Conner yawned and rubbed his face. “I don’t think it is, either, dude.”
“But that other place is a different Marbury.”
“I don’t think it’s different,” Conner said. “I think it’s maybe a different time.”
“What happened after I left?”
“To you? I have no idea. What you told me, about Ben kicking you out of his house, and you finding the old man’s place on Tamarind.”
“No,” I said. “What happened to you, Con?”
“You must have been hiding out for a while,” he said. “I didn’t get to the old man’s for a couple days, and he was alive then, when I wrote that shit on his wall.”
“Did you see a little kid there?”
“The old man was always helping Odds, like I said. The Rangers didn’t bother him. They thought he was crazy, running around naked, all tatted up like he was, from here down.”
Conner held his hands flat, like he was showing the depth of a swimming pool, just below his rib cage. “But I didn’t know what to do. I was too scared to go back to the station after what happened—what I did—to Jay Pittman, even if he was a dick. I kept thinking about what he said about ‘bad magic,’ and how that Preacher—Uncle Teddy, I swear it—had been talking about this Jumping Man crap, and he seemed especially freaked out about all the stuff that started happening as soon as you showed up.”
“But you said it wasn’t me.”
“It wasn’t you, Jack. I could tell. But I don’t know. Somehow, the insane shit started tuning in when you and I showed up together. Things started getting all fucking crazy. So, after I sat there and watched Pittman die, I decided I wasn’t going to go back.”
“Where did you go?”
“You need to remember this, when we go back, Jack. It’s what needs to happen so we can put things back together.”
Conner was scaring me.
“Okay, Con. What do I need to do?”
“I know where you can get some horses. There’s lots of them being kept by the Rangers at the ag school, and there’s not enough of us to keep an eye on them. You’ll have to get some horses. You need to take Ben and Griffin and get out of there. Go southeast. Go before everything runs out and falls apart. Everyone’s going to die, Jack. There’s too many Hunters now. You know where you’re going. I don’t need to tell you. The settlement. I’m going there, too. We will find each other. We can put things back the way they’re supposed to be, and then maybe we’ll be done with this shit and we won’t fuck with it anymore.”
Sure we won’t, Conner.
“I think I know what you’re saying, Con.”
“I keep thinking how we need to put the pieces of the lens back together,” he said.
We sat there for a few minutes, not talking, until it was light enough to see.
The thing in the sky had faded to just a ripple in the dusty blue of morning.
Conner cleared his throat and shifted. “It’s really hot in here, Jack. Let’s put down the windows.”
I started the engine, lowered our windows, and turned on the air.
“We should go somewhere else to do this, Con. Let’s not do it on the street here.”
“I was thinking that, too.”
* * *
We drove south on the 101.
We headed for the two-lane pass that led out to the ocean, toward Cambria. Along the way, the side of the highway was clogged in some spots with cars and motor homes filled with people who’d brought out their telescopes or cameras to wonder at the thing in the sky.
Most of them had pale and weary expressions of panic on their faces, like they were witnessing the end of the world, or maybe an alien invasion.
When I thought about it, I supposed they were right on both counts.
Conner and I were not from here, and this world was never going to be seen again.
We passed a rest area that was completely filled with motorists. Some of the cars there looked like they’d been packed up with household belongings.
“Look at that shit,” Conner said. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“I don’t know, dude. Maybe they’re scared.”
“Of a fucking Christmas-tree light in the sky? I could show them some shit.”
“Yeah. We both could.”
* * *
I pull the truck off the highway and follow a lightning-bolt string of rusted barbed wire along a single-track path of wheel ruts cut into the drying summer grass.
The roof scrapes beneath the clawed fingers of low-hanging oak branches.
Another Jack would worry about scratching his paint.
At least there is shade here.
Conner doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
We’ve done all this before, and it always feels the same: We are standing on a cliff, looking down into deep black water, daring each other to jump first, watching.
Watching while your best friend falls and falls.
I get out of the truck, leave my door open, and a bell keeps ringing to say that I’ve left my key in the ignition.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Conner gets out and we walk farther into the woods.
“I hope nobody ever finds us,” I say.
“This place doesn’t exist, anyway,” Conner answers.
Ding. Ding.
I have the glasses in my right hand.
It feels like being at the front of the line, waiting to get onto the next roller coaster car that stops.
“It exists. But we don’t belong here.”
“We fucked up worlds, Jack.”
I think about the thing in the sky, the jagged edge of the Marbury lens.
What can I say?
Conner grabs my shoulder and I stop. “How far do you plan on walking, dude?”
Ding. Ding. Ding.
“I don’t know.”
“Look. Let’s try to remember what I said, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I will find you, Jack.”
“Okay.”
“And, Jack? If something happens. I mean, if, let’s say, we end up with one of us in hell and one of us in the Bahamas…”
Conner smiles.
I say, “Fuck that.”
Then Conner hugs me and puts his face right up against my ear.
He backs off.
I raise the glasses.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
“Bye, Con.”
Part Three
THE UNDERWORLD
thirteen
How much time?
A second? A year?
There were neither clocks nor calendars in Marbury. They had gone away, disappeared along with certain words.
I lay on my side, curled up on the stained and bare mattress that tilted downward in the ruins of a bedroom that was mine in some other world.
It was mine here.
I watched the window. The rain stopped; there was no dampness beneath the sill, only dust. When I moved my hand, the glasses fell from my fingertips and onto the floor.
Clack.
This is real.
How much time?
I had things to do.
Get up, Jack.
I sat up, waited for the blood to stop swirling in my head, and took stock of what I was—this Jack.
The new and improved Jack Whitmore.
I turned my hand in front of my eyes, looked at my aching palm. Still bandaged, dry like parchment paper; the wound felt tight.
How long has it been?
I was dressed in the splitting dungarees, the prison uniform I’d had on when I woke up on Ben and Griffin’s garage floor. My boots were the same fraying things that showed open windows onto my filthy socks, and I wore the loose, rusty T-shirt I’d taken from Quinn Cahill. On my belt, I had my knife—Quinn’s knife.
It was stupid, but I suddenly felt so lonely and isolated. I almost wished the kid was there with me.
I shook my head, put my feet down onto the floor.