Stone Junction (34 page)

The glow faded into an empty tranquillity. Daniel opened his eyes and looked into his own eyes looking back. He saw his skeleton stretched out on the bottom of a lake, his bones the glossy black of ebony. He wanted to lie there forever, but a resonant drumming from the surface seemed to summon him. He felt his skeleton float upward. But it didn’t break into light. The lake surface was frozen; Daniel’s bones rattled against the ice. The drumming was almost deafening now. People were banging the ice with shovels in the hopes that the vibrations would raise his body. He could hear them calling to each other but the ice muffled their words. He tried to call out, to tell them it was all right, he liked the bottom, but the thick ice made it hopeless.

He’d started sinking when Volta, calmly and distinctly, said ‘Life.’ Daniel stopped his descent and floated, gathering what strength remained. He kicked back toward the surface, feeling the cold water rushing through his eye sockets, ribs, pelvis. As he neared the frozen surface, he balled his right hand into a bony fist and slammed it upward through the ice, shattering it into a geyser of diamonds. His bones were fleshed when they touched the air. He pulled himself out of the lake through the hole he’d opened. Severely disoriented, he turned in circles, looking for the shortest way to shore, but fog obscured his view. His flesh felt wet, but he wasn’t cold. In fact, it seemed balmy. He turned and faced what he hoped was west and started walking. He hadn’t taken three strides when he stepped over the edge of a cliff.

Volta had just finished decoding a long message from Jean Bluer when he heard Daniel scream. He stood on the backporch in the early morning light listening intently. When there were no further sounds from Daniel, Volta glanced at his watch. It was seven-thirty. At seven-fifty, another scream shredded the silence. Volta turned and went back inside, leaving Daniel’s bewildered cry echoing away across Laurel Creek Hollow.

Daniel’s terror was reflexive, powerful, total – ‘cellular,’ as Volta had called it. Daniel was irked at himself for being surprised. Volta had noted that the feelings of wetness and warmth were precursors to the drop.

On his second attempt, Daniel had no previews of coming attractions, no sense of wetness or warmth. He met himself on the surface of the mirror and immediately fell. Though startled, Daniel managed to form an image of himself falling. He could control the fall with the image, but his grip was shaky. The sound of the wind planing over the shed roof cracked his concentration.

He was focusing too slowly, caught in movement rather than anticipating it. He needed to leap to the moment of transformation, catch the fall as it started. But first he needed rest. He felt so confident he drank the rest of the water, then took an hour nap.

The third time was the charm. The instant he merged with his image on the mirror’s surface, Daniel imagined himself falling with a concentration so powerful and precise that the terror never really began. He opened his eyes.

The mirror was empty. The quilt cushion was bare. Amazed, Daniel stood up and walked through the mirror, the wall, the laurel tree outside. He walked up the trail thinking,
How can I walk without a body? Without
feet? Why don’t I just sink into the ground or float off?
He wasn’t troubled by the questions, just curious.

Volta was sitting on the porch, trying to read a bundle of letters fluttering in the strong easterly breeze. He seemed less interested in the messages than the shed.

Watch this
, Daniel thought, even though he wasn’t sure what he would do. Not that it mattered. He felt serene, powerful, invincibly wise. He began to dissolve in pure pleasure. He understood this was the danger Volta had warned him about, but he wanted to feel it forever, wanted to stay there, pouring into joy. He almost flirted too long. With immense concentration he imagined a mirror, then his image in the mirror, and, when their eyes met, himself.

Daniel’s return was wrenching. As he staggered sideways on the lawn, right in front of Volta, he felt a searing pain, followed immediately by a rush of melancholic exhaustion. Confused, he looked up at Volta.

Volta’s eyes glittered with delight. ‘Daniel,’ he called, rising from his chair, ‘you
did
it. Excellent.
Excellent!
Finally, someone to compare notes with. Come in, come in – you must be hungry.’

Three:
WATER

Sensitive Chaos.

—Novalis

In its unbounded state, it's water's nature to seek a spherical

from. That's why rivers meander.

—Schwenk

Gurry Debritto started with the CIA when he was twelve years old. His father, a marine colonel, served as a CIA liaison officer. When they needed a young boy to pose as the son of a female agent, the colonel suggested Gurry.

Gurry trained all winter at Norfolk with Claudia Lord, the woman agent who would be posing as a bitter war widow and Department of Defense secretary with a child to raise and some information to sell. They were hoping to flush a Russian agent.

It went down in a Baltimore hotel. Claudia fumbled pulling her gun. She’d just flipped off the safety when the Russian shot her. He stepped up quickly as she slumped to the floor and shot her again to make sure. Then he turned the gun on Gurry and pulled the trigger, but Gurry was diving over Claudia’s body and the bullet grazed his calf. Gurry picked up Claudia’s gun and kept rolling as three more slugs tore chunks from the carpet. As the Russian bolted for the door, Gurry came up kneeling, the gun held steady with both hands. He shot the Russian in the neck. Hearing his father’s war stories, he’d wondered what it would feel like to kill someone. Now he knew. It felt good.

With his father’s blessings, the CIA put him on salary. His training was thorough, his teachers the best. At sixteen, he performed his first solo hit, a Dayton reporter about to reveal some bad news about cash movements in the Cayman Islands – not that Gurry cared why. But when he was twenty he did ask himself why he was killing people for a loutish bureaucracy he had come to despise for the monthly pittance of sixteen thousand dollars.

Gurry declared himself independent. The agency graciously gave him his leave, sending two men to kill him. When their bodies were found mummy-wrapped in scarlet ribbon at the bottom of a dumpster two blocks from the director’s house, a truce was negotiated: Gurry would continue to take on special assignments for them at a reasonable wage, but could accept or reject assignments as he chose.

Gurry Debritto’s career wasn’t limited to assassination – he did security work and general demolition as well – but assassination, he often said, was ‘the biggest buck for the bang.’ His fees grew in direct proportion to the narrow legend he became. The most he’d received was twenty million dollars for poisoning Jack Ruby. The least was the twenty thousand for killing Annalee Pearse. That one still pissed him off. It wasn’t his fault it was botched.

‘We’re drunk in a Motel 6 in Stockton, California. You didn’t find Miss Rainbow Moonbeam Brigit Fifth Bardo or whatever the fuck her name is, but we know enough already, don’t we? Other people at the party said she wandered back around dawn and announced – it was the sort of thing people remember – ‘I just went around the block to the Horsehead Nebula and sucked a boy’s dick till his skull caved in.’ That boy had to be Daniel, and we know he must have told her – bragging, probably – about Livermore. Or maybe she gave him drugs. Or found something in the house. Or convinced him it was wrong and he should call the cops. But maybe he called Volta. Annalee said they’d been given a number to call if they saw us. But we don’t need all the pieces to solve the puzzle. We can
feel
the truth. We can
feel
Daniel’s fear and hatred, and Volta’s cold, neutral touch. You were right to advise our independent investigation, right to sense their dissembling. Volta is brilliant. To suggest – after coaching Daniel – that it wasn’t an accident. The best lie is always the truth. He’s worthy of us.’

Shamus Malloy was talking to his horribly burned hand. He always took the white glove off now as soon as they were alone. He had the thumb tucked under his index and middle finger, making an opening like a mouth. Above it, on the knuckle joining the index finger to the hand, stray splatters of molten silver had left pocked scar-tissue that resembled two blank eyes. Shamus looked into them. ‘You have to help me. What should we do now? What should we do about Daniel and Volta?’

His hand said, ‘Destroy them.’

Transcription:

Denis Joyner, AMO Mobile Radio

Time to ID down to a bottom line: you got the DJ, the Direct Jolt, wired to fire some juice in your ear, and if you got the DJ, you know you have KUSH fuckin’ rollin’ ray-dee-ooo, natural as a six and five, and where you are is where it’s at, and who I am’s a mystery to me too.

Let’s run that bunny down to an illogical conclusion. I mean,
come on
people! Why are you covering me up with this deluge of cards and letters asking, ‘Hey, who are you, and what’s going down, and is this for real, and wow, who pays for your folly and where can I get me some?’ Asking, ‘What does DJ
really
stand for?’ Asking, ‘What does it all mean?’

My marketing consultants must be taking drugs. They must think demographics are some kind of visual aid.
Who
am I? Hey,
who
are you? And who are we if we’re turning the table together? Why is it wise to question all answers and stupid to answer all questions? Face it: Sometimes you have to beg for an answer. I mean get right down on your bony little knees and beg your heart dry.

But friends and countrymen of the roaring night, you don’t have to beg me. Answers I don’t know are my specialty. So, let me take your questions from the top:

My real name is Doe John. I was born of gypsy spawn and motion is my home. I am the Voice of the Blur and the Breath of Song. Hang on, honey – I got the pedal to the metal and I won’t be long.

Everything is going down, unless it’s rising or signed a short-term contract with equilibrium.

It’s for real and for sure. A true fucking story, friend. You can bet it with both hands.

When you lose the bet, AMO shoots some vig my way, keeping me on the air like some alternative PBS for the sorely bored and seriously demented. In the long run, I come out of your pocket when you’re asleep at night and tell you all the good ways to be bad.

DJ stands for disc jockey, as in I’m riding the wheel just like you and I guess we’ll just have to see for ourselves where it stops. If it does. If it’s moving to start with. Because if wishes were wings we’d all be risen, and if cream was butter we wouldn’t have to churn.

Don’t mean shit.

Churn on that.

And next time send me some tough ones.

This has been the Devout Jester whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

Three days after Daniel’s first disappearance, he came in for breakfast, sat down, squared his shoulders, shut his eyes, and instantly vanished.

Volta, who’d been chopping tomatoes for salsa to accompany his renowned
huevos rancheros
, laid the knife on the cutting board and applauded, murmuring, ‘Bravo.’ Then he went back to chopping.

He was aware of Daniel’s presence but tried mightily to ignore him. He was glad to get rid of him, if only for a few minutes. From the moment Daniel had reappeared and stumbled toward the porch, he’d showered Volta with questions. The only one Volta could answer with certainty had been the first.

‘What did you put the poison in, the wheatcakes or the ham?’

‘Daniel! I take pride in my wheatcakes, and I would never insult Tick Hathaway’s ham.’

‘Where?’

Volta couldn’t tell if Daniel was demanding or pleading. ‘I injected it in the apple in your portion of the fruit salad. I was in a Christian mood.’

‘
What?
Christian?’

‘The Tree of Knowledge. Forbidden fruit. Temptation and the Fall and all of that. Some tastes of the forbidden are rapturous; some make you sick.’

‘What’s sick,’ Daniel gasped, ‘is dosing somebody. And what’s really sick is mixing speed with it.’

‘I’ve offered the apology of necessity. I can only repeat it. And please – it wasn’t
poison
. It was a virus that took Charmaine weeks of intense work.’

‘She hates me,’ Daniel said.

Volta noted with surprise the disconsolate edge in his tone. ‘No, she doesn’t. She highly recommends you, as a matter of fact; and as you undoubtedly noticed, she is extremely aware and uncommonly insightful.’

Daniel doggedly shook his head.

After that first question, Volta had no certain answers. This uncertainty seemed to provoke Daniel into fusillades of more questions, as if answers simply awaited the right inquiry.

‘Why do your clothes vanish with you? And your fillings? Why don’t they just fall on the floor?’

‘I don’t know,’ Volta patiently replied, a reply he would often repeat. ‘I can only tell you, based on my own limited experience, that anything in intimate connection with your force field for longer than thirty to forty hours will disappear with you and reappear when you do – depending on its own strength of field and its harmony with your own.’

‘What do you mean exactly by this
force field?
Your body?’

‘Daniel, I can only speculate. I think of it as the sum of vitality – flesh, soul, psyche, or anything else you consider a constituent of being.’

‘Wait a minute now. Let’s take a practical example. Say my pocketknife disappears with me and I walk outside and set it on a rock and then go back inside and reappear, the knife would still be in my pocket?’

‘No, not in my experience. It would reappear on the rock, right where you left it.’

‘Why? It wouldn’t be in my force field anymore.’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps there’s some principle of dimensional or field exclusivity. Or as Smiling Jack is fond of saying, “You can’t be in two places at once if you’re not anywhere at all.”’

‘Wait a minute. How can you see? You don’t have eyes. How can you hear when your ears have vanished? It just doesn’t make sense.’

‘That’s because it’s impossible, Daniel. If the impossible made sense, it wouldn’t be impossible. I assure you I made long and serious inquiries – discreetly, of course – from physicists to shamans. The only conclusion among those few who would even
entertain
the notion was that sensory integrity is not limited to somatic existence. Think of it this way: You briefly turn into your ghost.’

‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’

‘Don’t tell me. Tell your ghost.’

‘All right, all right. So what you’re saying is that the physical self turns into spirit.’

‘I don’t know. What I’m suggesting, if anything, is that we’re born to be amazed.’

‘But I wonder …’ and Daniel would ricochet off on another line of questions.

To spare himself, Volta added another four hours of solitary meditation to Daniel’s daily post-graduate regimen. It didn’t matter. There were still as many questions; Daniel just asked them faster.

‘Why did you experience the ecstasy as contraction while I felt it as expansion?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps we were experiencing different things, or the same things differently.’

‘And that’s why I didn’t go through that still, empty, stop-time sensation you did when you vanished?’

‘So I assume, yes.’

‘But some things we experienced were the same. Why some in common, some unique?’

‘I don’t know. To make it more interesting?’

But the interrogative reversal didn’t work. Daniel ignored the question and bored on with his own until Volta said pointedly, ‘Daniel, ask yourself. You know as much about it as I do, and I have no doubts that soon you will surpass my meager understanding.’

Volta wiped the cutting board. Daniel had been vanished far longer than his program prescribed. Volta resisted an impulse to check the clock. Daniel was beyond him. He must have simply imagined a mirror, making a leap that Volta had never considered. That didn’t surprise him, for he’d felt from the beginning that Daniel wanted to dance on the threshold. Thus far Daniel had displayed discipline and respect, but his passion to understand what was essentially a mystery could easily fuse into obsession, and that worried Volta. As he cracked eggs, he decided to relinquish his position on the Star. He was weary of constant decisions, weary of questions he couldn’t answer or had already answered too many times. If they stole the Diamond, he would have found what he’d sought. Then he could spend his remaining years watching the wind blow, visiting friends, tending the garden, savoring a cup of afternoon tea, standing in the Diamond’s center.

Volta glanced at the clock. Serenity would have to wait. Daniel had vanished fifteen minutes ago, clearly ignoring Volta’s suggestion that he limit disappearances to under ten minutes. He tried to sense Daniel’s presence in the room. He felt, but only faintly, that Daniel was still at the table. Just as Volta was about to abandon nonchalance and yell at Daniel to return, Daniel reappeared, still seated at the table. He showed no evidence of disorientation. His smile was almost indecent with triumph.

‘Forgive the theatrics,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve been around you too long.’

‘Indeed,’ Volta said, his throat tight. He could feel his anxiety collapse through relief into anger. Anger was pointless.

‘Not bad for a beginner, wouldn’t you say?’ When Volta said nothing, Daniel added, ‘It’s all in the imagination, and a million mirrors.’

Volta walked over to Daniel. ‘No it’s not,’ he said evenly. Before Daniel could react, Volta slapped him hard across the face. ‘It’s a dance, and you better watch your step or you’ll fall through one of those mirrors and keep on going.’

Daniel touched his numb cheek and lifted his eyes to Volta’s. ‘Fuck you,’ he said.

Volta swung but his open hand never touched flesh. Daniel had vanished.

Swiftly but without apparent urgency, Volta moved to the center of the kitchen. He rolled up the sleeves on his faded denim shirt and waited, trying to sense Daniel’s whereabouts. Before he could bring his concentration to the necessary point, Daniel appeared behind him, locking his hands behind Volta’s neck and pushing his head forward and down, virtually immobilizing him with a full nelson. Applying just a bit of pressure for emphasis, Daniel grunted, ‘Well my, my –
imagine
that. I mean, who would have even
imagined
the
possibility
, or ever
imagined
it would come to this? Do you
imagine
I’ll accept your apology?’