“So it’s pretty safe wherever it is?”
With his broadest smile yet, the little man replied, “You’d be amazed.”
“I see.”
“Secondly, they won’t come to take it from you. I can assure you that. They won’t know you have it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Trust me.”
It was strange, but Eric found that he really did trust this man. There was simply something about him. He was special somehow. Meaningful. If that made any sense.
“Directly behind this station is a narrow path. It’s little more than a game trail. Follow it and it’ll take you to an old salvage yard. There’ll be scroungers there, but they shouldn’t bother you if you don’t get too close.”
Scroungers? That was good. He was worried there wouldn’t be any more freaky creatures to deal with.
“Edgar will meet you there. He’ll show you the final road, the one that’ll take you to the cathedral.”
Eric sat there, staring at his nearly empty coke can, pondering all that he’d heard. The attendant did not rush him. He sat patiently behind his desk, continuously smiling.
He recalled the dream. Like now, this man had told him all these things and sent him on ahead. His head fuzzy with morphine, still weak from loss of blood, Dream Eric had barely understood everything that he was told. Specifically, he realized, he’d neglected to ask the only question that really mattered. So he asked it now: “If I make it to the cathedral…will I survive?”
For the first time since they met, the little man’s smile disappeared. He stared back at Eric with an expression that was actually quite sad. “That’ll be entirely up to you,” he said.
“Father Billy said that you told him no one who enters the cathedral ever leaves alive. You told him it would claim anyone who went looking for its secrets.”
“I might have said something like that once, yes.”
“Then how is that up to me?”
His smile returning, the gas station attendant replied, “It’s always up to you.”
Eric didn’t understand. But he clearly wasn’t going to get any more than this. He drained the rest of his coke and glanced around for a garbage bin. There didn’t seem to be one.
“Just leave it anywhere. I’ll toss it in the recycling bin next time I go out.”
Eric placed it on the corner of the desk and stood up. “Thank you,” he said.
“You’re quite welcome.” Then, leaning forward, the little man added, “For everything.”
Though it seemed impossible, Eric was sure that he was referring to the events of his dream, when the little man saved his life.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Eric left through the front door, just as he did in his dream. In both time frames, no big, floppy-eared cat waited to tear out his intestines.
He glanced up and down the narrow blacktop road—not one car had driven by since he arrived—and walked around to the back of the station. There, he found the narrow game trail, just as the little man had promised.
Suddenly, it occurred to him that he never asked the man’s name.
He considered going back, but decided to simply keep walking. If he survived his journey to the cathedral, maybe he’d see him on his way out. If not, what did it really matter whether he knew the man’s name?
Pushing past the overlapping branches, he made his way along the narrow trail, down a long and shallow hill, across a densely forested gully and up over the next rise.
His cell phone rang. It was Isabelle.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
“It’s like we got cut off. But I didn’t think that could happen.”
“I didn’t either.”
“Did you catch all that weirdness back there?”
“Some of it. But it was weird. It was like you were in a cave or something. I could barely reach your mind.”
“Strange.”
“Very.”
“You were saying there was something odd about the gas station before we got disconnected.”
“I was. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something very different about that place. I don’t think it’s a part of the fissure.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s just… Odd.”
“Well, it’s behind me now.”
“It is. I should hang up. Karen’ll be calling you soon.”
“I’m sure she will.”
“Bye.”
Eric disconnected the phone, but didn’t bother sticking it back in his pocket. Now that his signal had returned, he saw that he had eight missed calls. Karen had already been trying to reach him. And sure enough, within five minutes the phone began to buzz again.
“Where are you now?”
“I’m in the woods.”
“How’s the dream coming along? Remember anything interesting yet?”
“Interesting? More like disturbing. Apparently, two days ago I would’ve been mauled and almost killed by some kind of freaky cat.”
“What?”
“Crazy scary, right?”
“What happened?”
Eric told her about his trip through the canyon and the disturbing memories that churned up as he made his way along the stream. He then told her about his visit with the diminutive gas station attendant and his curious smile.
“So weird… Who do you think he was?”
“I have absolutely no idea. I guess he’s like the old folks. A caretaker of some sort.”
Karen considered this for a moment. “Could be. But he sounds more important than a caretaker.”
“He does. Maybe he’s the head caretaker. The guy in charge of it all.”
“Maybe.”
“I couldn’t even begin to guess. This is all way over my head.”
“The cathedral is starting to sound like a crazy scary place.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“What did he mean when he said everything changes there?”
“You keep asking me like I’m going to have an answer for you.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m just saying that this is seriously beyond my field of study.”
“You didn’t take that class in theoretical dimensional compression physics? How irresponsible of you.”
“I know. It’s days like these when those fluff classes really come back to bite you.”
“Slacking never pays.”
“It really doesn’t.”
Both of them fell silent for a moment as Eric made his way deeper into the forest.
“Are you all right?” Karen asked finally.
“I’m fine. I’m just a little shaken.”
“That sounded like a hell of a nightmare.”
“It was. It was so vivid. I can’t figure out how I managed to get up and walk out of the gas station in the state I was in.”
“Well, it was only a dream.”
“No. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.”
Karen sighed. “I guess it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t real. But it was real, too. It’s…”
“Totally insane.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“I think I see something up ahead. I’m going to hang up for a little bit again.”
“Okay. I’ll call you later.” Apparently, she was done even pretending she could count on him to call her back in a timely fashion.
“Sure. Bye.”
Pocketing the phone, Eric pushed through the dense foliage and stepped out into a wide field where tall grass and weeds struggled for real estate with seven impressively long rows of old and rusting automobile carcasses. An old, red Firebird, half hidden in the tall grass, stood facing him. The yellow bird painted across the vehicle’s distinct hood stared back at him.
This was obviously the salvage yard the gas station attendant told him to expect. But it clearly hadn’t been used in many years. The newest vehicle he could see was a seventy-seven Chrysler.