"And they don't want to do that?"
:'Of course not."
'I don't like the sound of it either," Harry said. "I'm all I've got. I don't want to give it up." "I said let go of it, not give it up," Norma said. "They're not the same thing."
"But when you're dead-"
'.What's dead?" Norma shrugged. "Things change but they don't end. I told you."
"And I don't believe you. I want to, but I don't."
"Men I can't convince you," Norma said. "You'll have to find out for yourself, one way or another." She drew a little closer to Harry. "How long have we known each other?" she said.
"You asked me that."
"And what did you say?"
"Eleven years."
"That long, huh?" She lapsed into silence again, for a minute or so. Then she said, "Are you happy, Harry?"
"Christ, no. Are you?"
"You know what? I am," Norma said, her voice tinged with surprise. "I like your company, Harry. Another time, another place, we would have made quite a pair, you and me. Maybe we did." She laughed, softly.
"Maybe that's why it feels like I've known you longer than eleven years." She shuddered. "I'm getting a little chilly," she said. "Will you take me back downstairs?"
"Of course."
"You sound so tired, Harry. You should sleep for a few hours. I've got a mattress in the spare room."
"It's okay, thanks. I'll go home. I just needed somebody to talk to."
"I wasn't much use, was I? You want plain answers and I don't have any."
"There was something I didn't tell you."
"What's that?"
"I almost stepped through." "Through the door?"
"Yeah.
"And why didn't you?"
"I couldn't leave Ted, for one thing. And-I don't know-I guess I was afraid there'd be no way back."
"Oh, maybe the best journeys are the ones with no return ticket, Haffy," Norma said, with yearning in her voice. "Tell me what it was like."
"The shore? It was beautiful." He conjured it in his mind's eye now and could not help but sigh.
"Go back, then," Norma said.
Harry didn't reply for a moment, but instead scanned the glittering panorama before him. It too was beautiful, after its fashion, but only from this angle, and only at night.
"Maybe I should," he said. "If you're thinking about me, don't," Norma said. "I'll miss you, but I'll be fine. Who knows, maybe I'll come after you one of these days."
He went back to his apartment to clean up (his shirt was glued to his chest with Ted's blood) and gather a few items for the journey. It was an absurd procedure, of course, given that he had no clue as to what lay on the other side, beyond sea, sky, and stones.
He pocketed his wallet, though he doubted they traded in dollars. He put on his watch, though surely time was redundant there. He slipped on his crucifix, despite the fact that he'd heard the tale of Christ had been fashioned to distract attention from the very mystery he was about to enter. Then, with the new day barely dawning, he made his way back to the building between Thirteenth and Fourteenth.
The door he'd opened using the prodigile, less than a dozen hours before, was open. With the steady beam of a flashlight to precede him he made his way to the top of the stairs. There he paused, listening for any sound from below. He'd escaped the prophet's murderous ways once; twice was tempting fate. There was no noise, however; not a moan. Extinguishing the flashlight, he made his way down the stairs by what little illumination came from the door above. It had given out by the time he reached the bottom of the flight, but there was a second source below, this far stronger. The blood of one of the murdered celebrants, spilled liberally from head an I t irew up a lilac light from its pools, like the phosphorescence of something rotted.
Harry halted at the bottom of the step until his eyes had become properly accustomed to the illumination. After a time, it showed him a scene he had prepared himself for as best he could, but which still raised the hairs on the nape of his neck.
He'd seen death arrayed before, of course, all too many times, and seldom neatly. Bodies carved and corroded, their limbs broken, their faces erased. But here was something stranger than that; twice stranger. Here were creatures he'd thought unholy-worshippers of the Anti-Christ, he'd thought-whose flesh was not the stuff of any simple biology. He had a primal suspicion of things that looked as different from himself as these beasts had. Such forms had in his experience housed malice and lunacy. But surveying this scene he could not bring himself to rejoice at their dispatch. Perhaps they'd been innocents, perhaps not. He would never know. What he did know was that in the past week he'd spoken of moving beyond what he'd once assumed were the limits of his species. He could no longer afford to scorn any form, however unlikely, for fear in time it might turn out to be his own. Anything was possible. Perhaps, like a fetus which resembled a reptile and a bird before it came to its humanity, he would revisit those states as he moved on. In which case he had siblings here, in the darkness.
He looked beyond them now, towards the center of the chamber. Though the filaments had lost their light, a few scraps of the misty veils that had hung from them remained. But they could not conceal the absence at the heart. The opening that had led on to Quiddity's shore was gone.
Stumbling over corpses as he went, Harry crossed to the spot, hoping with every step that his eyes deceived him. It was a vain hope. The prophet had closed the door behind him when he'd stepped away into that other place, and left nothing to mark the place.
"Stupid," Harry told himself.
He'd been so close. He'd stood on the threshold of the miraculous, where perhaps the mysteries of being might be solved, and instead of taking the opportunity while he had it, he'd let himself be distracted. He'd turned his back, and lost his opportunity.
as this the destiny Norma had spoken of? That he be left among the dead, while the miracle train moved off without him?
His legs@rained of the adrenaline that had fueled him thus far-were ready to give out. It was time to go, now; time to bury his frustration and his sorrow in sleep for a few hours. Later, maybe, when he had his thoughts in better order, he'd be able to make better sense of all this.
He made his way back across the slaughterhouse and up e stairs. As he came to the top of the flight, however, someing lurched out of the shadows to block his path. The phet's massacre had not been completely thorough, it appeared. Here was one who'd survived, though even in the paltry light of the passageway it was plain she could not be far from death. She wore a wound from the middle of her chest to her hip, its length gummy with dried blood. Her face was as flat as an iron, her eyes gleaming gold in her noseless, lipless face.
"I know you," she said, her voice low and sibilant. "You were at the ceremony."
"Yes I was."
"Why did you come back?"
"I wanted to get through the door."
"So did we all," she said, leaning in Harry's direction. Her eyes shone and fluttered eerily, as if she were reading his marrow. "You're not one of us," she said.
Harry saw no reason to lie. "No, I'm not."
"You cw-ne with him," %he suddenly said. "Oh by the'shu... She flung herself back away from Harry, raising her arms to protect her face.
"It's all right," Harry said. "I wasn't with him. I swear."
He came up the last few steps and started towards her. Too weak to outrun him, the creature sank down against the wall, her broken body wracked with sobs. "Kill me," she said. "I don't care. There's nothing left."
Harry went down on his haunches in front of her. "Listen to me, will you? I didn't come with whoever it was-"