Phantom (32 page)

The woman led the boy across the stark
plateau toward the mountain. It rose out of sight, blotting out
most of the horizon ahead of them, its upper reaches disappearing
into the blackness of sky and space. It seemed appropriate, in a
macabre fashion, that this mountain should be their destination. To
Ned it could be nothing but the end of the line. It looked like an
accumulation of all the evil and death that had ever been
experienced, gathered in one place, given mass and substance. Next
to it, Everest would be a mere pimple.

Ned took slight comfort from the fact that
they would have a very long climb before they reached the top. He
thought about trying to escape. Would the woman let him? Hardly.
Was there any way in which he might foil her? Unlikely. Even as he
considered this, he was trailing along beside her, one step back,
as if he were on an invisible leash. Anyhow, what would he do,
where would he go, if he did manage to flee? This world was the
place you came out in when you broke through the bottom of the
final nightmare, death. There was no "going on" from here. His only
company, if they could be called that, would be vampire dogs and
forests of tube creatures. For the first time, Ned confronted the
feeling of being alone, utterly alone in the universe, and without
hope. It was a mind-stunning, heart-withering reality, and with it
came a sudden desire as shocking as it was new to him. He wanted to
die. He was already dead, but death was proving to be not what he
had expected. Some kids he had known thought you went to heaven or
hell, or to a pit-stop called purgatory, or some place that was
limbo. Ned had never been taught one thing or another, and so
death, to him, had always been simply the end of life. He had never
given it much thought. Now he longed for death, but not this death.
He wanted the sweet sleep of oblivion, an endless, dreamless peace,
the obliteration of consciousness on every level. Not even heaven
or any other world, but only to be reduced to scattered, empty
atoms. This is how people feel when they decide to kill themselves,
Ned realized. But he knew, too, that he didn't have the option of
suicide. He had no options at all. That was why the woman could let
him think like this. He could change nothing.

Why does it have to be this way?

—
This is the way.

But why?

—
There is no other
way.

Why are you letting me feel fear and pain?
You said I would never know them again.

—
They are echoes dying
within you, and soon they will completely disappear. No fear or
pain will come to you from outside.

And when we get to the top of the
mountain—not even then?

—
Child.

The incantation worked again, but Ned was
aware of the woman's evasion. She went to the brink with her
assurances, but she always stopped short of giving him anything
explicit to hold onto. A loophole, a loose end—something was being
left unsaid. Ned was in a cruel situation. The woman was his only
hope, she was all he had in this place. He wanted to trust her,
because he had no alternative. But he couldn't; not yet, not
wholeheartedly. Maybe that trust would be found at the top of the
mountain. And maybe I'll find cartoon land there, too, he thought
in a spasm of self-contempt.

The ground began to slope gradually upward.
They were in the foothills, if you could call them that. The ascent
had started. Ned glanced up once, but the mountain was so
alarmingly close and massive that he quickly looked down again.
There was a small change in the way the ground felt to his feet, he
noticed. The same black sand was everywhere, but up to this point
it had been like a gritty dust on a hard surface. Now there was a
barely perceptible give to the earth's crust with each step the boy
took. It was like walking on heavy, thick egg cartons that had
almost but not thoroughly hardened into rock.

The woman stopped, and Ned with her. She
turned her eyes to him and the force of her gaze touched him
deeply, as if she were trying to transfer some of her strength to
him. It was not love, nor even warmth, but a kind of willed concern
that fed his mental stamina. At the same time as he was being given
this apparent boost, he could feel the leash tighten and pull him a
little closer to the woman.

—
It will be all
right.

What will?

The woman looked ahead and pointed.

Then Ned saw it.

Or rather, them.

People. Crowds of people, everywhere around
the bottom of the mountain. There must be millions of them, he
thought dizzily as his eyes swept the scene. Tens of millions.
Where had they come from, who were they, what were they doing here?
Well, they could ask him the same questions. The sight was so
startling Ned could accept it only in terms of manic humor. This
had to be the biggest mob in history., the longest waiting line,
the largest convention .... The woman kept her word: in spite of
their incalculable numbers, these people didn't frighten Ned. It
went far beyond that. They constituted a kind of crushing mental
blow that sent his mind reeling numbly. Only a little while ago he
had considered himself utterly alone, singled out for his own
special fate—and with that thought he had unwittingly conferred on
himself a tacit but spurious importance. Now, this vast horde of
human beings showed up the lie. Their mere presence exploded any
notion of uniqueness. He was alone—with the rest of mankind—at the
mountain of common destiny.

As the woman led him toward the crowd, and
then into it, Ned couldn't keep himself from gawking. The people
were naked and hairless, and their skin was like burnished garnet.
They ignored the woman and boy. Their eyes were open but apparently
unseeing, as if they could focus only on some inner preoccupation.
They were silent, and this absence of a single voice in an ocean of
people was perhaps the most chilling aspect of the scene.

But as he looked closer, Ned saw something
else. The people stood around in groups made up of from two or
three to a dozen or more individuals. They moved, but their
movements were short and halting, without purpose. They were like
odd human sculptures; still in the process of turning rigid. Two
men tottered nearby, shifting slightly on their feet—that was when
Ned saw it. The two men were connected—fused together along the
length of their right arms. It took a few seconds to sink in, but
then Ned realized it was true of everyone. The individuals in each
group seemed to be bonded to one another. Three women were joined
together at the back of their heads. A larger group consisted of
men and women whose arms were a chain of interlocking loops. Some
were cemented chest to chest, facing each other blindly. They all
struggled to move by themselves, as if they had no understanding of
their true situation. Thus, they constantly bumped, and nudged and
stumbled against each other, often falling to the ground, only to
rise awkwardly and resume their mindless ritual efforts. Ned passed
within a foot or two of some of these groups, and he could see
clearly that no cement or glue or stitching held them to each
other; every join was flesh to flesh, seamless and unbroken, as if
they had simply grown that way. From the beginning.

Again the question presented itself: What
were all these people doing here? But this time Ned wasn't eager to
hear the answer. He had a feeling that he already knew it. They
were here because they were here because they were here ... and
this is the way it is, forever. Everything is forever here, he
thought gravely. What a contrast with the world he had left behind,
where "forever" carried little weight. The harder Ned tried to come
to terms with the word, the more it defeated him. It was no longer
a mere abstraction, it was a bruising reality in the form of all
these doomed souls acting out their meaningless pantomime. Ned
couldn't accept it, but neither could he avoid it. Then a terrible
thought crossed his mind.

Are my parents here, somewhere?

—
Child.

Tell me!

—
Child, be still.

The mental leash tightened. Ned's anxiety
was diffused temporarily, but not eradicated. The woman seemed to
be moving faster now, dragging Ned along with her. They threaded
their way through the massive tangle of people with surprising
ease. The boy's eyes were open, but he was unable to focus clearly.
Tens of thousands of bodies and blank faces flew past, a hellish
tapestry unraveling at a frantic pace. Dimly, Ned perceived that he
was about to become one more drop in the anonymous ocean. He would
go blind, the woman would abandon him and, sooner or later, his
body would graft onto another and ... forget the rest. As long as I
don't know, Ned prayed. Please don't let me know. It all became a
blur.

Finally, his vision cleared. They were on
the mountain. It loomed over them like a dark moon about to fall
onto the Earth. The woman was watching Ned, but now he avoided her
eyes. He felt weak, and he was depressed at having been hauled back
into a state of self-awareness. He looked down and away from the
woman, the mountain. The view below was no better. Ned saw the
people again, and they truly were an ocean, stretching to the
horizon on all sides and probably far beyond sight. Their numbers
no longer amazed him, nor did the fact that he had passed through
that mass of bodies. Nothing amazed him anymore. You see, he told
himself, your brain is shutting down. The last stage in the
process. Well, maybe that was all right too. It will be all right,
that's what the woman was always saying, and maybe she was speaking
the truth. Stranger things have happened.

It suddenly came back to Ned in a flash of
pain: his parents. Were they down there, in that gigantic
collection of twitching statues? He couldn't bear the thought, and
as the pain dug deeper into him he knew with certainty that he had
to go back and take his place, to be with them. If that was their
fate, it would be his as well. But the woman held him where he was
until his pain turned into anger.

—
You did that to
yourself.

Why don't you answer me?

—
It isn't necessary, when
you answer yourself.

Then my mother and father are down
there?

—
Still the wrong
question.

It's not wrong as far as I’m concerned.

—
But it is.
Exactly.

I want you to—

—
Come.

The woman turned and resumed her ascent. Ned
went with her because he had no choice. Her power held him as
surely as the stringer had held those rock bass flopping against
his leg the day he and Peeler had walked back from Baxley Mill
Pond. The irony didn't escape him. The rock bass at least had no
idea of what was happening to them, since they don't have ideas at
all. But Ned could think, and it was a curse to him now.

The woman. He hated her. He—

She spun around and her eyes seized Ned. The
woman radiated warmth and affection. Her beauty was dazzling. Ned
felt as if he were dissolving in her love, and he knew that he
loved her. He always had, he always would. Even in this place the
end would be perfect and happy, because they would be together. Ned
rushed to bury himself in her embrace.

In that instant her smile changed. It was
the barest of movements, but with it she turned off the illusion.
Ned stopped short, stunned with cold. Her smile was not quite a
sneer, but it said: "You see what I've just done to you?" Ned felt
betrayed and manipulated, but more than that he was ashamed of
himself. What a puny fool he was that she could toy with him so
easily. She had rubbed his nose in hopelessness.

They continued on their way. Lesson over,
Ned thought. And lesson it was, for he had begun to realize that
there was something to be learned from that little episode. She
knew his thoughts. She had always known his thoughts, and she was
undoubtedly taking them in right now. The mistake was to let
thoughts form in the first place. He would have to rely on whatever
was to be found below the surface of his mind. He would have to
cultivate it and get it ready, but he would also have to keep it
down there, unspoken, unthought, until the time was right. And at
once Ned knew what it would be, but he quickly pushed it back into
his subconscious before it could take shape. She can't reach that
far—can she?

Don't keep the mountain
waiting, don't keep the mountain waiting
,
he thought like a moron singing some inane anthem.

The woman yanked the leash sharply, and
hooks of pain caught in his mind. Now, that's pain that comes from
the outside, he thought loudly. The woman didn't respond, but Ned
didn't expect her to. His wince worked itself into a determined
smile.

Ned looked around. They were so high on the
mountainside that it was no longer possible to see the people far
below. The ocean of burnished skin and the desert of black sand had
merged into a featureless expanse that disappeared without the
benefit of a horizon. It was as if only that speck of sun and this
mountain existed in space. The rest of the planet might as well
have fallen away, Ned thought. No going back; it wouldn't be
there.

Don't keep the mountain waiting ....

He was learning how to keep his mind active,
preoccupied. Thoughts were like ice skaters on a frozen pond. You
had to keep them busy doing figure eights and toe stands while the
real work went on below the ice.

The group was still changing, Ned observed.
Slowly, but unmistakably. At this altitude the black sand had
pretty much vanished. The mountainside was dark and bare. It looked
like solid rock, but it gave slightly underfoot, with that feeling
of matted egg cartons. In places it was almost springy. It amused
Ned to think that the mountain might actually be hollow, a colossal
papier-mâché prop. He and the woman would be ants on a stage set
for space giants. Was the curtain up or down?