Now he does.
Now he has all of us, and he sees these creatures clearly. They are empty. They are hollow. The wind whistles through them.
As they creep toward the dome like insects toward meat, eager to eat him and everyone he loves, Addis does something that doesn’t make sense. Instead of running away like all prey should, he steps forward. He advances on the predators.
They stop.
Addis stands in a clear circle surrounded by the swarm. He is waist-high to most of the skeletons, and those behind the first row can’t even see him, but skeletons don’t have eyes. They don’t see light bouncing off matter, the detail and nuance of reality. They perceive only broad concepts, vague shapes in the extrasensory fog that surrounds their shriveled brains. They see with notions and assumptions, predictions and preconceptions, so what they see now moving toward them is not a harmless little boy. Like Dobermans cowed by a Dachshund, what they see is the boldness of his challenge.
The skeletons step back.
You can’t, they say, a statement without a predicate, a meaningless noise of negation.
We’re bored of your game, Addis replies. Play it by yourself.
He feels his hands on the living ladder, the rungs of generations warm in his grip, and he climbs.
There is no up or down, they tell him in their detuned chorus, only here.
He climbs toward that bright ceiling, as distant as the sun, and he feels its warmth on his cold skin. He feels its gravity pulling him upward, easing his ascent, and he silently thanks us. The books around him are more beautiful with every shelf, thick tomes bound in oil paintings with pages of green leaves and yellow flowers and living human skin, books of glass and books of water with words in floating coils, spherical books with nested pages that he doesn’t know how to turn—experiences beyond his understanding. But he doesn’t need to turn every page to share in the wealth we’ve gathered. The words flutter out to meet him and he breathes them in, expanding ever larger, filling himself with the Higher in this endless inhalation.
There is nothing above us, the skeletons hiss from a thousand miles below. Never has been, never will be.
Addis inhales the breaths of every life that’s ever lived.
Addis exhales an answer.
I
I AM FLOATING DOWN A RIVER.
I am lying on my back, gazing at the stars. I take quick breaths, keeping my lungs filled; my arms and legs trail limply behind me. It feels good to fill my lungs. I fill them tight and feel a shuddering pleasure, like stretching my limbs after years in a cramped cell. The air is warm and sweet and it saturates my blood. I am buoyant. I can float forever.
I wonder where my friends are. Will they be waiting for me in the parking lot with their tubes already packed in the car, impatient with my leisurely pace? I must have lost my tube. It must have popped and sank. I must have been on this river all day, back-floating effortlessly as the sun went down and the sky turned pink and then purple and then this inky blue spattered with stars.
How far might I have drifted in all those hours? Far past my friends, certainly. Well on my way to wherever this river ends.
But now the river is a road.
I hover three feet off the pavement, gliding like a parade float through downtown Missoula. The town is empty. The buildings are charred. I hear the echoing taunts of children as I drift past the remains of my school—Rear End! Reject! and of course, Retard!—all the clever names they invented to replace my mother’s puzzling choice, and then silence.
I drift past my church and I hear my pastor’s operatic shouting, the congregation’s simian hooting, then silence. Past my house. My father’s snarled scriptures. My mother’s secret sobs. Then silence.
I drift through the doors of a prison.
Through the training yard, where I learned how to fight. Past my old cell, where I learned how to kill. Past the bones of forgotten prisoners, left to die and come back and die again.
“Wow, R,” Julie says. “Hard to imagine you in a place like this. You don’t exactly have that ‘hardened convict’ vibe.”
“Although if I were a judge,” Perry says, “I’d convict you of first-degree cheese for that speech you made out there.”
They walk on either side of me as I float, like pallbearers. I don’t like that comparison, so I send my mind elsewhere in search of a better scene.
I am dreaming.
But if every moment is shared on the shelves of the Library, how real might a dream be? If the thoughts that compose us exist outside us, beyond the sealed vault of our skulls, who’s to say it’s not really Julie—or some loose fragment of her—walking next to me? Who’s to say it’s not really Perry—though he’s long dead—strolling on my left?
The prison’s stained ceiling is gone, replaced by a blue sky. We are on the roof of the stadium, and Julie and Perry sit on a red blanket while I float a foot above it. I worry that the wind will blow me away, but Julie keeps a hand on my foot, anchoring me.
I feel a wet warmth in my chest. I hear a steady dripping beneath my back. Memory creeps in like an unwelcome guest.
“Did I say it?” I ask, staring at the sky.
“You said enough,” Julie says.
“Did they listen?”
“We’ll find out,” Perry says.
“Am I dying?”
They both look at each other.
“No,” Julie says, and I notice moisture in her eyes. “You’re not dying.”
“Everyone’s dying,” Perry says. “But especially you.”
“Shut up, Perry,” Julie says.
The sky looks different. Deeper, somehow, like a bottomless lake. “Will I come back?” My voice sounds smaller with every question. “Will I start over again?”
“Maybe you would have”—Perry slaps my thigh—“but those rules are about to change. I think we’re just about done with the whole zombie thing.”
“Can you wait?” I plead. “Just until I come back?”
He tilts his head, disappointed. “Come on, corpse, do you really want to repeat yourself? You’ve learned all you can in this halfway house. Either die or start living.”
“No moving back,” Julie says with a sad smile. “Move forward.”
I’m in a forest. The sky is hidden behind a canopy of trees, but the sun glows around the leaves, leaking through in sparkling flashes. My friends stand around me in a circle, their hair and clothes whipping in the wind. Has it already happened? Will I be lowered into the earth now? Will I watch their faces recede from me in that rectangle of daylight, smaller and smaller until the first shovelful covers my face?
Lawrence Rosso smiles down at me. He is dressed like a priest, but the book in his hands is no particular scripture. It flickers through sizes and shapes, from gilded leather tomes to yellowed pulp paperbacks.
“Is it good to die?” I ask him desperately. “Is there a better place?”
His smile turns bittersweet. “There are other places,” he says. “Other forms, other ways. They’re too big for the narrow valve of your brain, and when you experience them you’ll gasp and weep.” He shakes his head ruefully. “But there’s nothing like living. There’s nothing like being in the world. A ripe pear. A soft hand. The sun behind leaves.” He closes his eyes and sighs. “This is your home, R, for as long as you’re here. Never be eager to leave.”