Hitchers (24 page)

“It's gone.”

“But what is it?” It seemed important to understand what it was, if only because Annie was focused on it. She opened her mouth to answer and I stretched toward her. I didn't want to miss what she said. I leaned, leaned...

My head popped. All of the air went out of me. I felt myself fall like a dropped penny, hit the floor, circling and circling until I settled and was still.

I'd never been so still. There was no sound except the whistle of the wind. And suddenly I could see my feet, my hands, the tip of my nose, as if I had a physical presence in this world.

I'd fallen out of my body. There was no other explanation.

“Gone,” Annie whispered.

Now I remembered what the hum was. Annie once told me that she never felt completely at ease. There was always a hum, a sense that all was not well, a guilt driven by her own sense of inadequacy.

My own hum was not gone. I felt very heavy, like a block of iron, but a very unhappy block of iron.

“Annie, I fell out. I need to go back to the world of the living. How do I get back?”

Slowly, Annie lifted her head. “I can see you. Hi.”

“How do I get back? What do I do?”

“You blow away.”

“I don't want to blow away.” I tried to stand, but I felt way too heavy, and I couldn't get a sense of my legs. I tried turning. It was like trying to turn while encased in concrete.

I tried wobbling from side to side, and found that I could rotate ever so slowly, as if the air was mud. Eventually I managed to face the door.

It was closed. They were gone. They had no idea they'd left me behind.

“Annie?”

“Mm?”

“Please. How do I get back into my body?”

“You're dead. No bodies. It's fine.”

I was dead. I would blow away now. I would never see Summer, or Mick, or Mom again. I'd never speak to Lorena again. Grandpa had won.

A Hello Kitty Pez dispenser stared down at me from Annie's book shelf, its plastic smile taunting, the color bleached away by the curtain that separated the living and the dead. Or maybe my eyes had been scrubbed of the ability to see colors. What need do the dead have of bright colors when their purpose is to let go of the physical world and blow away?

I was about three feet from the door. If I could reach it, maybe I could open it and get into the hall and down the stairs.

I wobbled again, and as I rotated I leaned. After a few minutes of
this I could see that I was inching across the carpet toward the door.

As strenuous as moving was, I didn't feel fatigued, but it was hard to stay focused. I kept forgetting what I was trying to do, kept drifting off. To combat it, I pictured my friends. Mick. Summer. I tried to picture Lorena, but it didn't work as well. Deadland was a part of her.

After what seemed like hours I reached the door and tried the knob. My fingers stopped at the polished metal, but I couldn't feel it, let alone turn it. Staring at that knob I thought of something Summer had told me. Krishnapuma had written that he sensed the things in the world of the dead were not really things, only reflections of things, or echoes of things that only existed because of the collective memory of the dead. He speculated that places where no people had died—remote stretches of ocean or desert—didn't exist in this world. I could believe that.

The door swung open.

Startled, I cried out, raising my hands in supplication to whomever was passing through in the world of the living. I saw no one, but knew it had to be my friends.

I felt a pull, like the head of a vacuum cleaner passing close by. I leaned into it, reaching, felt the suction. I was lifted off the carpet, but I couldn't gain enough traction and I dropped back down with a plop. Frantic, I splayed my fingers and
stretched
until it felt like I was a foot taller.

My last chance; I knew they wouldn't come back again.

I caught a cone of suction, felt myself twist and spin as I was drawn up. And then...
pop.

The heaviness was gone, the sense of floating returned. I was back in my body. Struggling to stay calm I rotated back toward the front of my head until color and life flooded back into my field of vision.

“No, no, lassies first.” Grandpa was saying as he extended a hand, waving Summer toward the bathroom. “But try not to steal anything while you're in there.”

“Shut up, you prick,” Mick interjected.

Summer glared at Grandpa. “If you were in your own body I'd break your neck.” From the first syllable I knew it was Lorena.

“My own body is rotting in a grave,” Grandpa said. “So is yours.” He cupped his hands to his chest, forming imaginary breasts. “You won't have these to help you this time around.” He spit on the carpet at her feet. “I knew it was your idea to steal my strip. You can't trust a spic.”

Mick swung an arm around Grandpa's neck and put him in a headlock. He pulled us down the hallway. “Take your piss before I gag you.” Grandpa struggled to break free, but Mick twisted his neck. My view spun crazily. “If you weren't wearing Finn's pants I'd leave you to piss in them.” He shoved Grandpa into the bathroom and slammed the door.

Grandpa struggled to unzip my jeans with his quavering hands, then relieved himself with a grunt and an urgent stream.

They'd come back because Grandpa had to pee. I was alive because of Jack Daniel's.

Grandpa glanced at my watch. “It's only a matter of time, laddie. More me and less you every day. Only a matter of time.” The croak in his voice was getting even less pronounced, and he now fell at the midpoint between a beast from hell and someone with a bad cold. He broke into a mutter of Irish music, a snappy “Dum de diddle dum dum” as he zipped my fly. “Need to put on some real pants,” he muttered as he opened the door.

Mick was waiting at the door with the rope.

Grandpa eyed it. “You think you can get that on me when I'm ready for you, eh?”

Mick lunged for Grandpa's wrist. As if in slow motion I watched Grandpa lift my clenched fist and punch Mick in the eye. Mick slammed into the wall, dropped to his hands and knees.

Lorena leapt at Grandpa, wrapped her arm around his neck from behind and squeezed. Grandpa reared back, threw his shoulders; Lorena's head hit the wall. Her grip relaxed and Grandpa headed
for the door. Behind us, Lorena shouted for him to wait.

Grandpa strode out to the parking lot and hopped into the Maserati. “It's good to have legs that work,” he said as he fumbled the key into the ignition. “Everything is harder from a wheelchair.” His head lurched forward, then backward as he sped out of the parking space. “You just can't get away from people when you want some peace and quiet.”

I couldn't believe how cavalier he was about pounding someone's head into a wall. He was talking as if nothing had happened.

“I could never get any peace and quiet when I was alive. Between Frenchie trying to control my every move right down to when I bent my pinkie, and the rest of you blaring the TV and yammering back and forth like chimps, I never got a moment's peace.” He wheezed mocking laughter. “I'm the selfish one?” He barely slowed taking the turn. “So why did you keep hanging around after you grew up? I didn't ask you to come by, but there you were every couple of days, coming to butter me up, ready to pick my bones as soon as I hit the ground.”

Why did I keep coming around? I guess I thought that's what families did. They ate meals together once in a while, exchanged gifts at Christmas. Silly me.

“You think I was going to hand over my life's work to a sissy like you? Still hanging by your mother's apron strings when you were shaving? Letting that Mexican pay your bills while you brought in nothing, drawing your crap cartoons. For God's sake, make your way like a man! Don't whine and complain and wait for women to wipe your nose for you.”

Grandpa peeled through Toy Shop Village and up to my apartment in a cloud of road dust. Three news vans were waiting.

“Ah, shit. I don't need them hanging around.” He jerked the Maserati into park while it was still moving, went around to the trunk, pulled up the carpet and retrieved the crow bar.

He turned to the closest news team. “Get out,” he said, brandishing the tire iron. “This is private property. Get off it before I spill
your brains.”

A cameraman held out his hands. “Relax—”

“Now, God damn it!”

Grandpa watched as they pulled out, breathing like a bull after his charge. “That's how you handle them.”

Satisfied they were gone, he headed inside. “I told you I wanted you off my property. But did you listen? You're nothing but a leech, just like your God damned father.” He turned on a burner, grabbed a grocery list off the refrigerator and held the tip of it to the burner until the tip burst into flame.

“You want to play, Finnegan? Let's play.”

The flame crept toward his hand as he carried the burning paper to my studio, to the stacks of papers piled on my desk—the contracts and financial statements that had been rolling in as a result of
Toy Shop'
s success.

He wouldn't, I thought. He wouldn't light my desk on fire inside his own building. He held the burning paper to the edge of a document leaning off the desk. The flames crept across the page and lit others.

There was a
poof.
My desk was a bonfire. Grandpa backed out of the room.

He found lighter fluid under the sink. I'd barbecued in the drive-in lot exactly once, so it was almost full. He sprayed a trail from the kitchen right into my study, then dropped the canister and headed outside.

Everything I owned was in that apartment. All of my photos, everything I'd ever drawn. He'd just torched my life.

Summer and Mick were waiting outside by Mick's car, surrounded by newspeople and cameras. There was a black welt under Mick's eye that looked like it wasn't nearly finished swelling. They pushed their way over to Grandpa. “Is it you, Finn, or still the old man?” Gilly was back. He looked at Grandpa's hands, frowning in concentration.

Grandpa peered up at the apartment. “Me and Finnegan are
playing a little game. Aren't we, Finnegan?”

Inside, I screamed and raged and swore I'd get him for this.

A roar erupted inside the apartment. A window shattered. Flames leapt out the broken window and climbed the stucco wall.

Summer pulled my phone out of her pocket, opened it. It was hard to believe no one in the news crews had bothered to call, but she was right to make sure. Who knew what they would do?

Grandpa swatted the phone from her hand. “Let it burn. It's mine, I can burn it if I want.” He turned his face toward the flames. “You want to play, Finnegan? I told you to get the hell off my property. Now you're off. How do you like that?”

G
randpa was driving back to his house from Murphy's Pub when I finally regained control, six hours after he'd burned my apartment. He'd downed five drinks at Murphy's, and as I headed back toward Mick's place in the Maserati I felt like I was driving on a ship at sea rather than a level road.

The traffic going the other way—out of town on Route 85—was crawling. Every day more people were fleeing. I couldn't blame them—every day more hitchers walked the streets of Atlanta, seeking out friends and loved ones who didn't recognize them, returning to their old haunts (pun intended), and generally scaring the shit out of everyone who was not afflicted. No doubt about it, Atlanta was getting weird, and if I wasn't afflicted I would pack up my stuff (if I wasn't afflicted I would still have stuff to pack) and join the bumper-to-bumper traffic fleeing this giant morgue.

“You're a real piece of work, you know that?” I said aloud. “Lousy drunk.
Mick
is the drug addict? You want to see a drug addict, take a look in the mirror.” I tried to point at the rear-view mirror and poked it instead, then had to readjust it. “I think I finally figured
out why you hated me so much. It's because you saw yourself in me. Oh sure, you were the man, except you had to sneak to the bar so your wife wouldn't find out. You handed over your paychecks to her and got an allowance. That's it, isn't it? You harp on my weaknesses because it's easier than owning up to your own.” I took a deep breath, tried to calm down. I had a feeling I'd hit a nerve with that last observation, and it felt good. I'd shut up now, and let the bastard stew.

The lampposts just off the exit were papered with flyers of people seeking dead loved ones. I'm sure they realized that if a dead loved one had returned, he or she could simply pick up a phone. It was hard to give up hope, I guess, and I imagined most of the unafflicted who were staying in Atlanta were doing so because they hoped to find a dead loved one.

National Guard troops stood on a corner, watching over protesters who wanted all of the hitchers rounded up and put in a camp, or shot on sight.

When I got to Mick's, Mick was back and Lorena was with him. Lorena leapt from the couch with a jubilant shout, flew into my arms. After a moment of cheerful reunion she gestured toward the TV. “Have you seen this?”

They were watching my apartment burn on CNN. I was suddenly big news—the celebrity face of a horrible new plague. Well, me and Mick. They'd already run a couple of stories on Mick, but he was used to it and didn't seem to care. The police wanted to speak to me about the fire. There was a debate on the Rachel Maddow show about whether a person was culpable for a crime (arson, for example) if he was either suffering from post-traumatic identity disorder or possessed by the dead. Rachel and her guests didn't take a definitive stand on which I was—that was a topic for another show.