Memory's Door (A Well Spring Novel) (28 page)

“What happened to the gate? Why did it happen?”

“Every soul that is born must die. We cannot thrust immortality on them and force them to live forever. It is their choice alone.”

Reece’s voice sounded behind her. “Is this the only reason you brought us here?”

“No.” The man pointed at the field. “Look to the very edge. Tell me what you see.”

As before, as Dana stared over the field, the distance seemed to shrink, and her eyes could see far beyond what her normal vision could show her. Slowly a low ring of smoke or a cloud came into focus. It was twenty or thirty feet high and pulsed as if pushing to get to the gates. As she watched, a razor-thin column of the smoke shot out from the ring and circled one of the gates for a moment, then retreated. All along the ring, millions of tendrils shot out, crossing thousands of miles across the field in an instant, then merged back into the dark cloud.

“Do you know what that is, Reece Roth?”

The answer struck Dana just before Reece spoke it.

His voice was deep and sounded marinated in anger. “The spiritual manifestation of the Wolf. The spirit of religion.”

“Yes.” The man turned from the field and waited till all their eyes were on him. “I am praying for the time when you must confront it.”

THIRTY-NINE

M
ARCUS ARRIVED HOME FROM THE UNIVERSITY AT SIX
on Monday evening and reached for the doorknob as a ray from the sun flashed off of it. He stopped with his hand inches from the door. Had he just switched again? He couldn’t tell. Nothing felt different. But it hadn’t the other times either, so why would it now?

He grabbed the knob, opened the door, and stepped inside. Marcus knew immediately he’d switched. “Where’s Layne’s picture?” It popped out of his mouth before he could stop it. Marcus stared at the antique credenza in the entryway.

“Is anyone home?”

“Upstairs!” Kat’s voice called out and then another higher voice spoke from the top of the stairs. “Hi, Daddy!”

Impossible. Marcus shuddered as the boy whipped down the stairs—a blur of green shorts and a white top.

He braced himself against the railing and croaked out, “Layne!”

The blur on the stairs slowed and came to a stop halfway down and pointed at his chest. “That’s me!”

Words tried to bubble out of Marcus’s mouth, but nothing came. His son. Too full of life, too vibrant to deny he was real. His green eyes smiled at Marcus as if Layne hadn’t seen him in forever. How true that was. His brown hair fell forward as he peered up at Marcus.

“Your face looks funny, Daddy.”

“I imagine it does,” Marcus sputtered out.

His knees weakened but he refused to go down. He’d clearly slipped into the alternate reality again. Layne held out his arms and Marcus didn’t hesitate. He scooped up the young child and held him tight, his head buried in Marcus’s chest, his lips raining kisses on his son’s head.

He squirmed. “You’re going to make my stuffing come out, Daddy.”

He loosened his grip, tears pouring down his cheeks. “Sorry, I just haven’t seen you in so long.”

“I know. Between morning and now is a long time.” Layne gave a goofy smile with his head tilted to the side.

Alive
. The word kept ricocheting through his brain. Layne was alive. Marcus didn’t care if this was an alternate reality. Here his son was breathing, laughing, living, and Marcus wanted to stay forever. How old was his son here? Four? Five? Would he die in this reality three years from now as he had in the real world?

He tried to swallow his emotions. “Today made it seem like a long time since I’ve seen you.”

“Your eyes are leaking.”

Marcus laughed through his tears. How could he have forgotten? In preschool a boy had made fun of Layne when he cried, so he and Marcus had come up with this terminology to describe it.

“Yes, they are.” He squeezed Layne again. “And you’re the one causing the leaks.”

Marcus sat in his den at eleven o’clock that night trying to figure out what to do. The previous switches hadn’t lasted anywhere near this long. This one was going on five hours. He leafed through a stack of books on quantum mechanics trying to find a reason why these switches were happening, but he knew he wouldn’t find an answer. He’d written a book giving those answers and they were all wrong.

The only light came from the lamp on his desk. Its forty-watt
bulb cast a warm gold glow on his scrambled mass of notes and on a glass of Coke the melted ice had diluted into thin, brown sugar water. But it wasn’t his desk, wasn’t his Coke. Marcus rubbed his hair and closed his eyes.

A rap on the door frame startled him, and he knocked a stack of books to the floor as he sat up straight. They sounded like thunder as they smacked into the hardwood floor of the den. Hardwood? The floor in his den was carpeted. Just another reminder he wasn’t in Kansas at the moment.

He looked up to find Kat standing in the doorway.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

She eased into the room, her arms folded and her eyes narrowed. “Really?”

“I’m fine.”

She strolled by his desk and slid onto the couch under the windows. “What happened today when you came home? Layne told me you acted funny. And then you almost wouldn’t let me put him to bed tonight. And squeezed him like it was the last time you would ever see him.”

“Nothing happened.”

She glanced at her watch. “It’s late and I don’t want to drag the truth out of you. So if you’d just like me to leave, I can do that. But if you want to talk, I’m here, okay?” She scooted forward on the couch as if to stand.

“If I described what I’m thinking about, you’d call the gentlemen with the white coats.” Marcus clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the notes on his desk.

“Try me.”

“Right now I’m enamored to a much greater degree with this reality than the true one.”

“This reality?” She looked around the room and laughed, the laugh that captured him decades ago. “It’s the only one I know of. Do you know of others?”

“Yes.”

“Is this something you’re delving into in class, or is it an extracurricular activity?”

“A smattering of both.”

“How long are you planning to continue this somewhat boring line of conversation?”

“In other words, why don’t I just come right out and tell you what is going on.”

Kat nodded.

“You aren’t real.”

“I’m not?”

“No.”

Kat squeezed her upper arm, her tan fingers a stark contrast to her white blouse. “It feels so lifelike.”

“You’re part of an alternate reality.”

“What, like that movie
Family Man
, something like that?” She leaned back and put her arm along the top of the couch. “How wonderful.”

“I’m dead serious.”

“I see. Do we live in the same house in the other reality? Do I work at a bakery? Are you a physics professor?”

“Yes to all of the above.”

“And how long have I been a projection of your imagination?”

“Not my imagination. To me it’s as real as the other side.”

“So Layne is a figment of your imagination as well?”

“It’s why I reacted the way I did this afternoon.” He gazed into her eyes. “In my true reality, Layne isn’t alive.”

For the first time since she’d come in, Kat grew serious. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“What do you mean he isn’t alive? That would devastate you.”

“Yes.” He turned and slumped back in his chair.

“I don’t know why you’re talking like this.”

“You’re right. I apologize.” Marcus lurched forward. “Let’s drop it.”

“You’ve gone this far.”

He swallowed and closed his eyes. “Could you forgive me?”

“For what?”

“If I was the cause of Layne’s death. Could you stay with me if I’d done that?”

“But you didn’t do that. Layne is alive, sleeping in his bed right now.”

“But if I had.”

“But you didn’t—”

“Please, Kat. How would you respond?”

“Tell me what you think you did in this dream world of yours.”

“It isn’t a—”

“What happened?”

The memory rushed in on Marcus like a flash flood.

“Dad, look at this!”

Layne pumped his pedals and his bike shot toward a jump in a field at Matthews Beach Park. He and three older boys had set up a ramp and had been jumping off it for an hour. Layne’s bike smacked into the ramp and launched his son three feet into the air. At eight years old it must have seemed like thirty feet. Marcus glanced down at the paper he was presenting at the university that coming week, then back at Layne as joy broke out on his face. He circled around and sped back toward Marcus.

“Did you see that? Did you see it!” Layne slammed on his pedals and his bike skidded to a stop right in front of Marcus. “I was sooooo high!”

“It was excellent. I’m flummoxed that you didn’t scrape your head on the clouds.” Marcus grinned and turned back to his paper. “Nicely done.”

“Do you want to watch me do it again?”

“I would love to, Layne, but I’m right in the middle of finishing up a project here, okay?”

Layne’s gaze fell to the ground. “Sure, I guess.”

“But next weekend we can come back, and then I’ll even bring
my camera and get some photos of you flying through the air. I promise. No, wait. I pinkie promise. How does that sound?”

“It sounds good.” Layne looked up, a grin on his face. “But do you have your camera now? Could you take just one shot?”

“Layne.” Marcus tapped his papers with his mechanical pencil. “I wish I could. I do. Unfortunately I have to concentrate right now, but next weekend I’ll get a bazillion pictures and we’ll make one of them into a poster and put it on your bedroom wall, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Layne pedaled off but was back two minutes later. Marcus set his pencil down, rubbed his eyes, and sighed.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

Layne pointed to the three other boys he was jumping with. “Is it okay if I go with them to the store?”

“What store? Where is it?”

“Just up the road . . . it’s not very far.”

“That would be great.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Of course I will be! Really, very extra careful.”

“All right.” Marcus glanced at his watch. “It’s 2:33 now. I want you back here by three at the latest. Okay, buddy?”

Layne jumped off his bike and grabbed Marcus around the waist. “I love you, Daddy. You’re the bestest in the westest.”

Marcus smiled. Layne hadn’t said
Daddy
for over a year. That wasn’t a bad thing. It was good, an indication his son was growing up. But hearing Layne say
Daddy
reminded him there was a little boy still inside who would be a little boy for many years to come.

Three o’clock came and went without a whisper. At three fifteen, Marcus couldn’t wait any longer. He pulled his keys from his pocket and strode for his car, trying to ignore the sick feeling growing like thistles in his stomach. As he inserted his key into his car
door, sirens sliced through the air of the summer day and the temperature seemed to drop thirty degrees.

Marcus looked up at Kat through eyes blurred with tears. “I never got a photo of him doing the jump.”

“I don’t understand what you think you did, Marcus.” Kat took his hands in hers. “What could you have done? You let him ride his bike with his friends. How could you have known what would happen?”

“I did know. I did.” Marcus wiped his eyes. “Something inside me said, ‘Don’t let him go.’ It was as clear as anything I’ve ever heard. But I let him go anyway.” Marcus rubbed the corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger for a long time. “I was so wrapped up in that idiotic paper, I paid no attention to the voice inside.”

The pace of Marcus’s breathing increased and he repeated the last words Layne ever said to him. “‘You’re the bestest in the westest.’” Their secret saying for each other.

Marcus went silent, and after a few minutes Kat slid closer and put her arms around his shoulders. “He got hit by a car.”

Marcus nodded, his vision blurred by tears. Long minutes later he asked Kat again, “So could you? Forgive me?”

“I don’t know.” She turned and picked at her fingernails. “When a child is lost, marriages have a hard time surviving it. If I knew you could have prevented it . . . I would try, but I don’t think—” Kat sat up straight and stared at him, fire in her eyes. “But it doesn’t matter. You didn’t do it, Marcus!

“If Layne was on a bike or a boat or a swing or a ski slope or . . . or anything, if you heard that voice inside, you wouldn’t let him go. Neither of us would. You’d keep him from going and I’d never ever have to face what you say happened and you wouldn’t either.”

With that Kat pushed herself off the sofa and shuffled out of his den. In this Kat’s world, he would never do what he’d done to Layne. It’s the only perspective she could see—the only possible outcome. But in his true reality the angle of vision was much different.

Marcus sat in the silence for ten minutes, maybe fifteen, before slowly rising and easing into Layne’s room. He lay next to his sleeping son, kissed his head, and pulled Layne to his chest. The last thought before sleep took Marcus was how his boy’s hair smelled exactly how a five-year-old’s should and that he would do almost anything not to lose it.