The Very Last Days of Mr Grey (26 page)

Warmth, happiness as she looks upon giant eggs, cradles them protectively. Yelling men, chains pulling her away. The men stealing away, lugging her eggs with them. Breathing fire in one last desperate attempt to protect her offspring, then being shot and chained for years, left to rot in a lost, abandoned city whose king is dead.

Eila awakening something.

Mason, someone who didn’t belong.

The doors, the holes they left. Her chains evaporating. Flying for the first time in a hundred years. For the first time since she was free, as a young, small, happy whelp.

Then into a city like she had never seen. Confusion, then a call, something familiar. Going toward it at first and then something falling on her.

Fear, trying to escape, then trying to defend herself. Pain, falling—

Gunshot. And it is not from the dragon’s memory. Mason’s awareness expands, encompassing his physicality, his current location.

The agents shot at him— But then he realizes too late, they didn’t—not at him—and his eyes go to the dragon’s, and the single hole the bullet left as it traveled through the dragon’s open eye, into
her
eye, and the images streaming into Mason’s mind abruptly end.

Mason left his hand on the creature, and chills erupted over his entire body. His lower jaw moved forward of its own accord, his eyes stung, and he did not turn around, did not even face the two agents.

He just kept his hand there, until the dragon breathed out. Its final breath.

The eyelid closed over the great eye, and he said, very quietly, “I’m sorry.”

Then she was gone. He felt it as a physical thing, a turning away, a dissipation.

Mason turned, and faced the enemy.

They stood there, unrepentant.

He stared at them. One (for he did not care which) held a large gun out, still pointed at the being he’d just stolen the life from, the other with an identical gun at his side, as both looked on dispassionately. He heard what sounded like orders being shouted from all around them, but for now, they were alone, invisible in a cloud of dust, the soldiers too far away to interfere.

Finally, one of the agents spoke. “Come now, Mr Grey, stop this. We have complete control of your dream.”

Mason closed his eyes. “No.”

“No choice but the spike then.”

“A dream spike is less accurate.”

“But so be it.”

The other agent raised his gun, and they both fired at once.

Mason watched through closed eyes the projectiles approach. The same type of bullet that had pierced that dragon’s eye, when all other weapons had been ineffective against it.

All but you
.

The shots were aimed for his head, and Mason Grey didn’t move.

He felt one hit his skull, compress, then stop. The other hit his closed eyelid. Both hung there for a moment before falling to the ground. A small spot of blood formed where the bullet had pierced the skin on his forehead. Mason wiped it away. Then he opened his eyes. They were bright, and clear.

The agents looked at each other. Fredriks fired several times at Mason.

The bullets hit him. Some got stuck in his clothing, most fell to the torn up grass. None broke skin.

“You,” Mason said slowly, “are in my world.” Wind spun up around him, like an invisible helicopter was silently hovering above, the dust swirling away up into the clouds, revealing them to the world. “And in my world,” his feet left the ground, great torrents of wind tore at his hair and clothing, obscuring his face in a dark blur, “you end.”

Mason flew toward them, slamming into them both with his arms, then continuing on. Their feet left tracks in the ground as they tried futilely to dig them in to stop him as he dragged them out of the park.

They beat on his arms, his face, struggled against him to get free. He ignored this. A gun was placed to the side of his head, fired. His head jerked very slightly, but he did not slow.

That was when they began to scream. “Get us out of here!”

They were no longer clawing at Mason, but at their own chests.

Mason passed the edge of the field, through the midst of the shocked military onlookers, some diving out of the way, some keeping their weapons trained on the three of them—but not a single bullet was fired, though it wouldn’t have mattered—then Mason altered his angle to avoid the line of soldiers, steepening it, and the three of them were in the air, streaking past a news helicopter that almost went into a spin from the shocked pilot’s unintentional jolt of the controls, then past the vapor trail of a jet piloted by one Lieutenant Myers, high above the city.

But Mason didn’t stop, Mason didn’t slow. He kept going directly into the sky, troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere.

Space.

And as he sped the light around him bent and stretched until they were all, the three of them, burning with fire that would not go out for anything, anything except the darkness Mason now approached, now entered, a million miles from earth.

Silence, cold. Mason opened a door. Beyond were blackness, and horrors that hid in the darkest of places. He no longer had need of his hands to open these doors, and so the two men were still there in them, grasped one in each arm. And they were screaming.

Mason tossed Fredriks through.

“Get me of here!” Ehd shouted.

“Oh, Mr Ehd, I will.” Mason tossed him through, and the door slammed shut.

An infinite distance away, two men scream in their cradles, and then fall silent as their life force is ripped from them. Their hearts continue to beat. Their lungs continue to work. Not a thought fills their minds.

“It’s too cold for skinny dipping.”

“Come on! Chicken.”

He looks at them. “I’m gonna do it.” He kicks off his shoes, tosses the socks in their general direction, strips off his shirt and starts running toward the water, hopping out of his jeans as he does. He gets them off just before he reaches the surf and tosses them overhead behind him. Then he’s in the water, and it is freezing.

He’s at the beach with friends. It’s a different beach, and different friends, and this time he is the one to go in the water.

He floats, adjusting to the cold, looking up at the night sky, the stars and satellites streaking past, thinking how peaceful it is. His ears are in the water. All sound is blocked, and the only anchor to shore is a fire burning in the distance.

Something brushes his leg, and he absently reaches down. It’s slimy. He pulls it up. Seaweed.

And this, for some unknown reason, makes him think of sharks. And he realizes that he is all alone, in the middle of a dark ocean in the middle of the night out past the breakers, that he has no idea what is swimming beneath him, only that
something
is, and his only protection against whatever lurks below is a pair of boxers that wouldn’t stop a puppy’s claw.

Mason swims back to shore.

When he comes out, his friends are talking to a group of girls, sitting around a fire. One of them is drenched, and only in bra and underwear. Mason takes a seat next to her before he realizes what he’s doing. “Here’s the crazy man!” one of his friends says. “And he sits next to a kindred spirit!” At this point Isla turns to face him. She smiles. Mason remembers. This is how he meets Isla Doyle. This is how he falls in love.

Mason sat alone in his void. He wasn’t aware of how much time had passed, if any had. He sat there, contemplating. He knew soon he would have to go get Martynn. But for now, he sat. For now, he thought.

A time passed in this manner, and Mason observed his thoughts before letting them go on, unarticulated. Many things floating into and through his mind, many people. But the one that kept coming back—
The one that haunts us
—was Isla. Isla at sixteen, when he’d never seen her before. At twenty, when he had. At twenty-two, when she graduated. At twenty-six, when she died.

When we killed her
.

Mason’s eyes were open, and though there wasn’t much difference between open and closed here, for some time he’d been aware of a speck in the corner of his vision. Something that glimmered with faintest light.

Now he turned his attention toward this, and saw it was a handle. A bar-shaped thing, like a shovel’s.

He frowned. He approached. All he could see was the handle. And though there was no direction in this place, his mind exerted its own sort of order and caused things to appear where he expected. But this, this was where he’d expect the floor, it was what he fell toward when he sat, what his feet rested upon, if they could be said to rest at all. Not where a doorway would be.

He grabbed the handle. It twisted easily in his hand. It couldn’t be a door, he thought, it was a…

It’s a hatch
, a voice whispered sinuously.

He hardly had to pull, and the thing opened.

At first he saw nothing, but then an image, dim—so dim that even in this place of dark his eyes had to adjust—resolved. It was a girl.

“Emily?” But no, even Emily was not that young.

The girl was running.
From something.
She looked back, which was toward the hatch Mason peered through. He felt vertigo at this Escher delusion of direction, and had to rest one hand on the edge of the hatch to prevent himself from falling through.

She was running through a haze that looked like smoke.
It’s fog. The Fog.

Her clothing was unfamiliar, her hair as well, but Mason was overcome with the sudden certainty that he knew who this was. It was impossible, but it had to be her. His wishing had made it so.

“Isla!” He shouted it, but she was looking forward again, and didn’t seem to hear. He tried again, “Isla!”

She can’t hear you.

Mason felt a hand on his shoulder.

“You need to get a little closer.”

The shove pushed Mason off balance, his hand slipping, and he fell through and into the mist. He spun as he fell, and saw a man—himself—looking down, shining, silhouetted by darkness.

That self was grinning, saying something. The words didn’t reach him, but in his mind, Mason heard.
There are more worlds than this. And more than that as well.

Then the hatch was closed, and everything went dark.

On a street on which no cars drove, miles away from New York, in the city in which Mason Grey had lived, a large procession was making its way toward a church. The streets were lined on all sides. Some people held candles, some flowers, others, signs. All were somber, all were grateful to the man passing through their midst.

The procession was long, and stretched blocks back.

It made its slow and deliberate way inexorably on, as life proceeds toward death.

Finally, it reached the church, ascended the stairs, entered.

The coffin was carried past the already packed pews. It was laid at the front of the church, then seats were taken, the front row reserved for these vanguards who had borne the burden all this way.

A priest opened the coffin, and there Mason Grey lay, perfect in death, his body completely undamaged, his cause of death—unknown.

This would be the only viewing.

There was much crying. Many friends came up to his coffin, paying their last respects before his body was returned to ashes, to atoms.

The line to get inside was long, and only those who’d gotten there early or knew him personally were inside now.

It was a child who first said something, something that all who saw the body noticed but had been too possessed of, or by, adulthood to say it out loud. “Mom,” the girl said, “what’s wrong with him?”

The mother stifled a cry. Her daughter was too young. Tom had been right. Her ex-husband always was about Genevieve. “He’s passed away sweetie.”

The girl frowned, looking at her mother, who was growing more and more aware of the line formed behind her, waiting their turns to partake in this ancient, awful, sad, ritual. “I know
that
. I meant, it’s not
him
.”

She placed a hand on her daughter’s head. “Come on honey. Let’s go.”

The girl looked back at the open coffin as she let her mother lead her away. “It’s just a shell,” she whispered. “He is missing.”

The next person in line was a woman, and she was crying. Her name was Lily. As she cried over the body, the woman behind her watched the little girl be pulled slowly away, to the pews, where they took a seat. The girl’s gaze never left the coffin, and Emily Penelópē Doyle couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that something was off.

The woman ahead of her, who was someone Emily vaguely recognized, walked away and Emily stepped up to take her turn.

She looked at her friend—more than that—laid out in a coffin, still far too young. This wasn’t something she had expected to have to go to again, not for a long time yet, if ever. And now she’d been to two in one week.

But as she stared at his closed eyes, his unmoving chest, his hands folded neatly, the girl’s words echoed in her head.
He’s missing
, she’d said, and as Emily gazed at the too-perfect body, she knew what the girl had meant.

Mr and Ms Williams, eighty if they were a day, moved up to the coffin as the young woman moved away without saying anything, without touching the body, as if frightened, or more likely as if embarrassed. Maybe she wanted to pray silently, keep whatever she had to say to herself. And—assuming the rumors the other women in Ms Williams’s apartment complex bandied about were true—they weren’t married, after all, and this was a house of God. Ms Williams wasn’t a big believer in the fire and brimstone God of old, and she doubted people like Emily, or her own gay nephew, would be going to Hell for such small things. No, that was reserved for the truly evil, not for people who made mistakes, or were different through no fault of their own.

But these ephemeral thoughts proved their nature as the body of
The
Mason Grey (who’d helped her can a hundred and two jars for the local animal shelter) came into view as she and her husband reached the coffin and evaporated under the burning sense of the essential wrongness which she saw laid before her.