The Marbury Lens (7 page)

This is real.

My feet, inside my shoes.

Sounds of cars on the road.

I slip my hand up inside my T-shirt and feel my side.

This is real.

Henry’s glasses are wrapped inside my sock and I know they’re in my back pocket.

I haven’t gotten away from anything.

Saturday night.

The pub was crowded with kids; and three guys had set up on a stage near the back and were playing folk music with a guitar, mandolin, and drum. I scanned the length of the bar, saw the same bartender who’d served me the night before, and just as I found a path to where he was pouring, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

A soft hand. It stopped me, turned me back.

“I didn’t think you were going to come. I’d almost given up waiting for you.”

I felt myself going white, like all the blood had just drained from my body, and my eyes met squarely with hers.

“It’s Nickie, with an I-E,” she had said, and spelled it out slowly. And now I remembered how I’d entered it into my cell phone, earlier, before it went dead. She was the one who took my picture after we met on the boat. I remembered it now, how she’d brushed my hand lightly while I was taking a picture and asked if I’d like her to take one of me, since I was alone, for my friends back home. Nickie.

Maybe.

What the hell is happening to me?

I exhaled, smiled. “I…I’m sorry. I don’t know where the time went. Jet lag, I guess. I’ll get over it.”

She smiled back at me.

“Well, I’m pleased you’re here now,” she said, and added, “Jack.”

Then she squeezed my hand.

I heard myself gulp. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever talked to in my life, I think.

She wore those jeans that were so tight around her ankles and a pink sweater that clung to her waist with a wide, open neckline that showed her collarbone, the perfect smoothness of her skin. And she looked at me with the softest blue eyes—the slightest trace of a smile on her lips, and shining black hair that spilled down to her shoulders—like she was waiting for me to say something.

Nickie.

“Do you want to get something to drink? Something to eat?” I stuttered.

“It’s very crowded in here, Jack,” she said. “Can we go for a walk outside?”

I looked back at the bartender. He was watching us.

Everyone’s watching you, Jack.

I took her hand. “Let’s go.”

When we were out on the street, Nickie slipped her arm in mine and I said, “Where to?”

Nickie smiled and said, “Come on. I’ll show you.”

And while we walked toward the Tube, I thought I’d better shut up and let her talk, because I didn’t have any idea how a guy like me could get a girl like Nickie to wait for him anywhere.

Hey, Nickie, did I tell you about how I got kidnapped by this sick guy named Freddie Horvath? And how he shot me up with drugs and shocked me, and I thought I was going to die? And, oh yeah, how he tried to rape me, too?

But I got away from him.

Y
OU DIDN’T GET AWAY FROM ANYTHING
, J
ACK
.

Freddie Horvath did something to my brain.

And then me and my best friend, Conner, killed him. It was an accident, but we fucking killed him, just the same. Did I tell you that, Nickie? Or, did I tell you about how I can’t even remember anything about meeting you today because I hallucinated some crazy shit about people getting hacked into pieces and eaten by bugs? Or how I got shot through my side with an arrow?

Did I tell you about that, Nickie?

Because I do remember that.

I reached around and felt those goddamned glasses there, still in my back pocket.

She took me to Hampstead, the part of the city where her family lived, and we ate Thai food at a café there and then rode on the Underground to Piccadilly.

She caught me staring at her on the subway. I wasn’t really staring, though, I was looking past her at the alternating blur and reflections in the window. I looked at myself, and sometimes I looked scared.

And Nickie said, “There’s something about you, isn’t there, Jack?”

That snapped me out of it.

I said, “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I think it’s okay,” she said.

She said it like she knew, like she could heal me. Maybe I was only hoping that was true, because I really didn’t know what to believe anymore.

I said, “Thanks for having dinner with me, Nickie. I’m beginning to feel, well, not so alone.”

It was warm, muggy, and we sat on the steps beneath the statue of Eros, looking out at the lights, the traffic. I felt so comfortable with her, but at the same time I felt like I wasn’t completely there, too.

“What made you do it?” I said. “Ask if I wanted you to take that picture, I mean?”

Nickie sat right next to me, our legs touching.

“It was Rachel who dared me,” she said.

I remembered. She had a friend with her. They wore dresses, uniforms, like they’d just come from school.

“Oh. Rachel.”

“It was a lark, anyway.” Nickie smiled. “I mean, we would never take a tour cruise on any other day. But when I saw you in the queue, I needed to follow you.”

“You
followed
me?”

Everyone’s following you.

“I was taken by you. I don’t know why, but I had to see what you were doing there, all by yourself. We laughed as we watched you attempting to order coffee on the boat,” she said. “When the server asked if you wanted filtered or Americano, you looked so confused and then you said, ‘I’m American.’ It really was, well…”

And her voice trailed off softly, blending in with the sounds of being there in that square, sitting beside her on a perfect evening in summer.

This is real.

Isn’t it?

“Well, either way, it was horrible-tasting stuff,” I remembered.

How can you remember the taste of the coffee, but nothing about Nickie?

Freddie Horvath did something to your brain.

You need help.

“So, I guess you thought I needed help or something.”

“I said I thought you looked interesting,” Nickie said. “And Rachel teased that I wasn’t daring enough to say hello to you.”

“Interesting?”

Nickie laughed. “You know,” she said, “you had that way about you, I suppose. Well. Very handsome. When I finally did say hello, you were so charming and easy to talk to. And anyway, you certainly had no qualms about asking me for my telephone number.”

“I couldn’t help myself.”

She put her hand over mine.

“Tomorrow, you should go buy a new charge cord for your phone, Jack.”

I thought about it. “I don’t want one. Too much of a connection to the other world back home. And Conner’s bringing mine on Monday.”

“If you’d like, you could call him with mine,” she said. She looked at her watch. “It’s afternoon there now. And I’m getting late.”

She took her phone out and held it to me.

“Can we do something tomorrow?” I asked.

“I’m going to church with my parents in the morning. I could call your hotel in the afternoon.”

“What time?”

I took her phone, flipped it open.

“Three,” Nickie said.

“I’ll make sure to be there.”

“Don’t stand me up again, Jack. Here, let me put in the code.” Nickie’s hand went to mine and she entered the dialing code for America. I looked at her face, and as I entered Conner’s number, she leaned into me and her hair brushed my cheek.

“There,” she said.

I almost forgot Conner’s number.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hey, Con.” I sounded choked, even to me.

“Jack! What happened? Don’t tell me. Your phone’s dead again.”

“Yeah.”

“I tried calling you. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Tell Wynn and Stella I’m fine. I’m calling from a friend’s phone.”

“A friend? Who?” Conner asked.

“I met a girl today.”

“Dude,” Conner said. “Did you get laid? Can I finally tell everyone you’re officially not gay? I think Dana will be disappointed.”

“Stop being a dick, Con.” I held the phone away from my ear. “I’m putting you on speakerphone.”

I held the phone in front of Nickie, and she tapped a button.

“Can you hear me?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Conner, this is Nickie.”

“Hello, Conner,” Nickie said. “I think you have a very nice friend.”

“Wow,” was all Conner said. Then, “Jack, take me off speaker.”

I was embarrassed, I put the phone to my ear.

“What?”

“Dude,” he said. “She sounds totally hot.”

I felt myself going red as I looked at Nickie. She had to have known what he was saying.

“She is, Con.”

“What’s
wrong
with her? Is she missing an eye or something?”

“You’re a dick. I’ll see you Monday.”

It was nearly midnight, and I’d walked Nickie to a taxi to take her back to Hampstead.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I said. I unlocked my arm from hers and stood in front of her before the open cab door.

I felt so awkward. I wanted to kiss her on the mouth, but I’d never done that before.

“Good night, Jack,” she said.

I hugged her, and I watched her as we separated. I think we both looked disappointed. And when the taxi pulled away, I kicked the ground. I hated myself. I should have kissed her good night and now she’d probably never call me tomorrow.

I tried finding an Underground station, but the nearest one had already closed. I began following streets in no particular direction. And then I realized I had no idea where I was. I started walking back toward the statue where we sat earlier, or at least what I
thought
was the right direction, hoping to find an open Underground station, or maybe a taxi.

I didn’t care. I finally felt happy. It was like the first time I actually knew relief.

Even if it wouldn’t last.

The street I walked on stretched ahead of me, narrow and dark, with closely packed row houses that rose up, straight and gray-faced, behind low iron fences and emaciated trees. I couldn’t see anyone else, and figured I must have turned the wrong way.

Then I heard a sound.

Faint, like a small wooden ball rolling across a plank floor.

I started running, hoping that the desperation of my breaths and the sounds of my footfalls would drown out the nagging
Why is this happening to me?
So I kept turning toward where I’d see lights, and I finally spilled out into a convergence of busy and crowded streets. A staircase leading down below the sidewalk, the Underground, people, noise.

You haven’t gotten away from anything, Jack.

All the way back to my hotel, I kept a hand in my back pocket, fingers wrapped around the sock that contained the purple glasses. I thought about abandoning them in the train car, throwing them in the river, a thousand different ways of separating myself from them but it was already too late for that.

I needed them.

I needed them to prove that I wasn’t losing my mind. Or maybe to relieve myself of worrying about what I saw on the other side of the lenses because I really
was
losing it.

I asked the clerk at the front desk if I could use his cellophane tape, and he looked at me as though wondering what kinds of drugs required the use of adhesives, but he gave me a roll anyway; and I promised I’d return it in the morning.

In my room, I shut the window and pulled the drapes across it. I kicked my shoes off and sat at the desk. I put the sock with the glasses in it on the corner of the bed and then took out the hotel stationery pad and began writing notes to myself:

Jack: Do not leave the room.

Jack: Remember Nickie is going to call at 3:00.

Jack Wynn Whitmore

I taped all of them on the door at eye level.

The rolling sound again.

Something was going to happen.

Roll.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Under the bed again.

I looked at the clock on the nightstand. I wrote down the time on another piece of paper:

12:37

Roll.

Tap.

I got on my hands and knees and looked under the bed.

I heard a voice. A whisper.

“Seth.”

Seth.

Freddie Horvath did something to my brain and I need help.

Breathing hard, I pulled myself up onto the bed, sitting so my back rested against the headboard, barefoot, wearing jeans, and a T-shirt.

Then, on another piece of paper, I wrote down a list of the clothes I had on.

I grabbed the sock and put my fingers down into it. I felt the glasses in there.

I pulled them out.

Roll. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” I said.

You haven’t gotten away from anything.

I put them on.

Pain.

It hurt so bad; and I was sick, felt the fever boiling inside me.

I opened my eyes and I was lying inside some sort of cave, wrapped in blankets that stunk and were soaked with my sweat. I could see the flat white sky beyond the jagged sash of the opening above my head, and I couldn’t feel my legs. All I felt was the burning misery.

I turned my head so I could throw up.

I saw shadows, two others were in there with me. Kids. I knew who they were.

How could I know them? Everything about them: Ben and Griffin. Half brothers. Ben’s father was killed at the start of the war, the beginning of the plague. A disease we couldn’t catch. And Griffin was born after everything went dark.

Ben Miller sat beside me. He leaned forward when I moved. When I vomited, it felt like an animal clawing its way out from my side. I screamed.

“Hey! Shut him up!” I heard Griffin Goodrich moving toward us from where he was standing at the entrance.

“Shhh…” Ben wiped a wet cloth across my face. “It’s okay, Jack.”

And then I heard him say, “He’s waking up.”

“He’s going to have to, Ben. Or I’m going to leave him here. Both of you. Two days in here is too long. We need to move.”

“It’ll be okay,” Ben said.

“Not if they find us. You want to end up like Hewitt and the others, nailed to a fucking wall?”

The smell of puke in my face made me want to throw up again, but I held it back. My stomach convulsed, tearing my insides. I traced my hand down my chest toward my hip. It was wet and sticky and I remembered that black arrow, but now it was gone. My fingertip tracked across the bumps of haphazard knots where someone had sewn my body shut with what felt like a shoelace.

“What happened?”

“How you feeling, Jack?” Ben said.

I tried to sit up, couldn’t. I answered with, “Uh.”

Ben wiped my mouth off and slid his hands beneath my armpits. He looked at Griffin.

“I’m gonna try and move you away from that puke there, Jack. Try not to do that again if you can help it, bud.”

He slid me around so my head was closer to the light coming in from the cave’s entrance.

Griffin held a clear plastic bottle over my face.

“This is all we have left,” he said.

He opened the bottle and poured a mouthful of cloudy warm water past my lips.

I swallowed.

“Thanks, Griff.” I remembered how everyone—at least, what was left of everyone—called the boy Griff. He was only twelve. Ben was fourteen. As far as any of us knew, that was all that was left. Just kids. And none of us had seen a girl in years. At least, not a live one. Or a human.

I knew where I was.

Marbury.

Griffin recapped the bottle and walked back to the cave’s opening.

I struggled to prop myself onto my elbows.

“Let me see how bad it is, Ben.”

Ben Miller stepped over me and squatted down at my side.

“It’s not too bad,” he said. He pulled the blanket down from my chest. “Just through where you could grab your fat, if you had any. But don’t get mad at me. Griff’s the one who sewed you up. You know I couldn’t even look at it, Jack, I was so scared you were gonna die.”

The wound puckered out like pouting lips, swollen and stitched shut with a winding of tawny thread. My skin was bruised black around it, the same on the back side as well.

“We had to take your shirt apart to get that thread. It was ruined, anyhow.”

I fanned the blanket away from me. All I had on were pants, loose and torn open with vertical slashes on both legs. Nothing else, just pants. I could see a big straight-bladed knife lying on the ground beside my hip. I knew it was my knife.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You don’t remember?”

“I’m having a hard time remembering anything,” I said. I shut my eyes, tried to picture Conner, Nickie, London.

Conner and Dana on that bed the night of the party.

Freddie Horvath.

What the fuck was happening to me?

You haven’t gotten away from anything, Jack.

“It was two days ago, outside the Bass-Hove Settlement. We found it. But they were waiting for us, knew we were coming. They got just about everyone.” Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “We’re all that’s left. Just us three.”

Ben looked toward where Griffin was standing. “What are we going to do now, Jack? I’m scared. We don’t have no place else to go.”

“Fuck!” Griffin shouted. Then I heard the jarring sound of a heavy rock pounding against another.

Ben stood up quickly.

“The harvesters are coming,” Griffin said. “I knew it. There’s something dead in the cave back there. We should have looked better. They fucking know we’re here now.”

He lifted the rock he’d used and smashed it down again, crushing the large black bug that had crawled into our hiding place.

I knew that soon the bugs would come by the thousands. Millions. And I knew what would be following after them, too.

Ben said, “You’re gonna have to ride, Jack. Get the horses, Griff.”

Griffin slipped out from where he stood and disappeared into the white.

“Help me stand up.”

I held my hand out for Ben.

“Stay there. Let me get your shoes, first.”

They were work boots, splitting and mismatched; and Ben slipped them onto my bare feet and held each one straight between his knees while he laced them tight.

“Are you gonna be okay, Jack? I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

I propped myself into a sitting position.

It hurt.

“I think so.”

Roll. Tap. Tap. Tap.

That sound.

Ben still had my foot wedged between his legs, but he turned around when he heard it, too.

Then I saw, standing at the back of the cave on the other side of Ben Miller, a pale and barefoot boy with sunken, dark eyes who looked like he couldn’t have been any older than me.

And Ben said, “Goddamned ghost. That’s all we need. No wonder that harvester found us so easy.”

The boy sat down and hugged his knees in toward his chest. He looked scared.

I thought he might have been crying, but he sat there watching me; and I understood that he knew me, too, had been following me, waiting for something.

I could see right through him, the cracks in the stone wall behind him. Then he got lighter and just spilled out into a kind of fog that blanketed over the ground where he’d been sitting.

Ben looked at me. “I never did this before. I heard it works. Hewitt told us how he’d done it, remember?”

“No.”

I couldn’t remember things very well anymore.

And Ben turned his face to the back of the cave where that grayish fog sat low upon the hot ground and said, “Well if you can help him, then do it, boy. I figure you’re the one what got us into this by being here in the first place, so it’s the least you could do. The harvesters are gonna get you anyway if you don’t.”

The fog rolled up, like a blanket, and the boy was there again, now standing.

Roll. Tap.

He was barefoot and skinny, starved even, with neither shirt nor hat, wearing tattered pants held up onto his pale, naked waist with a fraying rope of some sort. He looked dirty and uncared for. His jagged and light-colored hair hung down past his eyebrows.

“Well?” Ben said with an edge of impatience. “Why the fuck were you following us to begin with if you’re not going to help?”

The boy faded again, fogged over the ground once more. The cloud snaked along toward me, and the next thing I knew, it was slipping through the stitches in my side like wire-thin fingers, and getting inside me.

It was warm, and I could feel him like he was crawling into every part of my body. I knew who he was.

And I heard him say his name again.

“Seth.”