the table, and that was only two or three months out of the year. He was helping keep Drew out of mischief, Doc Brown told himself, and teaching some responsibility while he was at it. The truth was, he liked the Parker boy; he liked the company and he liked the wild tales Drew told of off-roading his four-by-four and long nights with teenage girls behind the outdoor cinema. But Drew graduated High School last spring, and Doc Brown would have to find someone new.

He drew the rag across the mess and dropped it in the bucket of cleaning solution under the ice machine, and shuffled over to the drying racks where he had been hand drying freshly scrubbed pint glasses. Doc Brown was a heavyset man in his early fifties, with a heavy brow and a wide nose, and a head as bald as a monk. He took great pride in his appearance, and he took great pride in the appearance of his bar. Under his apron his shirt was neatly starched, his bowtie straight and neatly tied. Doc Brown’s Pub and Eatery: Hot Food and Cold Drinks was meticulously cared for; Doc Brown swept nightly and mopped daily, he dusted the every surface. The faucet dripped in the sink behind the bar; the plumbing hadn’t worked since he bought the establishment, but he’d never been able to fix. Plumbing was his Achilles heel; no matter how many knobs he turned or valves he replaced, he had never figured out what was wrong. He looked across the room at the mostly quiet crowd gathered for the evening. A decent turnout for a Wednesday night.

Patterson Malone was already drunk and nodding off his in chair; he’d soon pay his tab and stumble home.

Across the bar, Del raised two fingers; he and his brother Willie needed another round.

Doc Brown delivered the drinks, and on his way back noticed something unusual about the front of the bar, something he must have missed when he opened the bar this afternoon. A distinct chunk was missing from the edge of the counter; a piece of the molding had been knocked free. Not wanting to draw attention, he ran his fingers across the textured edge as he walked past to confirm what he suspected; a heavy blow had damaged the decorative edge of his bar. He glanced up, nervously, but no one in the bar was paying any attention to him. He’d fix that tomorrow before opening the bar – a little sandpaper and a spot of stain and it would be good as new. No one would ever notice that it had been damaged. Good.

Some things were best forgotten quickly.

No sign of the Braeburn boy. Good. Miles was problematic, unsettled, unpredictable; most nights he sat and drank the evening away without a sound, but some nights he’d go into one of his fits, create all kinds of fuss and the town would talk about him for days. But it was a small town, and people kept mostly to themselves. Whatever disturbances Miles caused were quickly forgiven; he had lived in the city long enough to be one of them.

It would be a quiet night.

Not like last night.
Last night was trouble.

MILES: First Segue

2011-03-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

THE MOON sits low in the horizon, a cool white orb against a starry night sky, its radiance interrupted only by the black silhouette of skeletal trees, their branches arcing up into the moonlight like arms, broken and twisted, reaching to the heavens in desperate prayer.

The man walks home – no, not walks, he stumbles, he shifts and leans, the walk of someone too far into the bottle, the walk of someone for whom placing one foot in front of the other requires absolute concentration, of someone for whom every step is a struggle. The man is tall and slender, with dark hair and unnaturally pale eyes. The air is cool, and the man would shiver if he noticed the cold. He clutches the remains of a bottle in his hand, the amber liquid sloshing about as he shuffles and tips. He pulls from the bottle a long and slow draft, the harsh whiskey burning his throat on its way through to that soft place behind his eyes, that pounding space in the back of his head, and out to the tingling at the ends of his fingertips.

The man’s name is Miles, and he knows things.

The man’s name is Miles, and he is very, very drunk.

Something moves in his peripheral vision; he feels eyes upon him. He whirls around: nothing, but his sudden motion throws him off-balance and he stumbles and falls, kicking up dust and dirt from the unpaved road. No one stands where a moment ago he felt a dozen eyes, a dozen peering faces watching, waiting, silent as the clear black night. He struggles to his feet, still clutching the bottle, but fails to stand. He ponders, momentarily, staying put, laying in the gravel and dust until morning. Pushing that notion aside, he struggles once again and, barely upright, he sees her again.

The girl stands just off to his left, in the corner of his eye, four and a half feet tall, with dark pigtails and a permanent scowl. He knows that if he turned to look, he would see she shares the same unnaturally pale eyes. He also knows that if he turned to look, she would vanish, like a ghost of a memory, a shadow of a thought.

“What are you doing?” she asks, with the stern inquisitiveness that only a 9-year-old girl can muster.

She stares, hands on her hips. Miles bites his lip.

“I’m going home. I can’t-”

“Can’t what, you big dumb boy? Can’t stand up right? Can’t stop being so dumb? You could have helped her, you know,” she scolds him. “You could have at least tried.”

“I’m sorry,” he begins, but his words choke in his throat. “I did try. I just can’t–

“I’m so sorry.”

She sticks out her tongue. He pulls again from the bottle, and the harsh burn once again splashes down his throat. He struggles finally to his feet. He feels her scorn, her scowling face.

“You’re not really here, Anjie. You can’t be here.”

“Sure I can,” she says. “Everyone else is here.”

He feels their eyes upon him, a dozen sad faces, a dozen lonely and lost souls, a dozen people waiting in desperate anticipation.

“You can’t be here, little girl.”

“Don’t call me a little girl, you big, dumb boy.”

“You can’t be here because you’re dead, baby.”

He turns to look, but there is no one there, no one in the cool desert, no one on the horizon, no one on the long road into town.

“You’ve been dead a long time.”

CONSTRUCTIONIZING

2011-03-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

Forgive me while I reboot this. You'll notice a few things have changed.

I'm trying to manipulate the format so this reads a little more like web page than a blog...

I don't write particularly linearly (as anyone who has tried to navigate the previous incarnation of this site will undoubtedly know), and so the linear format of a blog wasn't exactly conducive to my 'snap the puzzle pieces wherever they fit' kind of writing style.

But my plan is to serialize the novel here, and share the pieces as they arrive, in fashion that makes a little more sense.

I have completely dumped the old posts, opting for posting the Great-Beast-of-a-Novel in some semblance of order.

This is the stage just before a first draft, known commonly as "Draft Zero." Yes, I know zero isn't really a number—it's a place holder in the absence of a number. Look, I don't name this stuff. Point being, there will be spelling and grammatical errors abound. I know they're there, and I will (theoretically) fix them when the manuscript is finished. Which, judging by how fast I've written so far, should be just after we've colonized Mars.

Thanks for reading. No really... you both mean a lot to me.

Welcome to a Great Chasm of Pretending

2011-03-21T20:28:00.000-07:00

Wherein I test-drive a number of works-in-progress. This is my proving ground, so to speak, for my world of fiction - from short stories that I've dug up from the dust and ashes, to new pieces that may eventually find their way to the anthology that I have been very slow to assemble (I had some ill-conceived notion that I'd finish it by the end of last year—hahahaha) .

This is self-motivation is its most simple - if I think people are reading, I'll more likely continue to write.

This will also feature the working draft of my most ambitious narrative to date: The Novel That Has Existed Mostly In My Head For Years, also known as MILES.

I've toyed with the building blocks of this blog a few times, and will likely do so a great many more times before this is finished. I'm dividing each chapter into 600-800 word chunks, because that's what I've decided looks okay on a page. This is all a process for learning, after all.

I may throw in pieces from a Horror Script I'm piecing together, or a Science Fiction Series I'm piecing together - we'll figure all that out along the way. This blog will be a sort of "previews" catalogue for the small handful of projects I have in development.

And so - because in a past life I was once a College Radio Personality - I close with "Thanks for Tuning In."

CONSTRUCTIONIZING

2011-02-22T13:45:00.001-08:00

Forgive me while I reboot this. You'll notice a few things have changed.

I'm trying to manipulate the format so this reads a little more like web page than a blog...

I don't write particularly linearly (as anyone who has tried to navigate this site will undoubtedly know), and so the linear format of a blog wasn't exactly conducive to my 'snap the puzzle pieces wherever they fit' kind of writing style.

But my plan is to serialize the novel here, and share the pieces as they arrive, in fashion that makes a little more sense.

SO! Short version: You'll see a number of TABS at the top of the blog that lead to hard pages elsewhere in the site. Those are the individual chapters to the Great-Beast-of-a-Novel (also known as MILES). Browse at your leisure. The original blog posts will stay up for now, until I come up with something more clever. So, for returning readers, there will be much within the chapters that you've already read. That's just the way it goes.

There is a considerable amount of new material, though, and a bit of 'new' material (chapters that aren't particularly new to me, but have been homeless for a while). Now they are all in order, and look like a proper novel, rather than all mish-mash as they were before. This is the stage just before a first draft, known commonly as "Draft Zero." Yes, I know zero isn't really a number—it's a place holder in the absence of a number. Look, I don't name this stuff. Point being, there will be spelling and grammatical errors abound. I know they're there, and I will (theoretically) fix them when the manuscript is finished. Which, judging by how fast I've written so far, should be just after we've colonized Mars.

Thanks for reading. No really... you both mean a lot to me.