“Wait,” said someone. “Don’t try to move.”
Another voice: “You’ll be okay, Cass.”
And someone shouting, “Over here.”
Cass opened his eyes. The person speaking to him was the Native-American guard. “Take it easy,” he said. “Help’s coming.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m okay.”
But the dark came again, crept over him like fog. He heard people talking somewhere. And he heard again the guard’s startled reaction: Wrong icon.
24
Cass Deekin’s phantom may not have become more famous than Hamlet’s ghostly father. But it sure as hell scared the pants off a lot more people.
Cass Deekin knew his colleagues would be waiting to hear him talk about Eden. But he was still shaken. He’d flown back to Chicago, unable to sleep either on the plane or in his bed. He’d left lights on in the house all night. And he had suffered a series of bad dreams.
In the morning he called in sick, and then, feeling the need for company, he went down to Minny’s Cafe for breakfast, and then to the Lisle Public Library.
At a little after eleven he showed up at the Collandar Bar and Grill. Cass didn’t particularly like to drink because he put on weight too easily. But this was a special occasion.
He collected a beer and soon struck up a conversation with a salesman from the Chevrolet dealership across the street. The salesman was middle-aged, personable, not quite able to pull back from his marketing persona. But that was okay; Cass didn’t mind listening to chatter today.
The salesman was talking about the current uncertainty in the industry and simultaneously extolling the pleasures of cruising America’s back roads. “Let me tell ya,” he said with a grin, “even if they could do that Star Trek thing and walk into a booth here and come out in Bismarck, it’ll never replace a Blazer. I don’t care what anybody says.”
After a while Cass became aware that the salesman was watching him closely. “You all right, buddy?” he asked. His name was Harvey, and the smile had been replaced by a frown.
“Yes,” said Cass. “I’m fine.”
“You sure? You look a little out of it.”
That was all it took. Cass told his story, described his flight through the dome in exquisite detail, his sense of having been absorbed by something, his conviction (now that he had had time to think about it) that he had been invaded. “Whatever it was,” he whispered, his eyes wide, “it was invisible.”
The salesman nodded. “Well,” he said, looking at his watch, “got to go.”
“It was there,” Cass went on. “God help me, it came through the port. The guard knew it, but he wouldn’t say anything.” He knocked over his glass. “Listen, I know how this sounds. But it’s true. They’ve turned something loose up there.”
Ten minutes later a reporter was trying to interview him. By then Cass had decided to say nothing further. It was, of course, too late.
Sioux Falls, SD, Mar. 27 (Reuters)—
Police captured accused hit man Carmine (The Creep) Malacci outside a motel near here today. Malacci, who has been the subject of a nationwide hunt after the assassination of a federal judge in Milwaukee, was taken after his whereabouts were tipped to police by local residents who recognized his picture from the television series Inside Edition. Malacci was said to have been on his way to Johnson’s Ridge, North Dakota, where he hoped to escape through the port into Eden.
Police indicated he offered no resistance. He was arrested as he returned from having breakfast at a pancake house….
Curt Hollis was walking past a flatcar loaded with lumber. He was headed toward the depot, about two miles away, when the wind spoke.
He had been working with J. J. Bender, the train dispatcher, opening boxcars for customs inspection. They’d finished the train, which was 186 cars long, and had just started back. Bender and the customs inspector were ahead of him, maybe forty yards or so, hands shoved into their pockets, clipboards trapped against their sides.
Bender and the inspector kept close together, their heads bent into the wind, which was out of the northwest. They were all walking on the east side of the train, using the cars for shelter. Curt didn’t mind the weather as much as the others. Bender and the customs inspector had spent most of their lives indoors. Curt, on the other hand, had done track work and construction jobs, had loaded tractor-trailers and laid roads. His face had turned to leather when he was still in his early thirties.
He was almost seventy now, and his body was starting to break down. Shoulders, knees, and hips ached all the time. He had diabetes and occasional chest pains. But he was afraid to see a doctor.
He slogged steadily through the snow. There would be more work for him when they got back to the depot. He was therefore content to dawdle while the others moved quickly ahead. Curt liked the long walks back after they’d cleared the train. It was late afternoon, and the sun was sinking. A couple of diesels waited on a parallel track to be exported. Between cars, he caught glimpses of Route 75. A pickup was headed north toward the border.
Curt was alone now. His kids had long since gone to live in California and Arizona. Jeannie, who had been his wife for thirty-seven years, had died in the spring.
The wind blew through the twilight. It lifted the tags on the lumber loads and peppered the boxes with dust. And it sighed his name.
Curt.
He stopped and looked at the gray sky.
His companions trudged resolutely ahead. A blue jay perched atop a tanker, watching him.
Curt.
Clearer that time. A cold breeze touched his face.
Out on Route 75, a tractor-trailer roared past, headed south, changing gears. Other than the customs inspector and the dispatcher, there was no one in sight. The cars were squat and heavy and rusting in the dying light.
“Is someone there?” he asked.
The blue jay leaped away at the sound and tracked through the sky, headed southeast. He watched until it disappeared.
Curt.
It was a whisper, a distant sigh.
Puzzled, almost frightened, he stopped. Ahead, the customs inspector had also stopped and was looking back at him.
There was no one hiding on the other side of the train. No one in the empty boxcar beside him. No one anywhere other than the two people with whom he’d been working.
His heart pumped.
His vision shifted, blurred, cleared. He looked down on the boxcar from above.
And on himself.
If he had been afraid, the fear subsided, drained away. He felt the calmness and indifference of the sky. He saw without emotion his own image, lying on the ground.
And he felt Jeannie’s presence. Young and laughing and fearless, as she had been before the long winters and the money problems had beaten much of it out of her. Her eyes were bright and she leaned toward him.
Then the light changed, dimmed, and he saw it was Bender kneeling beside him. The old sense of loss returned.
“Curt? What happened?”
He didn’t know. “Got sick,” he said. And then: “I heard my name.”
“What? Listen, just lie quiet. I’ll call the depot. Get a car out here.”
“There’s something here,” Curt said, struggling with Bender.
“He’s right,” said the customs inspector, her eyes wide. “I heard it, too.”
The deer had begun to bleed.
Jack McGuigan eased his snowmobile past a screen of heavy shrubbery and looked down the trail. Bright red drops glistened on the light snow.