Hitchers (16 page)

As soon as the car door slammed and Summer turned toward her apartment, I let Grandpa have it.

“So what do you think of that, old man?” I said as I pulled out of the parking lot. “My ‘spic wife' is back, too. Maybe the four of us can go to dinner sometime.”

I hated the thought of being away from Lorena for a moment, let alone the rest of the day and evening, but I couldn't expect Summer to sleep at my place, or invite me to spend the night at hers. I'd see her tomorrow; that would have to be good enough.

“You know what?” I continued. “My treat. I'll take us all to the best restaurant in Atlanta. With all the money that's pouring in from Wolfie's popularity, I can certainly afford it.”

It had been almost forty-eight hours since Grandpa last took over. A faint hope was beginning to flicker inside me that I was shouting into an empty car. God, I hoped so. If not, the old man would visit soon, and I'd be banished to that numb twilight place.

I flicked on the stereo, shoved in an Abney Park CD because I knew Grandpa would despise it, and cranked up the volume until my ears crackled.

T
hanks to Mick and Grandpa, I was spending a lot more time in bars than usual. Mick's taste was substantially more upscale than Grandpa's: The Regis had an authentic art deco-period bar, original oil paintings, plush chairs, and a grand piano. Mick and I sat at the bar watching the news, transfixed. The momentum on the news had clearly shifted; so many people were turning up with the blurt-like-a-zombie disease that it was supplanting the anthrax attack as the top story. The disorder was still being described as a post-traumatic stress response. That it was extreme and unprecedented only reflected the extreme and unprecedented nature of the anthrax attack itself, according to psychiatrists and people at the Center for Disease Control.

“If they think this is extreme, wait till they get a look at act two,” I muttered to Mick just as Summer appeared in the doorway. She scanned the bar, looking for us.

When she spotted me she hurried over, holding up a beat-up brown book missing its dust jacket. “Wait till you see what I found.” I gave her my barstool and stood behind her as she
thumbed through pages. “When we were talking last night, I had this niggling feeling that all of this was somehow familiar. When I got home I remembered. This mystic, J. Krishnapuma, comes awfully close to describing our situation.” She flattened the book on the bar, ran her finger under a line of heavily underlined text. “He said that consciousness persists after death, and that consciousness had what he called ‘osmotic properties'—under the right conditions the dead could get sucked in and out between the world of the dead and the world of the living.”

I read along where Summer was pointing. His language was gaudy, but it did sound eerily familiar.

“According to him everything has consciousness,” Summer went on, “animals, plants, planets, stars—but the various forms of consciousness aren't interchangeable. The consciousness of a star can't inhabit a human body, and vice-versa.

“So if they came through, the dead would have nowhere to go but into people,” I said.

“Charming,” Mick said.

Two months ago I'd have rolled my eyes at this sort of supernatural stuff. I was still skeptical that some mystic's fifty-year-old book held the answers we were looking for, but it didn't seem all that far-fetched, either.

“Why would I pay to eat food in a restaurant that I can cook myself?”
Mick blurted. Heads turned to stare, but we ignored them. Mick was probably used to people staring at him.

“How did he figure all this out?” I asked. “Does he say?” Summer tilted her head back to look at me, breaking into a wide smile. “Oh yeah, he says.” She flipped through more pages, stopped on a page with multiple exclamation points in the margins. She tapped the page. “He claims he visited the other side. ‘The world of the dead' he called it. Actually saw it.”

I guffawed. Couldn't help it. Even with my grandfather taking up residence in my body, this sounded way over the top.

“How did he do that?” Mick asked, eyeing the pages as if they
might explode at any moment.

Summer flipped to the next page, which was marked by a powder-blue Post-it. “He spent years fine-tuning his consciousness until he could enter a deep trance state, aided by mescaline.”

Mick leaned back, chuckling. “I figured heavy drugs had to be involved somehow.” He tapped the page with his fingernail. “I think I've been to the very same place a few times, only it was heroin that got me there. I preferred the opiates in my high-flying days.”

Summer smiled at the joke, flipped a few more pages.

I skimmed the browned pages of Krishnapuma's book, catching random snippets as they flew by:

He had a melodramatic delivery, that much was certain. Whether any of it was true... at this point I didn't know what to think.

“Maybe this guy visited this land of the dead and maybe he didn't, but how does it help us?” I asked. “How does it get my grandfather to go away?”

Once again Summer craned her neck to grin up at me. “Easy. You're going to go there.”

“Go where?”

“The world of the dead.”

I laughed, because I thought she was joking. “How the hell would I do that? I don't have years to fine-tune my awareness. Or any mescaline.”

Summer held up the book, her finger holding her place. “Krishnapuma didn't have this to guide him. And Krishnapuma wasn't halfway there to begin with.”

“I'm halfway to Deadland?”

“The world of the dead,” Summer corrected. She flipped open the book and read a passage: “‘Those who have touched death, however briefly, tread with one foot in the world of the living and the other in the world of the dead.' That's why you and Mick are ahead of the others who have this thing. You were in the world of the dead
when it happened.”

“Lucky us,” Mick said, exhaling smoke from his cigarette. He had been blurting so often he seemed reluctant to speak for long, like a person with hiccups who is tormented by anticipation of the next one.

Summer flipped through her notes. “There's so much more. Krishnapuma predicted that it might be possible for a rift to open between the two worlds, allowing the dead to pour into the world of the living.” She held up a finger. “And listen to this: ‘When a conscious being leaves its physical form, it dissolves back into the all, the place from which all consciousness arises. This process takes time; how much depends on the being's willingness to let go of the illusion of his own individuation.'”

“That's lovely. I have no idea what it means, but it's lovely.” Mick heaved a big sigh. “Is it possible we're all just going mad? Doesn't that make more sense than thinking we've each got someone dead inside us?” As if to underscore this, he blurted,
“Is it mint? If there are scratches I'm not interested.”
A red-faced guy in a white windbreaker glanced at Mick from the adjoining stool, swept his drink off the bar and moved away. It was becoming clearer it was a man's voice; the tenor was coming through stronger than ever.

“The thought has crossed my mind,” I said, “but that wouldn't explain how Summer could know so much about Lorena.”

“I know, I know.” Mick drained his glass. It made a solid thunk as he set it back on the table. “Wishful thinking.”

“But how did it happen?” I asked. I lowered my voice. “I mean, if we're all possessed, why are we all possessed?”

Mick shrugged. “Has to be the anthrax attack. No way the timing's a coincidence.” Another blurt followed—something about wanting pizza before bed—then another almost on top of the first.

“What if it's not so much the anthrax, but so many people dying at once?” Summer suggested. “Have so many people ever died at once before?”

I opened my mouth to suggest Hiroshima, or the fire-bombing of
Dresden, but neither had killed six hundred thousand people. Millions may have died from the bubonic plague in the middle ages, but that was over a couple of years. Plus the deaths were spread over a much larger area. Same with the flu pandemic of 1918.

“I don't think so,” I said. “Over half a million people in four or five days?” Something was niggling me about all this. I rotated my glass, thinking, trying to get a grasp on it. Then I had it. “But hold on—Grandpa didn't die in the anthrax attack. Why would he come back?”

I had to raise my voice to talk over Mick's blurts. His forehead was damp with sweat. “Mick? You all right?” I asked, putting a hand on Mick's back. Around us the buzz of bar patrons was rising.

Mick raised his arm like he was going to gesture at something, let it drop. His hands began to shake. “Oh, bloody,” Mick blubbered. His face was so slack he looked like he'd had a stroke. He inhaled deeply, jerkily. His hands were jerking like fish just hauled into the boat.

People left their seats. A dozen headed for the door in quick order. I knew just what Mick was going through, and I felt for him. Maybe it was easier for him because he knew what to expect.

The bar stool squeaked against the wood floor as Mick stumbled off it. He looked at us, wide-eyed.

Summer put a calming hand on his arm. “Can you tell me your name?”

“I thought I was dreaming.” His voice was the same deep, crude thing mine had been when Grandpa spoke, but he spoke fast, spitting and blubbering so you could barely understand. He looked at the mirror behind the bar, pressed his hands to his face. “I'm Mick. This is unbelievable.” He looked at me. “He can hear me, right? Isn't that how it works? That's how it was in the dream.” He stuck his hands under his arms like he was cold.

“That seems to be how it works,” I agreed.

“Mick!” He called, looking at himself in the mirror. “Gilly here.” He held up his hands as if warding off a blow. “Now don't get mad.
I'm sorry about all that legal stuff. That's all behind us now, okay?”

“I'm sorry,” Summer said. “Gilly?” She held out her hand. “I'm Summer.” Gilly studied Summer's palm, then held out Mick's quavering hand, dangling loosely at the end of his wrist. “Hey.”

“Can you tell me your last name?”

“I've been watching you.” He pointed at the mirror.

Summer nodded. “Can you tell me your last name?”

He touched Mick's lips.
“What's happening to me?”
He had a thick New York accent that came through despite the wet, croaking timbre of his speech. There was no trace of Mick's cockney British.

“Hansen,” I said. “His last name is Hansen.” Summer looked at me, her head tilted, questioning. “He co-wrote most of Mick's big hits.”

“I was also in the band for a while.” He looked around the bar, as if he'd just noticed where he was. “Did I die or not?”

“What's the last thing you remember, before you started seeing through Mick's eyes?” Summer asked.

“The wind,” he said. “Music going through my head, on and on and on and on and on. That's why I'm back. I need to find my notes and get back to work.” He looked at the mirror, raised his voice. “I been working on something new for you, Mick. It's good, really good. I promise. Not just a retread—”

“Wait a minute, back up,” Summer said. “Why are you back?”

Gilly held his outstretched palms over his head. “Because the gods, or the cosmos or whatever, wanted Mick and me back together. How could that be any clearer? We're in the same fricking
body.”
He turned back to the mirror. “Mick, no hard feelings, right? I worked on it on the other side, in my head. It's weird but it's not, you know what I mean?”

“Hang on,” Summer said, grasping one of Gilly's hands and tugging, trying to get his attention. “The other side? Can you tell us about it?”

My hands were shaking. That awful crawling sensation started up.

“Me and you, man, together again.” Gilly shook his head.

“Summer,” I interrupted, before the tingling swept over me, numbing me like a full-body shot of Novocain.

Summer looked at my hands, gave me a look that said “Don't leave me with two dead people.”

Grandpa turned to the bald bartender, shouted, “Whiskey, neat.” He nudged my drink toward the gutter of the bar. “Scotch is for sissies and Englishmen, which is the same thing.” He pulled his stool closer to the bar as if it offended him.

“Mr. Darby, my name is Summer Locker.” She motioned to Mick. “And this is Gilly Hansen.” Gilly offered Mick's wobbly hand.

Grandpa looked at it. “I was listening. I know who the hell he is.”

Alarmed, urgent voices carried from the far end of the bar. Someone was sobbing, “I don't understand what's happening” over and over. Grandpa glanced at them. Most of the patrons remaining in The Regis were standing, packed toward the entrance as if watching an avant-garde play. Most looked scared shitless, though a woman with dyed red hair was snapping pictures with her phone.

“Do you remember the other side?” Summer asked Grandpa. Grandpa shrugged. “I got nothing to say to you, missy. Why don't you jump in front of a bus and go there yourself.” He jerked a thumb at the door.

“Wait. You were dead too?” Gilly asked.

The bartender ventured within a few paces of us. “I think you should leave.”

“I think you should go to hell,” Grandpa shot back. “Pour my drink, and be quick about it.” The bartender retreated down the bar.