The Reality Conspiracy (37 page)

Satisfied no one was coming, she reached forward, planted her forearms against the floor, and dragged herself a foot closer to the door. Her heart beat even faster; her lungs worked like a bellows. Sweat ran down her face, trickled into her eyes, stinging, clouding her vision. Another foot.

The door was within reach! She touched it to make sure. If she could get through it, if she could get outside, the shotgun would be less than four feet away.

Supported by her left forearm, Daisy arched her spine, reaching for the latch. Blood flowed down her arm in bright rivulets, tickling her, filling wrinkles, weaving and crisscrossing like a network of external arteries.

She hammered on the latch with the ball of her thumb.

Once. Again.

Cringing from the noise, Daisy listened for movement within the house.

Everything was quiet. She pushed the flayed ham of her hand against the metal latch. Metal scraped exposed nerve. Daisy bit her lower lip in an effort not to cry out.

The latch moved with a metallic click.

The door opened about an inch.

Just enough to see outside.

The two hikers were gone, but they could not have traveled far. No, she could still call them with a shotgun blast.

Daisy rolled onto her left side, hoping that would create enough room for the door to swing open.

Yes! Open now. Wide open. Yet she couldn't feel the sunlight on her body. She seemed to be lying in a shadow.

She bent her neck backward, forcing herself to look up.

A man stood in the doorway.

Thank God
, she thought.

The first thing she saw was his bare feet, then bare legs. His bright white garment hung all the way to his knees. As her gaze traveled higher, her eyes clouded with sweat and tears. Straining, she could almost see his face.

"Help me," she wanted to say, but no words came.

His arm descended: she reached to take it. There was no pain as her ruined hand touched his.

The eclipsed sun glowed behind his head like a halo.
He must be an angel
, she thought. Yes, a white-robed angel come for me.

The man bent lower. She felt his strong hands probing underneath her shoulders and legs. He picked her up with ease, and now his face was close to hers.

He looked familiar. He looked so familiar. She blinked, and his smiling face came into focus.

And she knew!

Oh. Ooooh. So it was real. He really was out there.

She was so very happy to see her husband again. She wanted to kiss him, tell him that—

No! What was he doing? He was carrying her back inside the house!

She had to warn him! Had to tell him about those people, in the bedroom.

"B-b-beh-troom . . ."

Now they were passing the kitchen table, passing it and . . .

Stepping toward the bedroom. He had misunderstood. He thinks I want him to take me into the bedroom.

"Nuuuh. Nuuh nununu." She couldn't tell him. She couldn't speak.

The bedroom door opened by itself, like magic. When he carried her over the threshold the strangest odor filled her nose. Sickish sweet like . . . like . . .

The room was empty! How could that be? The little girl, the redheaded man, even the old man in the bed—they were all gone. Vanished.

Oh. thank God!

When Daisy saw the open window with its lacy nylon curtains blowing outside in the draft, she understood.

Stuart put her on the bed, looked down at her, his youthful face full of love, his familiar eyes smiling with a mischievous delight. It was just like their wedding night.

He touched her forehead, brushed strands of hair out of her face. He's an angel, Daisy thought, he's an angel now and the Good Lord sent him to fetch me.

But something wasn't right. There was something wrong with the gown that he wore. Stuart's radiant white cloak, it was nothing but a sheet. Daisy looked down. The top sheet was missing from her bed.

"W-wait . . ."

Her chest tightened, locking half a breath in her windpipe.

Still smiling, Stuart touched her face. His hands were warm. No, not warm, hot. They were burning.

Panic shot adrenaline throughout her exhausted body. Somehow, she got to her feet.

Reeling. Daisy took one, two stumbling steps toward the door, but he grabbed her hand, stopping her midroom. She stared in disbelief at her own reflection in the round vanity mirror. Could this haggard bloody old woman really be her?

Stuart's reflection was clear as he stepped behind her. The sheet fell away and she saw he was naked. His man-thing was hard and big, almost bursting, just like on their wedding night.

And when he spoke, sure enough it was her husband's voice. "I need you, now," he whispered.

He shoved her against the vanity, knocking over her Evening in Paris talcum, pressing her face against the vanity mirror.

Bending obscenely, she saw her own expression of agony as his man-thing like a bloated serpent wriggled against the backs of her thighs. She couldn't move, couldn't tear her eyes from their reflection.

The serpent bored into her, hot, scorching, like the barrel of a gun. A burning sensation moved from the pit of her, spread across her buttocks, along her arteries, over her solar plexus.

The serpent spat like a blowtorch, driving lava deep into her, yet she couldn't move, couldn't scream.

A tiny voice in her mind whispered. "This is death, Daisy. This is what it's like."

Her gaze locked on that horrid hot point at the middle of her forehead where the heat seemed to focus. The skin turned brown, like paper with a candle underneath. It darkened, turned black. As its circumference widened, blue flames danced in its center. Dense, sweet-smelling smoke poured from her skull, filled her nose, covered her eyes.

Somewhere, somewhere far beyond the smoke and the blue dancing flames, she heard laughter.

Burlington, Vermont

U
sing both hands, Casey pushed the door, then pulled it, then pushed it again.

Drat!
she thought.
I know I left this damn thing unlocked. I know I did!

She rapped on the door, then pressed the doorbell, thinking maybe Dad or Karen had come back. Nope; no such luck.

"Man, this is just great," she said. "Now what am I going to—"

"Hi!" a pleasant voice said from behind her.

Casey looked over her shoulder at the smiling man in the blue pin-striped jacket and light tan pants.

"Are you looking for Karen Bradley?" he said. His freckled face and bald head glistened with sweat. His red hair made an unruly halo. Casey smiled back at him, embarrassed because she'd been caught talking to herself. "No, but I'm locked out of her apartment."

"Yes. So I see. Is the door stuck? Can I give you a hand?"

"No thanks. But I'll take a crowbar if you have one."

"Locked, eh? Karen's not inside?"

"No. She's at the office. I'm here by myself."

The man looked puzzled. He glanced down at a notebook in his hand, then he looked back at Casey. "You know, I bet I was supposed to meet her there, at the health center." He looked at his watch. "I've got a one o'clock appointment with her. Don't know what I was thinking, coming here. Guess I'd better hurry; I've only got fifteen minutes to get up there."

He turned as if to go, then stopped. "Sorry," he said, turning back, "a moment of confusion there. I'm Bill Graig. I'm a friend of Karen's and I'm a guidance counselor at the high school. We were going to talk about some referrals. Don't know why I came here instead of the office. Force of habit, I guess."

Casey raised her eyebrows. "You wouldn't happen to have a key, would you?"

The man seemed to blush. "Oh no, no. We're not that kind of friends. We just meet here sometimes after work; gets both of us out of the office." He cleared his throat, "Listen, you're locked out, and it just so happens I'm on my way over there. Karen and I probably meet for about an hour. No more. Could I give you a lift over? You could get her key and I could drop you off here on my way back to the school."

"All right!" Casey smiled. "I'm getting rescued. Hey, this is just like in the movies."

Both of them laughed. The man stepped behind the wheelchair and pushed Casey in the direction of the Plymouth.

Hobston, Vermont

J
eff saw nothing remarkable when they entered the woods. Of course he had no idea what he expected: flashy high-tech machinery? Helmeted spacemen? Big-eyed insects with ray guns?

He listened, but heard nothing unfamiliar in the wind. No saucer sounds, no half-human calls echoing from the granite cliffs? Nothing.

Instead, he was far more impressed with the woodland's beauty than with its strangeness. It was tranquil here, very lovely. He wished Casey could see it.

Ahead, from where the land rolled to the northeast, he could see a stark, bare-topped peak. "Mount Mansfield," Alton told him, "highest mountain in Vermont. Taller'n any building in the state. Kinda puts things in the right perspective, don't it?"

Jeff nodded, smiling. He enjoyed Alton's humor, but he could hear a nervous edge to every jest and chuckle.

Both men stared at the panorama. Pointing, Alton continued, "If ya look at it just right up on top, you can see the face of an Indian, forehead, nose, chin, and all. Like he's some giant, lyin' on his back, lookiri' up, keepin' a watch on the sky."

Jeff studied it for a moment, then, sure enough, the rocky mountaintop really did look like the profile of a reclining Indian.

After they passed a row of evergreens, Alton stopped beside a hickory tree and cleared his throat. "This here's where I figger Stu stopped to rest after we split up. I 'member the imprint of his rifle butt in the snow. And the snow was all sorta tromped down, jest as though he'd stood here for a minute or two, shiftin' from foot to foot."

Alton seemed to hold back at the point where the slope steepened to become the base of Stattler Mountain. He took a few hesitant steps forward and stopped. "I ain't so sure I want to go up in there again." He wiped his hand nervously across his mouth, avoiding Jeff's eyes.

"We're getting close to where it happened?"

"A-yep, too close, for my money." Alton pointed with a trembling hand. "You jest walk right up there, straight ahead. Pretty quick you're gonna see a mossy rock with a big, kinda circular depression—what they call a bowl—right near it. That's the spot. You go on an' look. I'll wait right here."

Not wanting to pressure the man, Jeff went on alone. But—he had to admit—he felt a queasy spot in the pit of his stomach. Without Alton at his side, he didn't feel so brave.

Soon Alton called out behind him, "That's where I found his Winchester. Eight there by your foot, lyin' in the snow."

Jeff looked down. He glimpsed the brown tail of a snake as it whipped out of sight under a rock. Then he looked over his shoulder. Alton was still leaning against a tree about one hundred yards below.

"You okay there, Jeffrey?" Alton called in an abnormally high-pitched voice. Its echo bounced around in the air.

"So far so good."

The sun beat on him warmly. Circular shadows collared the trees, hugging their trunks. Jeff guessed it must be around noon. Checking his watch to confirm, he found it was almost one o'clock.

Blood pounded in his ears from the exertion of the climb. His chest hammered. He looked around again, studying the landscape, feeling puzzled.

What had really happened here?

He experienced a melancholic chill identical to the one he'd felt years ago when he viewed the battlefield at Gettysburg. Or perhaps it was closer to the tremor he'd endured more recently when morbid curiosity led him to retrace the steps of the infamous Boston Strangler. It was as if some unsettling memory hovered permanently in the air. There was an almost tactile discomfort in the place's deceptive normalcy; the tranquility was some kind of illusion.

Yet, all appeared commonplace, remarkable only in its loveliness. But try as he might, he just couldn't get beyond it—something had happened here.

What?

Had a man literally walked off the face of the earth?

Had a UFO swooped down and pulled Stuart Dubois into the heavens?

Had the old man stepped out of the third and directly into the fourth, fifth, or sixth dimension?

Or had the sky opened up, creating a porthole to another. reality? Every notion seemed so foreign, so unreal, so utterly incredible in this natural setting.

A breeze rattled dead leaves in the treetops. Jeff scanned the sky: clear, blue, perfect as exquisite crystal. It seemed to go on forever. The mountain slope ahead was bright in the sun. Dull rocks seemed to glow, greenery appeared iridescent. Shadow-choked trees formed walls on either side of the mountain trail.

What? What had happened here?