The Lost and the Damned (18 page)

Then it’s the black again.

Once you’ve become willing to accept time travel as a genuine possibility, a whole range of ideas and theories that had been previously unavailable opens up. Maybe the ideas were too crazy, too out there, too unlikely. They were denied because they had to be impossible. But once you accept the impossible, it’s a wide open world. It’s comfortable for a while, as the world now seems larger and more full of possibility. It’s when you find what lurks in the shadows of those possibilities, the things that hide in the darkness of the impossible that change your mind.

I woke up, disoriented again. I recovered quickly, quicker than the last time. I was still slow getting my bearings. If I had been clearer of mind, I would be thankful that I didn’t wake up in a closet again. No, this time I was outside. I saw sunlight, though I was laying in shade. I turned and saw Katie next to me, her eyes blinking as she stared at me. We were on the ground lying against a car or a truck or something. The ground was gravel, and looking forward, I saw a great brown rock face rising high.

I pulled myself up to a standing position and felt my center of gravity just drop, my head suddenly dizzy. I reached out and steadied myself on the vehicle, the disorientation passing quickly. I tried to think how we got here and remembered the office room. I had shuffled Katie into the closet and then stepped into the closet myself. But there was no closet in the closet. Instead of a cramped closet, there was just space. Black, empty, limitless space. I stepped out into the void and then my mind went blank. There was a long gap in my memory and then we were here.

When my balance returned to me, I stood up. We were in the shadow of a mobile office trailer, the kind you see at construction sites or in movies with spoiled movie stars. We were on the rear side, the door assumedly on the other side. It was the trailer that we laid against in our unconsciousness. I helped Katie to her feet. She seemed okay, just quiet and very confused.

“I guess my rescue isn’t quite going as planned,” I said to Katie with a half smile. She smiled back with a real smile, clueless to my joke.

I stretched my arms, looking up at the sky. The rock face rose high, but the sky was clear. It curved somewhat, and I wondered if we were in some kind of a basin. I didn’t feel as freaked out as I thought I would be. I wondered if I had too many surprises thrust on me in a short period of time. Maybe I was tired of being shocked. Maybe things have gotten so weird I was no long surprised. This was at least a change from the hospital. I still had no clue what was going on, but hey, now I was getting some nice crisp air. It smelled like mountain air, and that was nice.

Enough stretching, I decided, it was time to figure out this next fucked up situation. I peeked around the trailer and didn’t see anyone immediately on the other side. I did see something that interested me more. Stepping from behind the trailer, I stood and stared at the stone temple.

Before me was something that looked like a Mayan temple gone mad; or something that I assumed was Mayan from the scant images I had seen on cable television. Could be Aztec or Olmec for all I knew. There were stone tiers that went the whole way up the pyramid. Stairs led up the center of each face, reaching the pyramid top. Instead of a point or a building at the top, it was flat. It looked like there was something stone on top, but I couldn’t tell what. Stone arms grew out of the sides of the pyramid, reaching for the sky before turning in on the pyramid summit with points, as if a giant insect had died and fallen on its back. The temple was awe inspiring itself, but it was where it collided with the modern day that was of even more note.

Around the pyramid and on each of the tiers were stationed all sorts of scientific equipment, machines with consoles and a web of wires connecting them all. Giant floodlights dotted the temple. Scientists went back and forth on the pyramid like ants on an ant hill. Besides our own trailer, a number of others surrounded the pyramid. I stood there, taking it all in, wondering just how weird things could get and just where the hell I was. Were we in Mexico? South America? I had decided time travel was possible, but this was beyond that. Where the hell were we and how did we get here?

That’s when Katie started screaming.

The sudden sound nearly made me jump out of my skin. My shoulders tightened and my head snapped around. Katie was standing a step or two behind me, staring at the pyramid. No one was near her and she wasn’t bleeding, she was just standing there, looking and screaming. Then she turned to me.

“WHY DID YOU BRING ME HERE? WHY THE FUCK DID YOU BRING ME BACK HERE? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHY DID YOU BRING ME HERE?”

She just continued to scream at me as I stared dumbfounded. This soon passed as I realized her screaming would attract all sorts of unwanted attention. I grabbed her with both arms, pulling her back behind the trailer.

She writhed in my arms, screaming at me, calling me an asshole, a prick, and a ton of other creative insults. All the time she kept demanding to know why I brought her back here. “WHY? WHY?” she finally settled on, repeating it over and over. I tightened my hold on her, forcing my hand over her mouth to quiet her. I hated doing this, using force against her, but I felt it needed to be done. She screamed against my hand, the muffled sound thankfully much quieter. I held her tight and whispered, “Shhhh! Shhhh! Calm down. If you calm down, I’ll let go of you. Just no screaming. We may be in danger.”

It took a few moments, but eventually she stopped screaming and stopped fighting me.

“If I let you go, will you be quiet?”

She nodded.

I let her go and she jumped out of my arms, immediately taking a few steps away from me, wrapping her arms around herself. I almost expected her to start screaming again. Instead, she just complained. “Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck is wrong with you!”

“I needed you to stop screaming – ” I started.

“Why the fuck did you bring me back here?” she demanded, interrupting me. “Here of all places. Oh my god. Oh shit, this is so fucked up. Not here. Just not here.” She gripped herself tighter.

“Katie?”

“Jesus Christ, this is really fucked up,” she said, not even paying attention to me.

I took a moment to peek around the trailer. As far as I could tell, no one was coming this way. I don’t know how they didn’t hear the screaming. Maybe they took the time to go get their guns.

I turned back to her. “Katie?”

“Just so fucked up,” she mumbled.

“Katie?” I said louder and more insistently.

“What?” she practically shouted, finally paying attention to me. She looked annoyed.

“Do you know how you got here?”

“Do I know how I got here? Of course I know how I… fucking… got… here…” her voice slowed down and trailed off. She looked confused.

I gave her room and she took a long minute, deep in thought and confusion.

“No, I don’t,” she finally said softly.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked.

She looked at me. “Yes. No. I don’t…” She furrowed her brow, breaking eye contact with me. “It was like… It was like a four year old came into your house and took over, banishing you to a tiny room in the attic. You can look out a small window, but you can’t see much. She comes up to tell you everything that’s happening, but she tells it in four-year-old talk. It's worse when you know the four year old is you… or used to be you. Actually,” she said, meeting my gaze again, “it’s more accurate that I used to be her.”

Now it was my turn to be at a loss for a response. I decided to bulldoze past the particulars of her mental landscape and back to the stuff I thought mattered. “My name is John Keats. Your record company hired me to find you and bring you back.”

“Are you some kind of bounty hunter?” Those mesmerizing green eyes narrowed, ready to be judgmental.

“Detective, actually.”

“Private?” she asked. Why does everyone ask that way?

“If I’m going to hate my boss, it might as well be me,” I responded.

She nodded a few times, her eyes flitting around as she nodded, as if confirming everything made sense and was consistent. “John Keats, that’s the name of someone famous, isn’t it?”

“A poet, actually.”

“A poet? Seriously?” she asked.

“I hope you won’t hold it against me,” I said with a smile.

This seemed to soften her expression. “Nah, a poet’s cool. It’s not like we get to pick our names. We have to rely on other people for them.” She nodded more, as if things were making more sense. “So I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think you’re going to get paid.”

My smile disappeared from my lips, but I tried not to show any other reaction. “Why is that?”

“Cause I don’t have a record company.”

“You do, actually. Intersperse Records.”

“Intersperse, eh?” she said, trying it out. “How did that happen?”

“According to the story,” I responded, “it was Robbie. He got your video onto MTV, it played well, and from there the record companies were falling over themselves to get your band.”

“Fucking Robbie,” she said, “I knew there was a plus side of him banging that MTV ho. At least we have an album now. A couple of people have heard of us now.”

“It’s a little more than a couple,” I said, recalling the pictures of her plastered all over record stores. “Your album is gold or platinum, or whatever the best of the best is.”

“No shit?” she said, surprised, leaning back on the trailer and folding her arms. “I’m not sure if I even believe all this.”

I shrugged. “Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you believe it or not. What I care is what Intersperse believes. As long as their check is real, the reality or unreality of your career doesn’t matter to me.”

“That’s a rather pragmatic way to go about things,” she said.

“In my line of work, I have to work with what I’m given. My task here is ‘find the girl’. As long as you’re Katie Vanders, it doesn’t matter whether you rock or not.”

“That makes sense.” She paused for a moment, an impish smile appearing on her lips. “And for the record, I do rock.”

She pushed herself off from the trailer and began pacing, walking in a circle. “It’s good to be back in control,” she confided, stretching her arms. Her pacing took her to the edge of the trailer, where she could turn and see the pyramid. I saw her head start to turn, then flinch as she forced herself not to look. Then she paced back into the more “safe” area in the shadow of the trailer.

“So how’d we get here, Mr. Detective?” she finally asked, her arms swinging idly.

“That’s a long and strange story,” I said reluctantly.

“Come on, it can’t be that long. Once you start, you’ll be surprised how quickly you finish. So you found me in the hospital, we left the hospital, you drove me back here for some reason…”

“No,” I said flatly.

“No?”

“We never left the hospital.”

She looked around, then put her hands on her hips. “I’m having a hard time believing that.”

“We never left. Not really…” I said, looking for a good way to explain it. “We were in the hospital, we blacked out, then we were in the hospital still, but in 1985. From there we –“

“Wait,” she said, putting her hand out to stop me. “1985?”

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly feeling stupid.

“The year 1985?”

“Yeah,” I said, now embarrassed. This had not been the best way to bring up my suspicions of where we had been.

She looked me up and down. “Are you sure you weren’t another patient in the hospital?” I opened my mouth to respond, but she waved her hand and continued. “I mean, you could be some stalker that just ended up here. Grab Katie, take her to the place of her greatest trauma, then tell her lies about her music career.“ I opened my mouth to object again, but she waved me off again. “Introduce yourself as a famous poet, then, once she is lulled into a relative state of comfort, then you bring out your crazy 1985 theories. Even for a crazy person, this is a crappy first date. Color me unimpressed.”

I opened my mouth to talk, finally given the chance to speak, but then I closed it. How would one respond to something like that? I had figured out where she was, come to save her, found myself embroiled in a sea of weirdness while trapped inside a godforsaken hospital, finally got Katie to wake up, tried to explain, and then had not only my sanity questioned but also my truthfulness. Looking back over everything, maybe I should question my sanity.

“The suit is a nice touch, though,” she said, breaking the silence. “Every girl’s crazy about a sharp dressed man.”

If I had tried at that moment to explain the events of the hospital to someone, they would also think me mad. It’s how things added up at the time, but I agree the logic would equal crazy. Now, even through the lens of time, recounting the story seems unreal. There in the moment, after the accusation, I began to question my sanity. Even before I entered the hospital, things were strange. Pillars of light, monsters. Once I entered the hospital, there was death, martial law, red electricity, possible time travel, another monster, and more death. Did that all really happen? Had this all been some really involved delusion? If that were true, how did we get here? Moreover, where the hell was here? If Katie’s accusations of insanity were true, this place we were at would be the only real place, as I would now be emerging into clarity and the real world. After having seen that pyramid, I would have guessed this to be the delusion.

I shook my head. No more of those thoughts. There was no benefit in questioning my sanity. Maybe I was sane, maybe I wasn’t. But ultimately, I couldn’t go around questioning. I had to act, and to act, I had to believe that I was sane; I had to believe that all I know was true. As soon as I question myself, I have already failed. I had a job to do and it needed to be done. I decided it would get done whether it was real or if I was just some shivering inmate in a room without a view.

“Katie, where is this?” I asked. I knew this place had terrible memories for her, and while I didn’t wish to torture her, I needed to know where we were. Katie’s doubt aside, I wondered if this was also in 1985.