Читать книгу Between The Doors - Wes Peters - Страница 8

chapter one

playing truant

I

The boy came home to one hell of a mess that day. Stillness and heat premature in the early spring season hung like ugly tension in the air. The river beside the road to his home in the woods ran shallow. The drought had plagued the woods for almost a month. Andrew could hardly remember the last time he had slept upstairs, where the stifling heat crept in through the windows and enveloped the second floor. He had resorted to sleeping in the cellar, where it was cool enough to grab a few hours of sleep—cool enough to wake up without being drenched in sweat.

The sleep Andrew did manage to get was spare, and would’ve concerned his parents had they time to notice. His effort in school had been, ‘lacking of late’, as his father would have said had he time to notice. He didn’t. Work with the local water treatment companies had become a twelve hour daily endeavor, thanks to the drought. Andrew’s father kept his son on track during this time of year when the weather improved and Andrew’s mind wandered from his schoolwork. Yet David Tollson had to leave at 6 in the morning and didn’t get back til the late evening. There was no one to help Andrew with his schoolwork, or ‘lack thereof’, as his father also would’ve said.

Andrew’s father had no ‘lack thereof’ of work, however, so Andrew’s truancy had gone unnoticed these past few weeks. His mother busied herself from sunrise to sunset, saving her gardens from ruin at the hands of the drought. Patricia Tollson had the finest garden in town. Rows upon rows of orchids, roses, and blue hydrangeas transformed the small lot the Tollsons called home into a castle courtyard. Helping his mother plant and tend these flowers implanted in Andrew a fierce love for nature from a young age. Flowers, his mother said, had a way of making a small life seem grand. Perhaps, thought Andrew as he walked past the rows of flowers leading up to the front door, now that the flowers won’t bloom, that’s why mom seems so small.

She certainly was not small today. Patricia Tollson waited patiently inside the kitchen, fidgeting with a pair of gardening shears. Andrew had heard her humming an old rhyme at the dinner table last night: April showers bring May flowers. An old rhyme had been circulating through her petite head all day: April showers bring May flowers. Well, it was May now, and she had spent all spring mourning her dead flowers and cursing her new flowers that wouldn’t grow. So what about May flowers? What if there are no April showers? As the front door swung open and young Andrew walked in, Patricia looked up and met her son’s eyes.

“Andrew, dear,” she said. Andrew froze. “Won’t you come sit with me?” The boy treaded slowly over to the high table where she sat.

“What’s up, mom?” he asked, forcing a small smile. She didn’t return it.

“Oh, just lovely, Andy. Do you know Mr. Scalza? Do you know Mr. Scalza, darling?” Andrew’s stomach dropped to his shoes. Mr. Scalza was Nayreton Middle School’s truancy officer. All of the days he’d skipped school and wandered along the banks of the Warren River were about to catch up with him. He had stopped going once the heat settled in and the drought started, in April. There was no point in sitting through school, which lacked air conditioning. The rooms baked in the valley below the White forest.

I’m a fool, Andrew thought. I’ve been to school maybe four times in the last three weeks. Of course someone was going to notice! Before he could answer her question, his mother continued. She looked down at the shears in her hands and dropped her voice.

“Mr. Scalza dropped in for a visit this morning. I was out gardening…” Her voice trailed off. Suddenly, Andrew was very afraid. He knew his mother wasn’t just angry about the hooky. No, there were other things contributing to her fury, things out of his control. To the boy, life didn’t seem so fair and grand at this point in time.

She continued. “Mr. Scalza informed me that your attendance has been less than satisfactory as…of…late.” Andrew grimaced. The old bird-faced Scalza, he knew, would have used that phrase, ‘as of late’. His mother was simply repeating his words.

“Andrew, do you know how hard your father and I work to send you to that school?” Patricia Tollson asked, her voice rising. Andrew realized he had hardly said a word in the entire conversation. She hadn’t let him. He tried to speak now.

“Mom, I-”

“Do you know hard we work?” she cawed out. Suddenly, she was up out of her chair, and Andrew could see the dirt on her jeans and blouse as the sunlight struck her shirt. Yes, she had been gardening all morning. She slammed the shears against the counter-top, scarring the old wood.

“Your father,” she spat, “works all fucking day and comes home after dark, too tired to talk, too tired.” She held the shears in front of her, and with that the entire situation changed in Andrew Tollson’s mind. He jumped to his feet, backing away slowly from his advancing mother, a slow-dance with shears. She continued.

“So tell me, Andy,” she said, still advancing. “How will he like to hear that you’ve been absent twelve times from school in the past month? Oh, I know. He won’t care. He’ll be too tired. Too tired.” Her eyes blazed.

“Twelve times, boy,” she said. With scary speed she reached out with her other hand and smacked Andrew on the head. He stumbled but kept his feet beneath him, his eyes focused on the shears.

She’s not herself, the boy thought. What’s gotten into her? He continued backing away, aware he was almost at the door. The world spun a little from her blow on his head, but he knew if he could get out the door safely he could get away. He tried to calm his mother, as he passed the small porch chair by the door.

“Take it easy, mom. I—”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” she screeched, lunging forward again. Andrew was ready this time, shoving the porch chair between them as he jumped backwards. Patricia Tollson’s upper body connected with the chair first, throwing off her balance. Her legs were next; her knees, exhausted from gardening all morning, made contact with the legs of the chair. She let out a small yell and collapsed over the chair, tangled up in its legs. Andrew avoided the collision and turned around, throwing open the door. He sprinted off the porch and through the garden, hearing his mother curse as she threw open the door behind him, hot in pursuit. The heat hit Andrew like a wall as he flew through the garden.

“Get back here, Andy!” she screamed in a voice unlike her own. The chase ensued for a few seconds, but by the time he passed the stone wall that marked the front of his property, he knew it was over. Andrew saw the shears skid up the street past him. His mother had thrown them in a last ditch attempt to stop him. Now she stood in her garden watching him run up the street, panting heavily. She blinked away the fertile tears that accumulated suddenly in her red eyes.

II

Somewhere along the road Andrew decided he wasn’t turning back. He longed for the open road, for something new—something that didn’t stink of the drought. Andrew followed the banks of the Warren River. He figured he had to follow the heart of the drought in order to escape it.

The Warren River was long and rich. It ran southeast, perhaps to the ocean—Andrew couldn’t recall exactly where it went. Should’ve paid attention in Social Studies.

“Shit, I should’ve gone to Social Studies.” He muttered aloud, and laughed. It felt good to swear, to feel independent. His mother swore like a sailor; why shouldn’t he be able to do the same? He turned off the road and onto the forest path that ran alongside the Warren River.

He strode along the path as the hot afternoon slid into early evening. Soon he’d be hungry. After a few miles the path parted from the river and wound back up the road. Normally Andrew took the path to the road and headed back home. Today was different. He could walk for days on end. Andrew continued along the river, abandoning the beaten path for his own path along the banks. The ground was dry and cracked; normally in the spring the water would be overflowing the banks from melted snow and rainfall. This year, no snow had lasted long considering the drought. The snow had melted, and evaporated, and the woods were dry. The world was drying up.

Andrew strode along the banks, headed southeast, and some invisible hand guided him forward. In his mind, he wasn’t Andy Tollson but a gunfighter from the spaghetti westerns he snuck up to watch on the western movie channels. He no longer walked on the side of a river but railroad tracks, having just shot up some bandits holding up a train.

Doesn’t matter how hot or how long the drought lasts here, thought the boy. The law of the gun carries on, whether it rains every day or it’s so stinking dry your piss evaporates in your stomach. That was Andrew Tollson’s say.

The boy continued walking downstream past dried stream beds and rotten marshes. The trees above him refused to bloom, and they begged the sky for something to drink. Andrew was lost in his little fantasy when he nearly stepped on another.

He would’ve walked right by the gun had the sun not caught the metal and shined. He stopped and looked at it. It was not a handgun like the Nayreton police wore on their right hips, but an ancient revolver, huge and menacing. It lay on the forest floor, untouched by the mud and leaves around it.

“Holy shit.”

Pick it up?

Why not? The boy wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity like this. He bent over and ran his hands along the old metal. Picking it up, he felt the weight of the weapon. The grips were weighted and heavy in his hands and yet Andrew thought the gun felt… natural. As if he’d held one a thousand times before.

He’d fantasized about the law of the gun before, dreaming of a time when gunfighters held reign and evildoers were no match for the heroes’ draw. The boy mimicked this draw, snapping the gun to attention and feigning a shot. He jerked the weapon upwards in western fashion. He didn’t dare the pull the trigger of course; what if it was loaded? At this thought he pulled back the hammer, and jumped as he heard the gun cock. He opened the cylinder, and felt weight within. There were six shells in the chamber, each unspent. He had found a six-shooter, with six shots.

“Freeze, punks! Make my day!” cried Andrew, feigning fire at six invisible enemies, his right hand slapping the hammer back with each shot. He didn’t dare pull the trigger, though in his head he imagined a sharp report and flash, as his enemy gunmen fell helpless, one by one.

The boy snapped out of his dream. Whose gun is this? Why is it here? Should he even hold it? What if the owner shows up?

What if the owner had a bigger gun? Without thinking, Andrew pulled the hammer back again. Having fired his dad’s rifle a few times at a range outside of Nayreton, the entire process came naturally.

Andrew searched the ground for extra shells or footprints. There was nothing to indicate any activity near the gun, only an imprint of dirt where the gun had lay in. It was if the weapon had fallen from the sky for him to pick up.

“How long has this been here?” the boy wondered. It looked ancient, like a weapon belonging to a western epic. Finally, the young boy felt the air grow still. He looked up and saw the cloaked figure up ahead at the bend of the river.

III

The sun had started its descent behind the tall hills to the east, and in the golden twilight the mysterious figure shimmered and shined. The figure was short and emaciated, cloaked in white and hooded so that his face remained hidden. He (or she) was only a hundred feet from Andrew, standing before the river’s bend, but to Andrew the figure seemed miles away. There was something unreachable about this stranger; Andrew wondered if one step toward the figure might cause him to bolt away like a deer.

The stranger reached out his arm, and in his hand he held a long bamboo walking stick in his hand, white and slender in the fading spring light. Now he beckoned Andrew using the stick.

I can feel its pull, Andrew thought, his heart racing. Why shouldn’t I follow it?

With the gun hanging loosely in his left hand, the boy began to walk toward the figure. He quickened his pace to a brisk jog as the cloaked figure turned toward the river. Instead of following the river and rounding the bend, the figure ran down the river bank and disappeared from Andrew’s sight. Andrew hurried towards the bend, and by the time he reached it, he saw the cloaked stranger across the river, moving south in the forest. The boy looked north down where the river bent and slowly faded into the wooded horizon. At the bank of the river where Andrew stood the water flowed slowly but steadily thanks to the sharp downhill curve ahead.

The hooded figure, almost out of sight now, turned and beckoned again for Andrew to follow. The boy spotted a few rocks in the water he could jump on to cross the river, and prepared to cross. His mother’s voice nagging in his head stopped him.

How would your father feel about you following a stranger in the woods? How’d he like to hear, after a long day’s work, that some hooded drifter led his son deep into the forest at nightfall? Andrew pushed the voice out of his head. His father wasn’t around to notice either way. Andrew didn’t know who he resented most: his mother, his father, or the drought.

It didn’t matter. The boy crossed the river.

IV

Andrew made it across the river without much trouble, and continued his pursuit of the cloaked man. He had an idea of where the stranger was headed, of course: due south. Andrew followed in his path. The terrain began to slide downhill at a suicidal rate, and Andrew had to descend sideways to avoid stumbling and flying forward. The slope continued for a few hundred yards, and while most of the hill was littered with trees and sharp rocks, the path Andrew took was clear of all impediments. It was if the cloaked man had cut the path clean. Despite the safe path, however, Andrew still led with his feet in front of him and his body turned to the side to counter the steep terrain.

After descending for what felt like hours, Andrew saw the bottom of the hill. Most of the terrain around him flattened, but his own path did not; it dove into a deep grove, shadowed by tall, thick trees. Andrew headed down into this opening, below the flat terrain. After a few seconds of descending he came upon stone steps that twisted and descended deeper into the earth. Andrew grabbed the earthen sides of the passage to slow his descent and straightened his body so he could safely run on the steps. The steps were narrow and thin, only large enough for the foot of a child. Andrew was thankful his feet were still small, but still he slowed down to a near walking pace to avoid stumbling.

The steps descended into the earth further and further til Andrew felt he was miles below the forest floor. The stairs ended with a stone wall with a small hole in the bottom, only large enough for a child to fit through. Andrew, not quite five feet tall, squeezed right through the opening. He came into the grove, expecting it to be shrouded in darkness as the staircase had been. However, several rays of light pierced through the darkness from the canopy above, illuminating the patch of green grass he stood on. Around him a circular grove, surrounded by thick oak trees, rose up to the sky. At the far side of the chamber sat a small, plump boy. He was staring at a tree at the center of the grove, with what appeared to be a sketch drawn into it. As Andrew drew nearer to the door he saw it was no sketch. An actual oak door stood in the center of the tree, begging to be opened.

V

The strange boy turned as Andrew drew near. He was clad in a dark green tunic and dark leggings, with a mess of curly dirty blond hair on his head.

“Hello,” Andrew said.

“Hullo,” the boy said, with a thick accent that reminded Andrew of some foreign film he’d seen about Ireland. The boy climbed clumsily to his feet, which were gigantic in comparison to the boy’s body. Andrew gauged him to be no older than thirteen.

“Name’s Andrew Tollson,” said Andrew, stepping forward and extending his hand as his father had taught him. As he stepped into the light, the strange boy gasped, catching sight of the revolver in Andrew’s hand. The newcomer stopped dead in his tracks and bent down to one knee.

“Forgive me, sir,” the boy said, his eyes staring down at the ground as he stumbled over his words. “Pleased to meet you, Andrew, son of Toll. You can call me Nickolas, Son of Smith, he of the field and the scythe. I… give myself to your service? Wait, I don’t think that’s it…” The boy trailed off and shook his head. “I don’ remember it, no sir.”

Andrew didn’t know what to say. He called me the son of Toll, he mused. That amazed him the most. His father’s name was David, not Toll. Just where in the hell is this kid from? He’s acting sort of weird.

When was this kid from? Andrew realized was the better question.

In his silence, Nickolas, son of Smith, looked up. “Beg your pardon, sir, but isn’t this where you usually say somethin’?”

Andrew shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you.”

Nickolas furrowed his brow. “Wish I knew how this was suppos’d to go… it’s jus that I never met one of your kind before.”

“One of my kind?” asked Andrew.

“A man of the gun, you know,” Nickolas said, motioning to the revolver in Andrew’s left hand. “You look young, but you must be one of them. Them of legend!”

Andrew raised his eyebrows and stepped back. “A man of the gun?”

“Yea!” Nickolas cried with a grin, and lifted his hands to the sky. “A legendary gunfighter!”

VI

Andrew Tollson was no gunfighter. He was adventurous, more than most boys his age, but he knew he was no man of the gun. In his head flashed images of gunfighters he knew, like Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, and Lee Van Cleef. Those were true gunfighters, serving the law of the gun and the law of the light. They enforced that law in the old west; could such knights of western cinema really bring peace in the modern age? Could gunslingers even exist in the 21st century? Andrew had his doubts.

Andrew remembered something his mother had said when he had started reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. “All good stories,” she said, as he sat back on the porch and she kneeled down in the garden, “start when a character takes on a new part.”

Andrew, nine years old, didn’t get it. “When they step into somebody else’s shoes, and leave their own behind,” she explained. Her pale face was beautiful in the spring light, as her crisp brown hair blew in the wind. It hurt Andrew to think about now. Her words echoed in his head. Suddenly Andrew wanted to leave his beat-up Nike’s behind in this grove and don a pair of cowboy boots. He straightened and addressed Nick.

“Rise!” He cried in his deepest voice. Nick looked up in surprise. “Rise, Nickolas, son of Smith. I accept your service and thank you for your blessing.” Andrew felt ten feet tall. Nickolas climbed to his feet, his eyes locked on the gunslinger. The twilight beaming into the grove from the canopy illuminated Andrew’s face as he beamed.

Andrew looked around. “Uh…” he shifted somewhat uncomfortably. “So… what is this place? Did anyone come through here?” He turned to survey the grove, expecting the cloaked stranger to pop out of the trees. He didn’t.

Trees surrounded the grove, in a neat circle. No leaves littered the ground- the grass remained untouched and green. On the far side of the grove, not ten feet from where the boys stood facing one another, stood a door. The oak monolith was attached to the largest tree in the grove, though the door’s frame exceeded the tree’s girth. Andrew thought it had a funny look to it, as if someone had propped a door upright against the tree.

Sensing Andrew’s eyes on the door, Nickolas shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “Not sure what this place is all about, sir. I’ve been alone here all day.” Andrew had to conceal a smile as Nick called him sir. “To be honest, I just woke up ‘ere. I’m beginning to think this isn’t my world at ohl.” Andrew furrowed his brow at the odd pronunciation of such a familiar word.

“What do you mean?” Andrew asked.

“Well, for starters, there’s no guns in my world,” Nick said. “Or gunfighters, none of ‘em neither. We only tell stories of guns. They’re just legends, not the real thing.” Andrew eyed the boy curiously.

“How did you get here?”

At this question, Nick cast his eyes downward at his feet. Andrew stepped forward and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“What happened?” Andrew asked, his eyes burning with curiosity.

After a short moment of silence, Nickolas looked up, but not at Andrew. He peered into the deep darkness of the forest.

“I died. . .I think.”

VII

He had been sitting there for some time before the gunfighter entered the grove. Nick had begun to grow hungry, and that was strange—he didn’t think ghosts could eat. He had tried chewing on some grass, but it was bitter on his tongue and he spit it out. Grass tasted bad whether you were dead or not dead.

Nick, who had always been told he was slow by his parents (though they weren’t so smart neither, Nick thought—not book smart at least), couldn’t quite grasp what had happened, and what was going on in this grove. If he was dead, then why was he here? He pondered this for quite some time when he woke up in the grove that morning, and when he spotted the door his questions multiplied.

The door was locked, as Nick had discovered when he tried opening it earlier. What lies beyond it? The boy wondered as he sat in front of the door, feeling the grass under his hands and the hot still spring around him. Perhaps it was a door back to the living world, he figured. That would explain why it’s locked, he thought.

If that was true, then should he get up and leave the grove? Would that make this new world he had woken up in the afterlife? That scared Nick, and he quit thinking about it.

One thing, however, terrified the boy even worse than the concept that this new world was some kind of afterlife. As he paced around the grove that day, waiting to come up with an answer or for someone else to find out an answer for him, he was suddenly struck by a horrifying thought: what if the door led to the afterlife?

Can’t be, thought the boy. Nobody ever said you enter the next life through a door, that’s just silliness.

“But then again,” the boy reasoned out loud, “nobody knows what going to the next life is like cause once you go, you don’t come back.”

So it was a definite possibility. After all, he was dead. Or was he? He was sort of confused about that too. Sure, he had fallen, fallen a hundred feet or more, higher than the boy had ever climbed in his life. As the wind had whipped at his face on his death fall from the Clock Tower, he had not screamed nor wet his pants. He had simply awaited the end. The crack would sound as his neck snapped on the cobblestone street below and the numb feeling would rush through his body as his spine shattered. He would’ve screamed, would’ve wet his pants, but the view of the rising world around him was too incredible for young Nick to do anything but stare in amazement as he fell and the ground rose up to meet him. He didn’t think of the people he’d miss, or the fact that he’d never lain with a woman (he’d heard stories from the older boys, but could hardly believe that a man and a woman would do… that). All he could do was watch and wait for that final crack that would let him know that it was all over.

The crack never came, he reminded himself as he sat in the grove. Instead of hearing that crack, he’d woken up in this strange place. Though Nickolas had never been to school a day in his life, he knew that some things in life demanded proof. Especially, he decided, something as important as one’s death. If he wasn’t dead, that meant all bets were off. In that case, it wouldn’t make sense that this grove was the entrance to the afterlife, and the locked door the exit of his world; it also wouldn’t make sense that this grove was the exit of his world and this door the entrance to the next life. If he wasn’t dead, though, how’d he end up in this grove? None of it made much sense to Nickolas. So he took a seat in the grass, and waited patiently for someone to figure it out for him.

VIII

Andrew stood before Nick, listening to his story and trying to sort it all out. Andrew knew that Nick wasn’t telling it all. He could see, however, that Nick was traumatized from whatever had happened; whenever the boy began talking about ‘falling’ he would stutter and look away.

“Well Nick,” Andrew said when the boy finished talking, “you’re not dead. If you were a ghost, I couldn’t touch you right?” He put a hand on Nick’s shoulder, who tensed up at first, then relaxed. “See? You’re not dead. You probably just dreamed the fall.” Nick, however, shook his head.

“Alright, well maybe not. But one thing is for sure, Nick,” Andrew continued, and gestured at the stairs behind him. “This world is mine. Above this grove, we’re in the gracious state of New Jersey. Are you from New Jersey?”

Nick shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

Andrew reconsidered. “Delaware? Maine? Maryland?” Nick shook his head comically at each of these. Andrew tried a shot in the dark. “Texas?” No luck. Andrew gave up. “Where are you from?”

“Ever hear of Sunsetville, sir?” asked Nick. Now it was Andrew’s turn to shake his head. “I live outside, in the southern fields. My dad, Farmer Smith as most know him, owns a good plot of land northeast of Brymino.” Nick straightened as he said this. Andrew knew now why the boy seemed so simple: growing up on a farm, Nick must have never been to school a day in his life. Andrew suddenly felt guilty about the past few weeks.

There’s something bright about him though, thought Andrew, though he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Well,” Andrew said, “let’s get you home, Nick. I bet Sunsetville’s right through this door.” He strode over to the oak door, reaching out for the handle.

“It’s locked though!” Nick called behind him. Andrew put his hand on the brass doorknob and a bolt of energy flew up his arm.

Andrew jumped, feeling his heart race in his chest. Suddenly, he was focused. Things that had bothered him all day, like the drought, his parents, and school ceased to matter in this moment. He felt a heightened attention on the present, and the gun in his left hand. It was a frightening perception of reality.

He turned the knob in his hand, and of course it turned. It opens to me, Andrew realized. He heard Nick’s breath draw slowly behind him in wonder. He heard the birds quit chirping in the canopy. In this moment of time, the world was standing still, and he could feel it. He opened the door and walked through.

“Wait up sir!” shouted Nickolas from close behind. Andrew heard him but didn’t turn. He stepped into the blinding light. Then he was floating. The world of New Jersey waned and faded behind him.