Fearful Symmetries (37 page)

What Lynch saw reminded him of an alligator, if that alligator’s head had been as long as a tall man. Jaws lined with fangs like carving knives thundered together as the head swung right and left, chasing after the women and men who scrambled out of its way. An eye the size of a saucer rolled in its socket. Lynch could see the thing, its pebbled flesh, which appeared feathered in a few places, but he could also see through it, to a bleached skull that would have been at home in a museum display.
Tyrannosaurus Rex
, he heard Anthony’s voice say.
King tyrant-lizard
. He shook his head. The beast sucked in a mighty breath, and unleashed a fresh bellow. Lynch backed into the booth. A busboy who had dropped to the floor when the wall exploded slipped as he scurried to his feet, and the monster darted its head to catch him as he fell. Its teeth scissored him in half with a wet crunch that vented blood into the wind. Droplets spattered Lynch, who cried out and rinsed his arms against them.

Melinda seized his hand. “Come on,” she said, “while it’s occupied.”

Lynch didn’t argue. Still holding her hand, he bolted for the door, past the enormous head jerking towards the ceiling as it gulped the busboy down.

Outside, the early evening was full of snow and screaming and the distant whine of sirens. Melinda steered them to the extended porch of the second building up the street from the bar. Lynch flattened against the space between a pair of windows. Melinda remained at the edge of the porch.

“Come back!” Lynch hissed. “It’ll see you.”

“Hear that?” Melinda said. Through the screams and the approaching sirens, Lynch heard the crack of timbers snapping, the rattle of debris on the ground. “That’s it leaving.”

“Leaving? Where’s it going?”

“Back out there,” Melinda said, nodding towards the plains. “It’s moving fast. I figured we’d have at least a few days before it tried the town. Then again, who knows how long it’s been on the loose, already?”

“Okay,” Lynch said. “Okay.” If he acted as if he were calm, maybe he would be calm. “What now?”

Melinda had no answer.

On what Lynch thought was the north side of town, a solitary black mailbox stood on the street side of a large, vacant lot. Lynch was reasonably sure there had been a house and barn here at some point; on a couple of his and Melinda’s previous stops at the mailbox, he’d had the impression of a pair of large, boxlike structures, one closer to the road, the other farther back, neither quite visible, both more like the smudges left after an eraser has cleared the blackboard. Each time, he had intended to ask Melinda about the phenomenon, but the message she’d read on the letter she withdrew from the mailbox had pre-empted his question. This morning, nothing was visible in the lot except a few tufts of scrub grass poking through the crusted snow. Lynch supposed this was for the best. He hadn’t appreciated how exposed this location was: only one more street of small warehouses separated the mailbox from the expanse of the plains, dazzling white under the early sun. He didn’t need any distractions from the vigil he was doing his best to maintain. Had he been a soldier, once? He thought so; though it was more of the obligatory-duty variety, not the active-wartime type. Hard to imagine that combat experiences, however intense, would have prepared him for the beast that had thrown the jukebox crashing over.

After a restless night spent within the bland confines of a modest Protestant church, Melinda had set out for the mailbox. Lynch had started to protest the recklessness of her decision, but she had cut him off, asking, “What makes you think we’re any safer inside? That thing didn’t seem to have any trouble breaking down the wall to that bar.” All the same, Lynch wanted to say, there was a difference between the beast coming looking for you and you putting yourself out where it could find you. But already, Melinda was out of earshot.

Lynch didn’t understand the black mailbox. Aside from the two of them, he doubted anyone could see or touch it, but with its chipped black paint and flag broken at the base, it had a strangely substantial feel, as if whoever had leveled the house and barn it served had intended to remove it, as well, but failed to complete the job. Once a day, he accompanied Melinda to it so that she could lower its front door and check its oblong interior. There was almost always something inside, usually a letter in a denim-blue envelope whose flap Melinda split with her thumb. She would read the letter twice, return it to its envelope, and replace the envelope within the mailbox, which she shut. As yet, she had not shared any of the messages with Lynch.

Instead, presumably following directions she’d received, Melinda led them to a different part of the town or its surroundings. There, they performed a task whose significance was generally lost on Lynch. A day or two after he arrived here, they ventured to the dirt alley separating a pair of houses, where Melinda handed him a shovel he hadn’t noticed her carrying and directed him to dig at a spot a foot and half away from one of the houses. Lynch, who would never be sure of the exact relationship between his present form and the world he continued to inhabit, took the shovel and sank it into the ground. About two feet down, the blade rang on metal. Working more slowly, Lynch cleared the dirt from a bronze disk the diameter of a dinner plate. Its surface was incised with tiny symbols that Lynch didn’t recognize. He pried the disk loose and raised it on the shovel to Melinda, who took it with heavy gloves he hadn’t seen her tug on. After he refilled the hole, and leaned the shovel against the house where she told him to, Lynch returned with Melinda to the mailbox. He guessed its opening would be too small to fit the bronze plate, but Melinda angled the disk and the mailbox accepted it without difficulty.

On another occasion, they passed unhindered and unchallenged into the recesses of the town jail. On the wall of one of its cells was an elaborate graffiti that Melinda copied onto a slip of paper whose destination was the mailbox. A third time, they made their way into the large rest home on the west side of town in order for Melinda to stare at an old woman whose face had so many lines, it was difficult to pick out her eyes and mouth among them. Of course, Lynch had asked what the purpose of their actions was, but Melinda had deflected his questions with one of her own: “You had plans?” If he persisted, she told him that what he was asking was above his pay grade, and refused to be drawn any further. Her answer was the same when he asked who, exactly, was sending the messages.

Today, the mailbox yielded a padded envelope whose contents jingled as Melinda tore it open. She removed a letter and a pair of keys from it. Lynch watched her face as she read and reread the letter, but could discern nothing from her features. She replaced the letter in the mailbox, and held onto the keys. “This way,” she said to Lynch, and started in the direction of the next street and its warehouses and, beyond, the open plains. Lynch had no desire to walk any distance out of town; in retrospect, their trip to survey the remains of the van the previous day seemed to him the height of recklessness. Neither did he want to abandon Melinda; in the time that he’d been here, she had been essential to him adjusting to . . . everything, to all of it. He wasn’t sure she was an irresistible force, but he was no immovable object. Following arguments with his wife, hadn’t he apologized first? After confrontations with the kids over infractions of the house rules, hadn’t he sought them out in their rooms, mock-bullying them into reconciliation? Nonetheless, the white expanse sparkling in the distance made his throat constrict with dread.

Melinda led them into the shadowed space between a pair of darkened warehouses. Some kind of car sat in the middle of the passageway. Eyes dazzled by the sun, Lynch did not register the vehicle as anything more than smallish, low to the ground. Melinda stopped beside the driver’s door. Bending at the waist, she slotted one of the keys she’d received from the mailbox into the lock. She swung the door wide and surveyed the car’s interior. “You drive?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Stick?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, then.” Straightening, she snapped her wrist. The keys arced through the air. Lynch lunged at, caught them. He said, “Hang on. We have cars?”

“Car,” Melinda said. She was circling to the passenger’s door. “Chop chop.”

A two-seater, the car’s age was apparent in the rips in its buckets seats, the roughing of the steering wheel and dashboard. Surprisingly for this location, it was a convertible. Lynch leaned over to unlock Melinda’s door, then slid the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine came to life with a coughing growl. Something about the deep rumble felt achingly familiar. Lynch put in the clutch, pushed the gearshift into first, and let the clutch out slowly. The car eased along the passageway into daylight. As it did, Lynch saw that its hood was white, its fenders a burnt-orange that might have faded from red. He jerked his foot off the clutch. The car lurched and stalled.

“Is there a problem?” Melinda said.

“This car,” Lynch said. “I know this car.”

“Okay.”

“No, you don’t . . . it’s an MG—I can’t remember the model, has a V8 engine. It was my, my fantasy car, you know? For when I won the lottery. One summer—we were on vacation—we used to vacation at a little lake somewhere north—the Adirondacks, I think. We rented a cottage just up from the beach. The couple who owned the place had a son who was the same age as my boy. Their youngest. Most days, the boys hung around together, building sandcastles, catching bullfrogs, going on hikes around the lake. The mother and father were nice enough. I can’t recall their names. I talked cars with him a couple of times each trip. Nothing too involved, but he knew I liked the MG. One afternoon, he came down to the cottage and asked my wife if he could borrow me for a little while. She said, Sure, take him.

“I couldn’t figure out what he wanted me for. He was big into his beer, too—thought of himself as a connoisseur. I wasn’t, not really, but I’d traveled for work, places like Germany and Belgium, where I’d tasted some decent beer, so this man liked to share whatever beers he’d discovered with me. It wasn’t beer, though: it was this.” Lynch spread his hands to take in the car. “Somehow, he had found an MG for sale at a price he was willing to afford. He knew I’d appreciate the purchase. The car looked a little worse for wear, but the engine ran fine. We popped the hood to check it. Anthony, my boy, was around, playing with the man’s son. Both boys came over to admire the car. The man turned to me, and asked if I wanted to take the car for a run. At first, I thought he was saying that he was going to try out the car and was inviting me to come along—which would have been fine. But no. He handed me the keys and told me the car could use a good run.

“It was so unexpected, so . . . generous. I felt the way you do when something good just happens to you, out of the blue. I asked Anthony if he wanted to go for a ride. He did. We belted in, and off we went. The top was down, which made it hard for us to have much of a conversation. But I could see the expression on his face. He wasn’t that old, maybe eight or nine. He was putting on his best serious face. I’d never included him in anything like this, before, and he was trying to show he understood it—its importance. The sheer pleasure lit up my face. I loved to drive. I didn’t get my license until I was in my twenties, but the minute I did, it was as if the driver’s seat was where I was born to be. My son had a toy: I can’t remember what it was called, but it was a kind of a space-age centaur, except, instead of horse’s legs, it had four tires. My wife said that was me.

“Anyway, I took the car to a highway and went all the way up to fifth. Probably too fast. Definitely too fast. If there had been a cop there, he wouldn’t have had to use his radar gun. There weren’t any cops. I don’t think there was anyone on our side of the road. To the left, there was a mountain, leaning back to a round peak. On either side of us, the scenery whipped by, but in the distance, that mountain turned very slowly.

“I could have kept going, would have driven all the way to Canada and back. I wonder if Anthony remembers it.” Lynch shook his head. “What is this car doing here?”

“Waiting for you to drive it,” Melinda said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“More information that’s above my pay grade?”

“Probably, but that isn’t why. I don’t know why this particular car was waiting for us. I do know that we don’t usually use cars because of the risk of drawing undue attention to ourselves. We exist beyond the limit of most people’s perceptions. Give us a car to roar around in, and we move that much closer to visibility, which causes all kinds of complications. That we’re sitting in this vehicle tells me how serious the situation with this creature has become.”

“All right,” Lynch said.

“I heard a theory, once,” Melinda said, “that your impression on the subjectile can form a kind of bond with other impressions. Doesn’t work for people, otherwise, you’d be surrounded by your loved ones, right? But maybe it applies to objects.”

“Huh,” Lynch said. “It’s a pity I never owned a bazooka. You?”

“Closest I came was a shotgun, which, I think you’d agree, is not up to the task.”

“No,” Lynch said. “Where are we going?”

“The battleground. Think you can find it?”

“We’ll see.” He let out the clutch, and steered onto the street.

What Melinda called the battleground was a shallow bowl in the landscape maybe five hundred yards across. It was five miles north-northeast from town, along a narrow road that followed the twists of a wide creek. Melinda had taken Lynch to the place the third day after his arrival, as a lesson in blending in with the living. A small tour bus ferried interested tourists out to the site, waited a couple of hours for them to wander its grounds, read the plaques positioned around it, and visit the gift shop, then carried them back to town. The bus was never full, Melinda said, which allowed the two of them to steal aboard and take one of the seats at the rear, where they found it relatively easy to escape detection, except for a toddler, a girl in blue overalls, who would not stop staring at them.