Eleven Twenty-Three, page 15
Tara and Chloe look over at me with blurred, fearful eyes.
“What was it?” Chloe says. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Are you okay, Layne? I didn’t see anything either.”
I approach the large plasma screen until it is less than a couple of feet from my face. I inspect the colors and movements carefully. The news has moved onto sports now, and the commentators’ voices are ominous and booming this close to the speakers.
“What’d you see, Layne?” Mr. Tennille asks from behind me.
“The screen went black for a split second and a white message popped up. Then it was gone before I even realized what was going on.”
“Well what did it say?”
“It said there was no escape,” I report. “That’s the message that came up. I know I saw it, even if it was for just a moment. It said there was no escape.”
“But who would write that, Layne?” Mr. Tennille asks incredulously. “Who would have the power to put subliminal messages on the air for us to see like that? And why would they say that to everyone out there across the state if this was only happening here in town?”
“He said it was the chemtrails…”
“What?”
“I can’t be certain,” I continue, “but I don’t think it was meant for everyone watching the news. I only think it was meant for the people watching the news in Lilly’s End. Someone is tampering with the feed and implanting messages for the township to read.”
“That’s bullshit,” Chloe says. “Who would write that? Layne, you’re seeing things.”
“I know what I saw just now, Chloe.”
“You’re sure, Layne?” Tara’s father asks me. “You’re sure you saw that?”
I think back to the message, there and gone in an instant just like what happened around town already.
“I’m positive. I was kind of staring off while you were talking about Mrs. Tennille when it happened. The screen went blank and it said, ‘There is no escape.’ I saw it.”
“But who would write that to us, as bad as things already are?” Chloe asks, crying again.
“Probably the same people who did this to us in the first place, Chloe,” I tell her. “This isn’t some chemical spill or something. It’s not a flu or a bug going around. Tara and I were in town with Hajime earlier and it was the same shit everywhere. Everyone lost it at the exact same time this morning—around eleven-thirty or so. How does a thing like that happen unless someone carefully planned it? Besides, I saw military choppers of some kind flying low over town right after it happened.
“I’m going to go and check on Mom,” Tara says quietly, slipping out of the room with her eyes buried underneath her fingers.
“You and your friends are fucking crazy,” Chloe whispers after her younger sister departs. “No one would intentionally do that to us. Dad, tell him it’s impossible. Tell him how absurd he and everyone else are being. It was just a one-time thing. It was an accident—”
“If Layne says he saw it, I believe him,” Mr. Tennille declares. “I myself watched your mother completely lose her mind in less than a breath, Chloe. You were still on your way here when it happened, so you didn’t see it firsthand. I did. She was foaming at the mouth, screaming and ranting, clawing at her hair—it was like someone else was controlling her—she had no cognizance whatsoever. If that same thing happened everywhere in town, then someone has to be behind it. I’m with Layne on that. And if Layne says he just saw a message on the TV screen, then I believe that too.”
“Thanks, Mr. Tennille.”
“No problem, kid.”
“Things will go back to normal,” Chloe insists, picking up the remote from the sofa. “You guys will see. Just wait till the phone service comes back. Then just give the other towns time to find out what happened here and help will be coming. I guarantee it. It just hasn’t been long enough for anyone to know what’s going on yet. But when they find out—”
“Chloe,” I interrupt, “in the times we live in, people know about what’s going on in the world the moment it happens. We know about bombings in Iraq five minutes before they’re launched. CNN knows about the collapse of other nations hours before our own military does. So why wouldn’t anyone know about this, this huge event that happened hours ago right here in America? Why isn’t it on every channel?”
“Because the phones are out,” she says, flipping through the TV stations. There is nothing on a single one of five hundred or so that mentions Lilly’s End. “The phones are out, so no one knows what’s going on yet, but they’ll be back on soon—”
“And why are the phones out, Chloe?” Mr. Tennille asks, running his hand shakily through his dirty blond hair. “Why do we not have cell phone reception? It’d be one thing if the land lines were out, but cell phones should get reception at any time, as long as we’re in the network.”
“Oh my god, you’re right,” I say. “Our cells should never have gone out, unless someone cut us from our own network.”
“So you’re saying someone from town cut our phone service?” she asks us. “Layne, you’re acting a bit paranoid and, um, stupid.”
“Not someone from town, Chloe. The different servers would all have to drop thousands of people from their network. It couldn’t be done from here.”
“Either that or someone from outside of town is somehow blocking our cell phone reception altogether,” Mr. Tennille says. “That’s not easy to do.”
“This was planned for this town, and it was planned so that none of us could let the outside world know about it. This isn’t meant to make the news.”
“Why would someone do that to us, though?” Chloe asks, flipping the channels without pause. Mr. Tennille and I stare, deep in our own thoughts, at the television.
And it is as Chloe absently changes the channel from 124 to 125 that I see another white message, floating in a sea of blackness, dash across the screen:
You are forgotten.
“I saw that!” Mr. Tennille exclaims. “Layne, I god-damned saw that.”
“Me too, sir. I saw it too. Between the two channels, another message came up. Chloe, did you see it?”
“No, you prick, I didn’t,” she says, throwing the remote down on the couch. “I don’t want to see it. I think things are bad enough without having to put tin foil on my head next, don’t you?”
She storms from the room to go check on Tara and her mother, leaving Mr. Tennille and I behind.
“We are forgotten,” he mutters, looking at the digital cable images. “That’s what it said, right?”
“That’s what I read, yes.”
“Not exactly encouraging, is it?”
“Nothing that’s happened since Tara and I got home has been encouraging, to be honest. This is just one more thing.”
We continue watching the muted television for several more minutes. Once, during a Verizon commercial that ensures us that their network will always be there, that our calls will never be dropped, and that we will always be connected to the rest of the world, the screen flashes one more ominous transmission:
This is your duty as a citizen.
Mr. Tennille grimaces when he sees it but does not comment.
“Do you have a cigarette?” he finally asks.
“Let me guess: you quit.”
“No,” he says. “I’m just out.”
I hand him one and remove another for myself. I light both of them and await the next message. They seem to come at regular five-minute intervals.
“So did you even get to bury your father this morning?”
“No,” I murmur. “No, Mr. Tennille, I didn’t get to bury my father.”
“That’s really a shame, son.”
“Yeah it is, sir. It’s a shame.”
04:55:22 PM
Tara stares at the turkey sandwich I made for her and pushes the plate away in disgust. When I try to push it back toward her, she lights a cigarette.
“You really should eat, Sunshine. You haven’t eaten since your toast and jam last night.”
“And you should really understand that I’m not hungry,” she says. “You haven’t eaten either. Take my sandwich, if you want it.”
“But I don’t want it.”
“Well then the hell with eating,” she sighs, standing up and pacing around the kitchen of her house. “What are we going to do with Miranda?”
“I don’t know. Do you think her family has found out?”
“They’re in Tampa. If you and my dad are right, then they have no idea.”
“And we can’t tell them,” I say. “I guess—I guess I’ll deal with it.”
Tara turns to me, a blank expression on her face.
“I feel bad for every minute I’m not crying,” she mutters. “Miranda is one of my best friends.”
“Everybody in town lost best friends today, Tara. Everyone lost someone important. We can’t wallow in it. We have to keep going. We need a plan. We’re in a mess here.”
“I always thought that was the most callow, selfish advice in every disaster film.”
“What?” I ask. “To move on and save one’s own ass?”
“Yes.”
“What would you rather us do?”
“I’d rather reach the still point, to be honest. I’d rather get to the part where we can just stop, look around us, take a deep breath, and think things over before making our next move.”
“In that case, Lilly’s End has been at the still point for years,” I say. “And after this—this still point of yours is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. If we stop and ruminate over everyone that died today and all the bad things that happened, who’s going to grapple with our deaths tomorrow, Tara?”
“Layne, I can’t look in that room again,” she says, her voice breaking. “Miranda is—”
“Don’t worry,” I say, looking out the window. “I told you: I’ll deal with it. What kind of yard tools do you have in your garage?”
There are pictures of Tara and Miranda and Julie and Rachel and other minor friends strewn about the desk and carpet of the bedroom. Miranda must have knocked over her old tin can of photographs during the morning struggle. There’s a snapshot of Tara and Miranda, drunk and surrounded by horny frat guys, both girls making the obligatory “wild-and-naive-but-not-in-a-slutty-way” face. There’s a photo of Miranda hugging her mom in front of the Raymond James Stadium, and it is stuck with blood to another photo of Miranda’s dog Pumpkin, who died two years ago of tumors. Wavy and sad underneath veils of red are dozens more pictures, a memoriam to a forgotten female bank teller who died alone on a Saturday morning in her bedroom.
Miranda appears to have sliced her own face and neck open with a letter opener before stuffing the bed sheets into her mouth and choking to death. Her gruesome, bloated head is slumped against the bed frame. Her body is awkwardly contorted across the floor, which is covered in what I can only guess is blood and vomit. It takes me a long time to muster up the nerve to touch her.
Her chorus trophies are perched up on the dresser and have been used as hat racks and a spot to drape Miranda’s high school graduation tassel. There is an opened DVD case for the film Old School on top of the DVD player. A crucifix has been hung above the bed. All of these knick-knacks and collectors of dust are proof: Miranda was a real person. She existed. She lived. She collected things and went to school and got a job at the bank and made friends with Tara and Julie. She watched movies in this room and occasionally slept with a cheating bartender named Brendan in this bed.
My grandfather was a real person, too. He carved flutes out of rosewood and crunched on peanut brittle and was a big fan of the phrase “Have you lost your pretty little mind?” while conversing with Dad or Grandma. My aunts and uncles and cousins were real people. They baked pies for Thanksgiving and shook my hand at Christmas gatherings and looked uncomfortably westward when conversations arose concerning my absent father. Everyone that has died today was a real person.
My father, Paul Prescott, I am still unsure about.
Before the first tears can build up and send me into shock and eventually unmanageable despair, I grab Miranda’s stiff legs and drag her body across the carpet. I cover her ruined face and neck with the bed sheet and laboriously pick her corpse up from the floor and make my way out of the room. The rigor mortis has begun setting in and her body feels like clay packed over petrified desert wood. I focus on the floor instead of my nausea.
“Tara, stay in your room a minute,” I call out, and carry Miranda outside, where it is cold.
After laying the body out in the leaves, I head to the garage and return with the shovel. Then, under the tranquil blanket of twilight, I begin digging.
I don’t get very far into the dirt before my cell vibrates and I drop the shovel to the ground. I whip the phone out of my pocket and see that another text message has come in. I am well aware that the phone service to Lilly’s End has been severed, and that for reasons unknown to me, I may be the only one here that has had any contact with the outside world since this morning. Again, it is from an unknown name and unknown number.
Attach the briefcase to your wrist.
Somewhere, a man who said his name was Mr. Scott slowly closes his phone and resumes a conversation with other well-dressed men indistinguishable in their cruelty and lack of remorse. They talk of timelines and project expectations, the effects of subliminal messages and how gullible the boy in the airport was. They laugh and flick absently at their neckties. A taciturn plane soars on the cold side of a thick glass pane. One of the junta mentions a mocha latte, but all he receives in response is a fleeting glance. Nothing.
I snap my cell shut and go back to digging a hole in Tara’s backyard. For a moment, I fight off the urge to bury my phone along with Miranda. The light breeze builds and after a while I can no longer see the bottom of my own pit. A neighbor’s wind chimes clink and coo faintly in the breeze.
I consider the possibility that this entire ordeal is my fault. Did I unwittingly bring this disaster home with me in the form of a Schlesinger American Belting attaché case, four-and-a-half inches deep, eighteen-and-three-quarters by thirteen-and-one quarter inch in size? Is the Apocalypse that compact? Did I carry Pandora’s Box around in my car for almost two days and do nothing to stop this from happening?
Even in the dark, I can still see the disseminated chemtrails looming in the purple-blue sky above my head.
After getting about three feet down, the dirt turns hard and I don’t care about digging any farther. I drag Miranda’s stiffened corpse across the mat of leaves and drop her into the hole. I didn’t dig it long enough for her height and her legs bend up awkwardly. Even after covering her body with dirt and leaves, the tip of one of Miranda’s Keds poke through the ground.
By seven-fourteen, I begin to really worry about Hajime and pace around the kitchen. Tara retreats to her bedroom to fret over Julie. I peer through the blinds at the street outside, waiting for headlights to slice through the dark. Nothing happens. By seven-thirty and still no sign of Hajime, the sweats begin.
I blink and swallow uncontrollably as a scratchy montage of silent images from childhood runs through my mind: four a.m. and hunched around the unnatural glow of a computer monitor, Hajime and I looking for nude pictures of Sheryl Crow or Alanis Morissette or Christina Ricci or autopsy shots of Cobain or video from the Budd Dwyer news conference; sprawled out on blankets in the backyard of his parents’ house, grilling onions on a hibachi; the two trailer park girls from our junior year at Kennedy, and how they both smelled like fresh tapioca when dressed but more like the lobby of a Motel 6 once their pants came off; four of Hajime’s paintings hung in the student exhibition hallway of a small art museum in New Smyrna; five minute diatribes on why French fries without ketchup lose the fun factor; and the two of us lounging across an orange sofa, Hajime wiping away tears as he says, “Dude, have you ever realized just how fucking scary space is?”
I keep looking out the window, waiting for the moment when his Vibe rounds the corner, and to spot his limp hand dangling from the window clutching a cigarette, or maybe a clove.
“The Internet is still out,” Tara says from the hallway, then adds, “of course.”
“I don’t suppose you have a cage full of messenger pigeons stowed away somewhere, do you? We’ll tell the world our story yet.”
She grins. Barely.
“Still no sign of Hajime?” she asks
“There must have been unforeseen circumstances,” I mutter, smoking nervously in the kitchen.
“He may still be okay, Sunshine. Maybe he just got held up on his way to St. Augustine.”
“Maybe it started again…”
“Don’t say that,” Tara pleads. “It couldn’t have. We would know. Everything would have gotten weird and we would know if it happened again. Don’t say things like that, Layne.”
“Why are you and your sister Chloe hell-bent on not accepting things for how they are?” I ask.
“Why are you and my father hell-bent on assuming everything is at its worst?”
“I’m not, Tara. In fact, I don’t think things are at their worst at all. I think this is just the beginning. Didn’t you see the messages on the TV earlier? We’re supposed to die here—every last one of us. I’ll be the first to tell you that this is not the worst. We haven’t even seen how terrible life is going to get in the End. Not yet.”
“I—I saw one of the messages on the TV in my room,” she admits, immediately grabbing a cigarette and lighting it. “It said, ‘Your tales are told as ghosts.’ What does that even mean?”
I immediately know the answer, but it takes me a long moment to collect my thoughts.
Not only will we die here in the sideways flower petal of the End, but we will also be forgotten—no one will care and there will be no justice because our souls will roam the fields of Elysium forever, with no great hero to avenge our deaths and put our spirits to a peaceful rest.
