The Marbury Lens (13 page)

“Who are you?” I whispered.

And Seth said, “Nobody.”

It always looked the same, always looked like death itself, the most terrifying part of the dream that wakes you up.

I saw them coming for us an hour later, a small sea of fiery red brands burning across the desert in the distance.

“Ben.” I shook his shoulder, whispered, “Ben. They’re coming.”

Ben shot up, eyes wide, looking around. I could see he was trying to figure out where we were, what was going on.

“We have time,” I said. “Get your shoes on. I’ll wake up the kid.”

Ben rubbed his eyes and walked across the dirt in his socks to the edge of our camp.

“There’s not that many of ’em,” he said.

“That’s what I was thinking.” I kneeled down beside Griffin. His dog ran off under the bushes to hide.

“Hey, Griff.” I leaned into him and put my hand on his chest. “Griff. We gotta get up now.”

Griffin slowly opened his eyes. He lay there motionless, on his back, all twisted up in those ill-fitting clothes, brow creased, confused, looking at me.

“Where’s Ben?”

“He’s right here,” I said. “It’s okay. We gotta get going, is all.”

Higher up, before the white dawn spread over us, we found the place where we would make a stand against them. Griffin took the horses up a mile past the spot; and, afterwards, came running back, barefoot, no shirt, his guns flapping and tugging down the waist of his pants, the little dog trotting two steps behind him.

We stacked boxes of ammunition by the dozens, and had preloaded magazines for the handguns, all ready to go. I had two extra clips for the rifle attached to the sling, too. All we had to do was wait, but that was a painfully difficult thing.

Ben kept his eyes focused sharp on the rising wave of dust kicked up below us by the horses and wagons they inevitably pulled. They’d have to leave the wagons below; the mountain was too rocky for them to make it up to the height of our post.

“If we don’t miss any of ’em, we probably won’t even have to reload a single clip. It looks like it’s no bigger than a platoon,” Ben said. “Fewer than the number we met the day we lost Henry and the rest of ’em. Maybe the same ones. Today’ll be a different turn, though.”

“There’s a possibility they won’t even find us, anyway,” I said.

“Not with him here.” Ben nodded at Seth, barely visible, crouching against the ground.

Harvesters followed ghosts. Even though they were slow, the bugs followed ghosts; and the devils followed the bugs.

Griffin peered out at the desert floor from behind a crooked ridge-line of broken granite, holding his gun pointed upward.

“They’re still far away,” he said. “Maybe that thing can get back inside you now, Jack.”

“I don’t know.”

“Take your shirt off so I can fix that bandage, anyway,” Griffin said.

“No. It’s okay,” I said.

“Don’t fucking argue with me, Jack!” Griffin glared at me.

I sighed, put my rifle down, and slipped out of my shirt. Then I sat down on the ground in front of Griffin. We all had our jobs. I had to listen to the kid.

Ben kept watch.

“Lay down.” Griffin opened the white first aid kit and squeezed some of that cold goo out onto the wounds above both sides of my hip. It hurt when he rubbed on them, and I thought that he was just trying to be a hard-ass to show me he could handle the job we’d given him. I was still bruised from front to back where that arrow had gone through my hide.

“This doesn’t look good, Jack,” he said.

“It’s from all the riding. I’m okay. Really.”

Then Griffin pulled the tape away from my chest. The gauze pad had stuck inside the wound, and I gasped in pain when he jerked it free. It smelled bad, was stained yellow. The dog sniffed at the bandage, and carried it off in his mouth when Griffin tossed it away from us.

He took another piece of gauze from the kit and lay it on my belly, then leaned over me and squeezed around the bite mark with his fingers.

“Fuck!” I instinctively pushed him away.

“It’s full of pus, Jack.”

Griffin wiped, squeezed again, wiped.

My eyes watered.

He turned his chin over his shoulder and said to Ben, “You ever hear of anyone getting bit by one of those pieces of shit?”

Conner is my best friend.

Ben just looked at us both and shook his head. “Is it bad?”

Griffin shrugged. Then he put some more antibiotic over the marks and used his thumb to smear it around. He looked right into my eyes, and I could tell he was sorry for pushing things a little too far with me, but he didn’t need to say anything. “You gonna be all right, Jack?”

“It’s okay, Griff.”

Then I noticed that Seth had been watching me, hovering beyond Griffin’s shoulder, and the boy just dissolved into a soft fog that swirled above my chest. Soon, I could feel every bit of him like warm jelly as he poured into me through each one of those toothmarks. It made me dizzy, like there was too much oxygen in my head, so I closed my eyes and lay there while Griffin finished taping a clean bandage in place.

And for just a half of a second, maybe less, I could see it all: the man Seth called Pa, Uncle Teddy, Hannah, and I could hear Conner’s voice, too, saying something to me like he was far away, at the end of a dark tunnel.

I fell out of Marbury.

“Hey, numbnuts.”

When I opened my eyes, I was standing under the shower. The light coming from beyond the doorway was the color of late afternoon. Conner stood, wearing a white shirt, slacks, an unknotted tie hanging from both sides of his collar, bouncing from foot to foot with wet socks in the middle of a puddle of water that pooled on the floor through the open glass shower door, saying something to me, holding my phone in one hand.

“Dude, are you fucking
high
or something? I said
Nickie’s on the phone
.” Conner pulled the shower door wider, swinging it back through the bathroom’s doorway. He put the phone back to his ear. “Nickie? Yeah. He’s standing here naked, in the shower. Hang on just a second.”

He waved the phone in front of me, teasingly, the look on his face an obvious confession that he’d been flirting with Nickie.

What else would I expect from Conner, anyway?

Then he flipped the phone around and snapped a picture of me.

That’s what I’d expect.

“I’m going to hang up and send you something, Nickie. Give me ten seconds, babe.” And he ran out of the bathroom.

“You’re a fucking asshole, Conner.”

Under the running water, I could hear my friend as he fell down and began laughing hysterically.

“Oh yeah, baby. And…send!” He laughed.

I shut the water off, closed my eyes. I stood there in the tub, dripping, rubbing my face with my palms.

Seth, take me back.

Fuck this place.

I have to go back. Ben and Griffin need me.

And in a flash of clarity, I came to the realization that it was Henry’s glasses that opened my eyes onto Marbury, but that it was Seth who’d brought me back each time.

Think, Jack, think.

How long was I gone for this time?

The glasses.

Fuck! The glasses.

Seth!

“Fucking Seth,” I said.

“What’d you say?” Conner called from the bedroom.

I wound a towel around my waist and stepped out of the bathroom. Conner was flat on his back, on top of the bed, still laughing, mesmerized by the screen on my cell phone.

“She’s gonna like that, Jack.” And then he giggled, and added, “My bad, dude. I think I accidentally sent it to Stella, too.”

“You are such an asshole.”

“Just kidding, Jack.” He wiped the wetness from his eyes. “But I did send it to Nickie.”

I didn’t care at the moment. The only thing I needed to do was find those goddamned glasses.

“Fuck!” I threw my backpack against the wall, scattering the contents in a debris field from the bed to the window.

“Hey,” Conner said, his voice dropped to a soothing tone. “Dude. Take it easy. You know I’m just messing around.”

I kicked my wet feet through my belongings, looking.

“Hey. Jack. I’m sorry.”

“Fuck!” I bent over and felt around inside the pack. “It’s not you, Con. I don’t give a shit about the fucking picture.”

The sock. At the bottom of the pack. I felt the glasses folded up inside my sock. Somehow I’d managed to put them back, to hide them from Conner. I exhaled in relief, wouldn’t let go of them.

My towel fell off. I was standing in front of our open window completely naked. I picked up the towel and screened it in front of me, turning around. The clock showed that it was past six in the evening. On top of the bed, Conner was sitting on the shirt and tie that I must have been wearing earlier. He looked concerned, scared almost.

Why were we dressed up?

“What day is it?”

Conner sat up, scooted back on the bed slightly. He shut off my phone, and put it down on top of my dark blue dress pants.

“Dude. Are you okay, Jack?”

I saw the look on his face.

I’m scaring Conner.

Fuck you, Jack.

I deflated, sat down on the chair at the desk, put the glasses in my lap, and dropped my face into my hands.

“Fuck this shit,” I said.

Conner got up, moved to the corner of the bed, and sat down right across from me.

“Jack. What’s going on?”

“What day is it, Con?”

“Are you kidding me, Jack?”

“I wish I was.”

“It’s Thursday, Jack. We just got back from St. Atticus School. Thursday.” He held the end of his tie up between two fingers. I remembered Wynn insisting we wear ties when we visited his old school. “We were going to change out of these things and go out.”

Three days.

I didn’t look up.

What the fuck happened to three days?

“Something’s wrong with me, Con.”

The nausea. I stood up, ran past Conner. I dropped to my knees at the toilet and began puking my guts out.

Freddie Horvath did something to my brain.

There’s nothing I can do about it.

I don’t want to do anything about it.

Fuck you, Jack.

“Jack? Jack!” Conner stood behind me. My knees, in a puddle of warm water on the slick floor, slipping out from under me.

Just like being born.

The trip of a lifetime.

“Jack? You’re scaring the shit out of me, dude.”

I must have looked ridiculous. Conner stepped away and came back carrying my towel. He draped it over me as I spit acid down into the bowl.

“Just get the fuck away from me, Conner. There’s something wrong with me. I’m all fucked up. Just get the fuck away!”

I rested my forehead on the bridge of my arms. Shaking, I still held on to that sock and those goddamned glasses that were inside of it. I could hear Conner backing away from me.

“I’m sorry, Jack.”

“I’m sorry, too, Con. I’m sorry, too.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to cry so bad at that instant. I could feel my eyes swelling up. But I’d never cried, and I didn’t let myself do it then, either.

Breathe, Jack. Breathe.

“Is it really Thursday?”

“You’re not fucking with me, are you?”

“No.”

“Dude. You need to talk to me, Jack.”

I nodded my head, but I didn’t look at him.

And I didn’t cry.

“I need to lay down.”

Conner stepped out of my way as I passed him. He had this uncertain and terrified look on his face, like he was watching me do something really bad and couldn’t stop me.

You’ve been doing something really bad, Jack, and nobody can stop it.

I got into the bed and pulled the sheet over me. I lay there on my side, facing the wall, just staring at it, my hand wrapped tightly around the glasses that I tucked under the wet pillow beneath my head.

The toilet flushed.

I heard the chair scooting across the wood floor. For a moment, I thought it was Seth again, but when I glanced down to the foot of the bed I saw that Conner was sitting there beside the wall with his hands on his knees, staring at me, like he was waiting for something.

“I can’t remember anything, Con.”

“Okay,” he said. “But you remember who I am, right?”

“The last thing I remember is Monday. When we went out. I don’t remember anything that happened after the fight.”

“We didn’t get in any fight.”

“I did,” I said. “After you went to sleep, I went back out. I got in a fight. I beat the crap out of this guy who’s been following me around ever since I got here.”

Conner said, “Is he a cop or a perv?”

“Neither. He’s just fucking with me.”

“You sure, Jack?”

“I’m not lying to you, Con.” I cleared my throat. “Tell me what happened since Monday.”

He scooted his chair closer to me, and almost whispered, “Really?”

I looked right at Conner. “Yeah.”

He sighed. “I’ll be honest, Jack. I don’t remember going to bed on Monday night, either. I hope it was good for you, too, Jack.”

He tried smiling. Conner was always trying to make a joke out of everything.

Then he said, “Do you think you need help, bro?”

I knew what he meant. He thought I was going crazy. It didn’t matter. I thought so, too. “I don’t know.”

Conner leaned forward.

“We woke up late on Tuesday. After noon. We ate. Went for a run. Then we went all over the place by the Underground. Drank a couple beers. Pretty much the same as yesterday, only you and Nickie have been calling each other, like, every five minutes. And you told her we were coming out to Blackpool tomorrow, to hang out with her and her friend, so we’d all come back to London together this weekend. We already got bus tickets to do that. And we went to St. Atticus this morning. Do you remember that?”

I tried to remember.

“Did we take any pictures?”

“You mean besides the one I just sent to Nickie’s phone?” Conner shoved my foot, smiled. When I didn’t react at all, he said, “Dude, you really are fucking scaring me.”

“It’s not the first time this happened, Con, where I just kind of drop out and then come back and it’s, like, later. But I’ve never been out of it for three days before.”

I heard him inhale, deep, slowly.

“Where do you go when that happens to you?”

“You tell me.”

“I’ll get your camera,” he said.

My phone buzzed on the bed next to me. I rolled over and grabbed it, looked at the screen.

Nickie.