Cathedral of Dreams (17 page)

“I'm not sure,” Keith said.

“I don't have all day here. You and I both know there's more to this than a simple act of politeness.” He turned around. “I knew I shouldn't have put you with them. Especially after I found out you were the boy. Do they know about the girl? Your dad?” He snatched a chair and swung it around backwards and sat down with his arms crossed over its back. “Did you tell them?”

“No,” Keith said.

“Then what is it?”

“They think I'm here to save them,” Keith said.

“Save them from what? Me? The fucking nut cases. Listen to me, without the proper integration they'd just be a bunch of crazies on the loose. Half of them would have killed the other half by now.” He puffed his cheeks and let out a long breath of air. “The system probably created the boy from your image as a random act, and they're reading into it.”

“That's what I thought,” Keith said. “But some of them think I'm some sort of beacon leading the Newcity police to you.”

Bradley appeared to think that was funny. He laughed and looked over at Sam who smiled uncomfortably. “First of all, the Newcity police are worthless. They'd have to call on the guards who control the perimeter. They're, at least, used to dealing with outsiders.” He leaned in toward Keith. “See, I know what the escapees call us.” He sat back and said, “And second, I've tested every frequency possible and you're not a beacon. I guarantee it.”

He stood up and lifted the chair out of the way. Bradley always acted anxious, as though he had a dozen other things to do and was late for every one of them. He tapped a finger to his chin. “You haven't had a visitation yet?”

“No,” he said.

“It's like you're already integrated. You aren't like the others and I don't quite know why.” He snapped his fingers. “You stay in our camp tonight. Sammy, get things ready.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said.

“Can I see my mother?” Keith said.

Bradley said, “Maybe tomorrow. You're the first to come through who has family with us. I'm afraid that close contact could bring back too many childhood memories, which may cause you to exhibit other psychological symptoms. You understand, don't you?”

“I think so. But what could I remember that's so important? Did she sell me to Newcity?”

Bradley waited before he answered the question, and when he did answer he spoke slowly. “I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. My concern is that you've only been here a short while and I think it would be too much emotional stimulus for you to handle.”

“But you said that I was integrating quickly,” Keith said.

Bradley backhanded Keith and knocked him off the chair to the ground. “I said no.”

The slap rang through Keith's head. He touched a hand to his jaw. Somehow, he had felt Bradley's anger as sure as he felt the man's hand across his face. Just as quickly as the anger came it subsided. The violence had drained Bradley's anger instantly.

The big man opened the tent flap to go. He turned to Sam and said softly, “Get him out of here. I'm too busy for this shit.”

Chapter 12

I
t took Sam a moment or two to gain his composure. When he did, he rushed over to Keith and helped him up.

“I'm all right,” Keith said while taking his seat again.

“Are you sure?”

Keith looked into Sam's eyes and saw nothing but compassion. “It's not your fault.” At times, Keith heard the words that came from his mouth but didn't recognized them as his own. This was one of those times. The slap had been some sort of wake-up call. He knew that now. The air had changed, the tent and its furnishings, even Sam, standing before him emitted a different energy. Keith rested and took in the area. He was sweating and ran a hand across his forehead. Feeling the dampness, he automatically checked for blood but there was only sweat smeared across his hand.

“You don't look right,” Sam said.

“How do you mean?”

“I don't know. You should be enraged, but instead you appear meditative, like you detached from the situation.” Sam stared in what looked like awe.

“Give me a minute,” Keith said. His eyes jerked from one item to the next, taking in the contents of the tent. Everything he inspected took on a life of its own: the desk produced the sensation of firmness and solidity, electronic equipment chattered and hummed with motion, a lamp slept in place, and even the tent produced its own essence, its own vitality.

“You're making me nervous,” Sam said. “What are you doing?”

“Taking it all in,” Keith said. As he let the space settle into a flow of its own, a harmony of existence, the boy with the bullet hole in his forehead stepped from behind a stack of boxes. Keith stopped looking around and stared at the boy. He took a calming breath. He opened to how Sam felt: nervous.

“You must stay awake,” the boy said.

Keith thought to ask what the boy meant, but decided against it while in the presence of nervous Sam. He closed his eyes for only a moment. When he opened them again, the boy was still there. Keith waited, but the boy said nothing more.

The boy with the bullet hole in his forehead, the boy who appeared to be a younger version of Keith, walked toward the entrance to the tent and passed through as though a breeze had parted the flap ahead of him.

Sam snapped out of his silence and reached for Keith, escorting him out of the tent and down the path behind the boy.

Keith couldn't understand what was happening.

A short distance in the opposite direction of the escapees' tents there was an opening in the forest. Keith's tent had been set up next to several others. The boy entered Keith's tent.

Sam stopped in front of the tent and turned to Keith.

“I'm staying here now?” Keith asked.

“My tent is next to yours,” Sam trained his eye on the tent to the left. “There's a lot more activity around here, but you'll be safer.”

“I was safe with the others,” Keith said.

“Don't be so sure,” Sam said before he left.

When Keith crawled into the tent, the boy was gone. “I had questions,” he said to no one. “First of all, how did you get Sam to follow you when he couldn't see you?” Keith lay down on his back and closed his eyes.

As he relaxed in the warmth of the tent air, he heard the boy say, “It was you who showed him the way.”

Keith jerked his eyes open and sat up. He was still alone in the tent. “Okay then,” he said. He lay back down and whispered, “How could I lead Sam if I didn't know where to go?” The inner voice that was the boy didn't respond. Keith forced his relaxation and almost fell asleep, but there was no more contact. He removed the notebook from his pocket and jotted down what had happened. The boy had told him to stay awake, so he left the tent and took a short walk. Sam had been right; there were many more people from Bradley's group on that side of the camp. Most of them appeared to be going somewhere in a hurry, while others Keith ran into were sitting and talking.

The afternoon sped along as Keith attempted to sort out what had happened in Bradley's tent. His greatest question was whether or not Bradley knew what he had done in awakening Keith into contact with the boy with the bullet hole in his forehead. Was Bradley that aware?

Keith rejected the notion and decided that the boy had manipulated Bradley to open Keith's communications, and not the other way around. Either way, a lot of questions were still unanswered.

The rest of the afternoon, Keith paid more attention to the natural elements around him. He walked to the edge of the woods and stared at the hillside, taking in all the colors and textures of the grasses, the bushes, the trees. Birds and insects fascinated him. At one point, he glimpsed an animal running through the field, its short body partially hidden in the tall grass. The creature's dark color scurried like a deep shadow along the ground. The world was enormous in size and varied in its things, both living and nonliving. Keith found it difficult to take it all in through his senses. Surely, he couldn't see, smell, listen, and feel all at the same time. His sight became a fuzzy background image whenever he concentrated fully on listening. And when he noticed details in the images before him, the sound of insects would fade. It was like all his senses were being tested at once, but he could only read them one or two at a time.

That evening Keith ate alone. Sam brought him a plate of chicken and rice and another bottle of water. They talked briefly before Sam announced that he had to go help the others. Keith's wanderings during the day had tired him out, but he wandered a little ways away until the trees opened to the sky, which had taken on an orange glow. Keith could not describe the feeling he received from just looking at the sky. He pulled the notebook from his pocket and wrote down the colors, the random shapes, and the fact that the clouds were layered, but the words meant nothing without the image. He put the notebook back into his pocket and stood in silence. In less than a half hour the colors brightened, streaks of white luminescence lined one of the layers before fading into night. With a glimmer of light pushing through, and little color other than gray and blue, Keith made his way back to his tent.

He had only been outside of Newcity a few days and already so much had happened to and around him. He needed a good night's sleep.

Keith saw that his dinner plate, which he had set on the ground outside his tent, had been collected for cleaning. The others were very attentive and efficient in the camp, almost as efficient as Newcity.

He crawled inside the tent, still a little hungry, and ate a few of the crackers from his pack. He thought to take notes, but rejected the idea in favor of sleep. The darkness inside the canvas would have made it difficult to see anyway.

He slipped out of his shoes and socks, pants and shirt and climbed into the sleeping bag. As the light from outside dimmed into complete darkness, noises became more noticeable: a scraping sound, buzzing, occasionally something moving through the fallen leaves. Keith listened for a long while, trying to imagine what each sound belonged to. He had heard many of the sounds before, in movies, but had never been in nature as long as he could remember, although he knew that he had been on the outside as a young man, perhaps until he was the age of the boy with the bullet hole in his forehead. Even when he glimpsed a memory of his family, they were always inside a house or apartment, but the general feeling was that they were somewhere other than inside Newcity.

Before allowing himself to nod off, Keith asked the boy how long he was supposed to stay awake, but there was no answer. He asked the angel with one wing the same question, but received more silence. Finally, he asked for help from his father. “What must I do now?” Again, there was no answer. The tent closed in on him then and he slept dreamlessly.

DAY 5

It wasn't morning when he was roused from sleep by a hand over his mouth and a voice in his ear saying, “Be still; it's me, Stacy.”

Keith rose to a sitting position and let his head clear.

A small amount of light sifted into the tent, allowing him to see her brown eyes and blonde hair close to his face. Shadow highlighted the roundness of her cheeks. Her breath was stale.

She turned her face away from him and whispered for him to get dressed as fast as he could and to grab his pack.

He acknowledged her command, and tapped her back when he was ready. He followed her through the flap and into the misty night air. The light came from the sky, but Keith couldn't tell its source, and only guessed that it was the moon and not lights set up around the camp.

Stacy reached for his hand and tugged aggressively for him to follow. He stumbled only once as they traveled the paths at night. There were twists and turns into side paths that he could not have remembered. As they came to a halt he wondered if this was the reason the boy had asked him to stay awake. He wondered how long he had been asleep. Was it minutes or hours?

There was little time to consider those thoughts. A large truck stood before them. Stacy dragged Keith to the rear of the vehicle where it was open. Inside were crates. Some were marked EXPLOSIVES in large block letters. “Weapons,” Stacy said. “Do you see?”

Before he could answer, she tugged on his arm and he followed her for a short distance farther until they reached a parked van. The van looked similar to the one that had brought him to camp the morning before. Even in the moon's light, Keith could see that this one was dirt-streaked along its sides, and the windows were darkened with a layer of dust. A door opened along the side and Stacy guided him into a seat in the rear next to a man who already occupied the bench. The rest of the van was filled with people he couldn't recognize in the dim light.