Most men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you (14 page)

I tried to move again. The blankets were stone. My limbs belonged to a stranger.

I stared at the wall and realized that a man was standing there, next to the door. Weird, because I had always been

looking at that spot and I realized he had always been there. Seeing the man was like seeing an optical il usion take

shape. And stranger, I registered he was there but I also felt like he had control of my registering him. I can't describe it. I didn't get the sense he was invisible, just that he could decide whether or not he would be noticed.

This had to be a dream. There was no sound. Not the rustling of leaves or cars rumbling past outside the barking of the

neighbor's fucking dog. You don't realize how impossible silences like this are until you hear one.

I couldn't even hear my own breathing. Or Amy's. I saw a black speck of something near the bed and when I focused on

it, I realized it was a fly, suspended in mid-air, wings caught in mid-flap. It was as if time had frozen.

The man in black did not move, just watched me. I say he didn't move but I then realized he wasn't frozen like the rest of

the room. He casually leaned against the wal , arms crossed. He shifted his weight leisurely from one foot to the other. He

wore sunglasses, had extremely pale skin and a small, pursed mouth.

Suddenly, I was outside. With no transition, the way it is in dreams. I was walking with the man in black, down my street,

through that world of absolute quiet. Fallen leaves hovered a foot off the ground, blown by a gust of wind that had been

frozen in the moment. When I went to walk on the leaves I realized I could step over them, they would support my weight

from their position in mid-air. They could not be moved.

I said, "Who are you?" though I can't be sure I made any sound.

The man didn't answer, only kept walking. We walked toward the highway, then followed it south, into the middle of town.

We passed a car that was half way through an intersection, a puff of exhaust hovering frozen from its tailpipe, the driver

inside a perfect mannequin. We walked toward one of the city's two elementary schools, not the beautiful new one they

built on the edge of town a few years ago but the other one, the one I went to, a brick building built in 1915 and patched

up over the decades like an old tire.

We walked across the lawn, grass poking pin-pricks in my bare feet as the blades would not bend under my weight. We

approached the front door and I first thought it was locked and then realized it wouldn't matter if wasn't, the door surely

couldn't be moved either way.

It was moot, because a moment later we were inside the building, again skipping ahead in that dream-like way. We were

in a dank basement, stocked with metal shelves ful of cardboard boxes of cleaning supplies and toilet paper and paper

towels. The man in black led me down to the end of the room to a metal door, paint peeling around the edges and stained

with rust. The door looked like it hadn't been opened in years. There were boxes sitting in front of it.

In a blink we were through that door, in a dark room lit only by a shaft of moonlight spilling in from a tiny window to our left.

Exposed bricks on every wall, black with grime and patched with spider webs. There was a massive machine to our right

and I knew we were in an old boiler room, shut down and closed off after modern furnaces were installed to replace this

rusting behemoth, probably before I was even in school here.

We walked around the old boiler, the thing looking like a huge, armored barrel laying on its side. And there, on the floor,

was Franky Burgess.

I only knew it was Franky because the head was missing and he was still wearing some of his old clothes. It seemed

unlikely there would be two headless men dressed that way.

But now Franky's body had ballooned to three times its previous size. The pants and bloody shirt had ripped at the

seams, stretched to the breaking point, the unbroken elastic digging trenches in the swollen flesh. Franky was 400 pounds

now if he was a pound, his abdomen bulging in a way that not even obesity could have accomplished for him.

I turned to the man in black, about to ask him why he was showing me this, to ask who he was and who he worked for.

I was back in bed. I threw aside the covers and jumped to my feet. Amy shifted and mumbled in her sleep. I left the room,

walking around the empty house.

Nobody home.

I went into the bathroom, splashed water on my face.

I looked up and in the split second before I blinked the water out of my eyes, I saw movement behind me. Amy getting up,

I thought. But when I went back into the bedroom she was still asleep. Mol y?

I turned and, sure enough, found her standing a few feet away in the living room, sniffing the air. I let out a breath.

I noticed for the first time that sitting on my coffee table was an object about two feet long, black plastic with a stock at one end like a rifle and a system of wire and pulleys at the other. A short arrow with a razor tip rested along its length. A

crossbow.

I could picture this idiotic thing going off and impaling the mailman the first time somebody accidentally kicked it getting off the couch. I reached down to take out the arrow but was stopped by the faint sound of my cell phone.

My pants were stil on the floor of the kitchen. I went in there, dug into the pocket and found the phone.

"Hel o?"

"Is this David Wong?"

Angry.

"Uh... maybe. Who's this?"

"This is detective Vance Falconer. Did one of you fuckwits take my head?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Frank Burgess's head. From the morgue. It's missing."

"I've been asleep-"

Have I?

"Are you at home?"

"Yeah."

"A car is coming to pick you up. If you leave that house, you're a fugitive."

I started to say something, realized I was talking to a dead phone.

The sun was thinking about rising outside, the shadows retreating in the house a little. I went back into the bedroom and

dug out clean clothes. I dressed and brushed my teeth and kissed Amy on the forehead. I left her a note on the bathroom

mirror telling her I had to go to the police station and that I'd be back soon unless they put me in jail.

I waited on the porch and a patrol car arrived about ten minutes later. The guy, a fat cop who I thought I remembered

seeing at the Hospital the previous night, made me ride in the back but didn't put handcuffs on me or anything.

We drove past the elementary school and the dream popped back into my mind. I said to the cop, "Hey, did they ever find

Frank Burgess' body?"

He didn't answer. I don't think cops have to answer questions from that part of the car.

We arrived at the police station, a depressing place that stank of disinfectant and burned coffee. He lead me back to a

small room with a table and a mirror that I knew was one of their interrogation rooms. I had been in here before.

There was a television in the corner of the room, on a wheeled stand. It had a VCR attached to it.

I sat for half an hour before Falconer burst in. He closed the door, looked up at the corner of the room where there was a

security camera, then reached up and pul ed its coaxial cable from the wal . That got my attention.

He glared at me, crossed his arms, paced around the room. Final y he said,

"Who are you?"

I didn't answer.

"They went over Frank Burgess' head. The medical examiner. I asked him to. You know what they found? His tongue had

been eaten."

"Well, that bug thing probably-"

"THERE WASN'T A FUCKING BUG."

Loud.

"Okay."

"I even looked at the head while it was laying in your fucking yard. There was nothing there."

"Okay."

"You think there was."

"I'm afraid you're going to hit me if I say yes."

"I might hit you anyway."

"I looked at the head, too, detective. Same time you did. The bug thing was in there. And the tongue being gone makes

sense, there are parasites that do that with fish. They crawl into the mouth, eat the tongue, and glue themselves to the

mouth. When the fish tries to eat, it's just feeding the parasite..."

"Wait, wait, wait. You think the bug thing was there when I looked."

"I think it's there now."

"How."

"Are you really asking me?"

A pause.

"Yes."

"Okay. Understand, when Franky came to my house that night, the thing was plainly visible. The bug thing was in my

room, crawling around, and Franky couldn't see it. It was right in front of him."

"Okay."

"Well, that's it. I mean, you can't see everything, right? You want to know if you're getting the flu, you can't just cut yourself and look at the blood to see the virus swimming around in there. It's too smal . The virus is still real, a physical thing in this world, but you can't see it. Okay? You can't see it for a completely arbitrary reason, which is that your eyebal just

happens to not be able to see things unless they're a certain size. And most of the world around you is like that. You can't

see the air you're breathing, you can't see the radio waves flying through the air, you can't see the gravity that holds you

to the ground, you can't see heat, or the thoughts in my head, or the events that are going to take place five seconds from

now. Almost everything in existence is invisible to you. These creatures are just one more thing. Why is that so freaking

hard? Why do people find it so hard to believe in invisible things when almost everything is invisible at any given

moment?"

"But you can see them, of course."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I just can."

"You lied just then."

"Holy shit. How do you do that?"

"It saves lives. Why do you think you can see this shit?"

"I think at one time all humans could see that world, the other world. Not 24 hours a day but I think they could see it with focus, with training. I think the ability has gotten lost in our species. It wasn't an accident, either. The things, the hidden

things, the things in the shadows, it was to their advantage to not be seen. I think the key to understanding this world is

realizing that the influence of the supernatural didn't diminish when we stopped believing in it. It grew. Even the people

who do believe in it, most of what they believe is bullshit and dogma and scams run by con men and corrupt

televangelists."

Falconer rubbed his eyes. A tired man.

I said, "It's the Fifth Wal . You've heard the term 'the fourth wal ,' right? Like in a movie, where the character talks to the screen? Ferris Bueller? You watch a movie and you can only see three walls and the fourth wall is the movie screen, it's

the audience. And the people in the movie don't know you're there but when somebody stops and talks to the audience,

they say they're breaking the fourth wall. Well, John calls this other thing the fifth wall. The level of reality above and

beyond us. And most people can't perceive it."

"But you, you're one of the special few, right? Just like the guys in straight jackets who think they're the whole world is an Illuminati conspiracy and they're the
only
ones smart enough to spot it."

"No. This ability to see, to see across dimensions or whatever, there was an intentional effort to restore it, to bring back that ability in humans. They tried it with a bunch of people but almost al of them died."

"Who did? The government? Can they read your mind, too? Would wearing a tin foil hat block them?"

"No, it wasn't anybody on our side. It was the other side who did it."

"So you've got this al worked out, don't you?"

"You tell me, detective. Am I lying?"

"Did you take the head?"

"You're going to have to put that into some kind of context."

"Franky Burgess' head is missing. I told you on the phone, they had it at the morgue, locked up. Now it's gone."

"Oh. I thought you were speaking metaphorically. I didn't take it."

"Somebody did."

"Did anybody see a huge monster made of turkeys in the building?"

"
What?
"

"You know, like at the turkey farm."

"That's not what I saw."

"Then you see what you want to see. Do they have a security video from the morgue?"

"They do. I've seen it. All we know is there was probably more than one guy. Neither guy was in frame, we just saw them

toss the head. Like a basketbal . One guy probably waiting by the door, the other in the storage room. They tossed the

head to stay out of the camera view."

"And they somehow got out of the building without getting caught by the cameras? How?"

"We're working on it."

I looked at Falconer, then at the VCR. Suddenly, it clicked.

"You want me to look at the security video, don't you?"

He didn't answer.

"You want to see if I see something there that you don't."

"I didn't say that."

"But you've got it, don't you? The tape? I bet it's already in that machine over there. Come on, why else would you bring

me here?"

"My reasons are my own fucking business."

"Fine, whatever. Play the tape."

Falconer paused long enough to demonstrate that the decision to push "play" was his and his alone. He did, and after a slate of color bars the screen blinked to a black and white shot of a room with what looked like an embalming table in the

foreground. I had a feeling that the camera existed mostly to make sure morgue employees didn't steal valuables off dead

people.

A few seconds of nothing, then...

A blur zipped across the center of the screen. Straight across, a dark shape. Indistinct.