The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (11 page)

There was something in his voice so
profoundly serious, so absolutely certain, that it calmed some of Jack’s
confusion just listening to it. “Can you tell me what happened? Why you missed
the train?”

“I did mention to you that you were
not the only one interested in the Sanity’s Edge Saloon. Many have killed for
possession of this place; some have slaughtered thousands just for the
opportunity to try and obtain it. The Saloon passed to you fairly, but that
doesn’t mean that the others won’t try to take it from you.”

“What does that mean? What am I
supposed to do?”

“Don’t worry, Jack. Four other people
will be joining you shortly. As the Caretaker, it will be your duty to protect
them and help them back on their way. To do that, you need to write about them.
Rather, write
them
. Their lives will come from your stories. Four
people. Four stories. Four return tickets. The fifth and final ticket is yours,
of course. The Caretaker has to look after those under his care first before he
can take care of himself.”

Jack felt a heavy, sinking feeling in
his stomach, copper-coated and sour like cold metal shavings. “Do you realize
how crazy that sounds?”

“Yes, Jack, I do,” the Writer said
patiently. “But you don’t understand everything. The Sanity’s Edge Saloon is
not just some abandoned building in the middle of a big desert. The Edge is a
material manifestation of the Nexus, a focal point for all the lines of reality
in all the universes. Matter and energy exist in the Nexus in their rawest,
most malleable forms; reality at the Edge is created not by rules that exist as
universal constants, but by the will of the individual. One individual: the
Caretaker. It probably sounds like magic. Who knows, maybe it is. But you have
to control it, Jack. You have to shape it to your will, not let it bend or
twist out from your grasp. It will if you’re not careful.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Jack
wanted to know. “Nothing works right. There’s no one around anywhere. The only
food I can find is inside an archaic candy machine that’s on the verge of blowing
a fuse, and that food won’t last a week even if, by some slim chance, the
machine does.”

“I don’t know anything about a candy
machine, Jack,” the Writer confessed. “Nothing works except what you
make
work. It’s a reflection of you, your desires, wants, and needs. The Edge
provides what you need, and sometimes what you want, but its methods are …
capricious. It won’t always do what you expect, and sometimes it will carry
things out in a bizarre or indirect fashion. But it will get you what you need,
always.”

“I don’t understand,” Jack pleaded,
desperately hoping for a simple answer, and knowing at the same time that one
would not be forthcoming, was perhaps impossible to give.

“You will in time. All Caretakers
come to understand in time. The Edge is your personal servant, your concierge,
your very own jinni.”

Jack shook his head despairingly. The
Writer was insane. Worse, his madness was contagious, a virus traveling easily
upon the rims of latté mugs, and breeding the crazed belief that the diseased
was a mad wizard’s apprentice/storyteller overseeing a reality which blended
Wonderland with a dark William S. Burroughs novel of insanity and junk
addiction to come up with a curious glom of madness and fiction, dream and
metaphor.

And it was consuming him whole.

I’ve gone mad
, Jack thought.
I’ve gone
completely mad. This is all a delusion. It has to be. I’m really in a
sanitarium chewing Thorazine and explaining my entire fucked-up view of reality
to a kindly intern who’s only listening because he’s paid to hold my dick while
I pee because my arms are tied up in a straitjacket.

“Listen carefully, Jack. This is
important. You don’t have a lot of time. You are the only one who can free the
others and yourself. The Sanity’s Edge Saloon is the Nexus of power and thought,
all of it raw and mutable. There are others where you are who want the Nexus,
Jack. Those who have gone before and were found wanting. Rejected, they were
exiled to wander the Wasteland forever. But they want to return, to possess the
Nexus once more, and they will stop at nothing for a second chance. I made the
mistake of underestimating their desperation. They ambushed me on the other
side, on your earth. I’m afraid the way to the Nexus is closed to me for good,
now.”

“But what should I do?” he asked.

“I can’t advise you anymore, Jack.
I’m sorry. Start working as soon as possible. Protect the passengers and avoid
distractions. And avoid the Cast Outs at all costs.”

“The Cast Outs?”

“Don’t tangle with them, Jack.
Especially not the one who came after me. He’s more powerful than you can
imagine. He was a Caretaker once, long ago, but he failed. He couldn’t control
the Nexus, and he was cast into the Wasteland to die. Only he’s managed to
survive, and has rallied others like himself, as well as any wild creatures of
the Wasteland, into his Tribe of Dust. Don’t underestimate them like I did.
They have power, Jack. Some have been accruing it for over a century, storing
it away quietly for the right opportunity to come along. And I’m afraid I gave
it to them.”

“The Tribe of Dust?”

“Just take care of the other
passengers, Jack,” the Writer said, sounding tired, his voice fading. “Give
them good homes; homes they deserve; homes that fit. Free them. Free
yourself
.
I wish I could explain it more clearly. I thought I would have more time. I was
wrong. I know you don’t understand, and I’m sorry about that, but you’ll have
to trust me.”

“I guess.”

“Good, Jack. Very good. That’s a
relief.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

The Writer let out an awkward sigh, a
sound like a ball bearing running down a long, steel pipe. “No, Jack, you
won’t. I’m already dead.”

Jack opened his mouth, but nothing
came out. What could you possibly say to a statement like that?
We’re all
mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad
.

“I’m sorry, Jack. That’s all the time
we have.”

Then the phone dissolved, liquid
running through his fingers and down the wall to form a puddle on the floor.
That quickly, it was gone.

There was nothing to do now but wait
for the

(madness, madness, madness, madness,
madness, madness, madness …)

others to arrive. He desperately
wanted another beer, an ice cold Corona with a juicy wedge of lime jammed down
into the bottleneck. One would be good. Six would be better. And being dead
drunk would be
perfect
. But for all that he wanted it, he was afraid to
turn around, afraid to turn away from the liquefied phone and look at the bar.

Because he knew when he did, those ice-cold
beers would be right there waiting for him …
just like he wanted them to be!

ONE

Jack crouched in the corner between the Pepsi machine and the Saloon’s
batwing doors, gaze alternating between the dried stain of the once-phone and
the endless expanse of white desert. The corner spared him the view of the
edge, that panorama of blue sky extending as far across and down as the eye
could see, apparently without resolution.

He was alone, adrift in a world
without another living soul. Maybe on some level he had wanted this. Not
exactly
this
, but a solitary place to write, to escape his problems; a
place beyond the expectations and recriminations of others, all of whom
believed he was, if not simply wasting his life, not living up to his
potential.

But this was different. This was
alone taken to the limit of its definition. There was no radio at the saloon
because there were no radio stations to receive. There were no phones in the
saloon—the exception now a dried stain on the floorboards—because there wasn’t
anyone to call. There wasn’t a television because … Well, the reason would
always be the same.

He was completely and absolutely
alone.

A couple years ago, he caught the
flu, only just managing to make it through his workday and get home before the
worst set in. He stumbled up the stairs to his apartment and went straight to
bed, limbs weak, mind foggy, body aching and shivering with cold. He doped up
on NyQuil and crawled beneath a mountain of blankets, spiking a fever. Sometime
around midnight, he awoke to a rain of puzzle pieces sprinkling from his
ceiling, wafting with the gentle ease of snowflakes. Delirious, he tried to
collect them, piece them together, fitting colors and edges; he had to, though
he had no idea why, assembled pieces crumbling as he moved on to others. In the
morning, the fever broken, it seemed like so much nonsense. But the experience
made one thing apparent: if something ever happened to him—if he fell in the
shower, suffered carbon monoxide poisoning, died of the flu, or just sold his
possessions and ran away—
no one would ever know
. Come Monday morning
when he failed to show up for work, they might suspect. Or they might not.

How long before he was missed? Or was
it hubris to assume he ever would be?

He’d allowed himself to half-believe that this was just a vivid dream,
one he was waiting through, one he knew he would eventually wake up from. But
no longer. The Writer had changed everything—again! —and it would never go
back. There were things he had to do, people who needed his help, others who
looked for him to fail. The Writer was dead. His killer or killers wanted the
Saloon—call it the Nexus if you like—and would likely try to kill him as well
to get it.

Yesterday had been the strangest day of his life. Until today. Even time
was meaningless here, watches and clocks and calendars useless. There would be
no Christmas Eve or Halloween or New Year’s Day. There would be no more Friday
nights and no more Monday mornings. All the old rules, all the previous
assumptions, had been wiped away, the slate brushed clean. Reality at the
Sanity’s Edge Saloon was, in a very real sense, starting over…

… or winding down.

In
The Gunslinger
, Roland
searched a vast and growing desert swallowing whole towns and reducing them to
dried-up, dying places. According to the gunslinger, the world had “moved on.”

Perhaps that was happening here?
Perhaps this world had moved on?

Or you’re simply losing your mind?

Jack climbed unsteadily to his feet, fed some change into the Pepsi
machine, and bought a can of Mountain Dew. Then he went inside to the candy
machine to get something to eat. He tried not to look around, to consider
anything more about the saloon or what his role in all of this might be.

His head was pounding.

Armed with a soda and a cellophane
package of peanut butter crackers, he set off to finish exploring the saloon,
determined to know as much about the place as possible. Eventually, someone
would come along.

He hoped it wouldn’t be long.

*     *     *

Jack rummaged cupboards, closets and
drawers, hoping to find something amidst the careless bric-a-brac that might
answer some of his questions. An old owner’s manual perhaps:
So, You’re
Insane and the Caretaker of the Nexus of the Universe
, or something to that
effect.

What he found was more questions.

In some respects, it was exactly as
the Writer promised. He had all the time in the world to write, and none of the
usual distractions. He didn’t need to worry about the rent or utility bills.
All of that was taken care of now. There was food when he was hungry, even if
the selection was a little haphazard, and he had a place to plug in his laptop
while he listened to music on the CD player. The Saloon might well be
everything he had always wanted.

And that fact alone
terrified
him. No longer could he believe that he might have been a great writer if he’d
only had the opportunity. This was his opportunity. If he failed now, it was
because he wasn’t any good. He would have to find a new dream … or kill
himself. Was it better to live your life having never fulfilled your dream, or
see it die outright and know—
fucking know!
—that there was nothing left
to live for?

Jack returned to the room at the top
of the Saloon, the one that felt most comfortable, the most like home. He
wasn’t surprised to see the typewriter gone. In its place sat a brand new
computer, one better than he could afford on his own, especially now that he
was unemployed and hiding out on the fringes of reality. A small placard
affixed to the PC tower read
Jabberwock
.

He felt like a new employee on his first day, stepping into an empty
office and discovering that the person responsible for his orientation wasn’t
there: called in sick, quit, or maybe just went postal and had to be hauled
away. And maybe the analogy wasn’t too far from the truth. The Writer was gone.
Jack was the Caretaker now. The Sanity’s Edge Saloon was exactly where he was
supposed to be, and it was in this topmost room that he was apparently supposed
to do whatever it was he was supposed to do.

So what
was
he supposed to do?

He loaded a CD, turned up the volume,
and returned to the desk. He repositioned the chair and sat down in front of the
keyboard. He saw a cord trailing from the back of the new PC to his laptop,
which now sat beside it on the desk. He didn’t remember leaving his laptop
here, and was certain he had never plugged it into the new computer—precisely
because the new computer hadn’t been here the first time he was in this
room—but he was starting to accept the fact that reality within the Saloon was
…
fluid
.

Maybe he was having a breakdown?

Or maybe you’re already broken?

He flicked the computer on, rewarded
with a soft hum, initialization procedures scrolling past in an indecipherable
array that concluded with an all too comfortable Windows tableau—something that
he was at least familiar with.

He experimented with a couple rounds
of solitaire, lost, and tried searching for any preexisting Word files, in case
the Writer had left any messages for him. It was unlikely given that the Writer
clearly intended to be here with him and favored the typewriter to the word
processor, but it was a place to start. He found just five stored files:
TICKET1, TICKET2, TICKET3, TICKET4,
and
TICKET5
.

Were these the tickets the Writer
mentioned, the ones Jack was supposed to write for the others who were coming,
so that he could send them all home, him included?

He opened the first one, but the only
thing he found was a digital image, visible for only a moment before it
disappeared, the pixels dissolving back to white and leaving him with a simple
blank page. The cursor blinked at him expectantly,
mockingly
. Jack
stared at the whiteness a moment longer, then closed and reopened the file.
Only the picture did not return, only the empty page. No matter. He knew the
image the moment he saw it: Cross-Over Station. He recognized its quiet
grayness, the lonely clock staring over an empty terminal abandoned years
before. It looked exactly as if someone had photographed the place that same
morning. Jack immediately opened the second file, this one a picture of an
empty corner in a padded cell, some kind of asylum where the walls were bare
canvas, dingy and gray-white and stained with smears of deep, ruddy brown. He
thought the stains looked like dried blood, but he couldn’t be sure. There was
so much of it, too. It sent a chill up his spine, and he wasn’t sorry to see
the picture fade to white. In the third, he found a picture of a first-class
plane cabin, plush seats and unfinished glasses of white wine and amber-colored
liquor left behind on lowered tray tables. But the seats were empty; like the
first two pictures, all he had was a vacant setting. The next was a woodland
scene viewed from the ground up, as though someone was lying on their back
staring up at a thick clutch of tangled trees looming overhead, dark and
ominous, crowding forward to suffocate the viewer. The final picture was of a
dry culvert, white cement blinding under the noon sun. For a moment, Jack
thought about the wasteland outside, the bone-white sand and pale blue sky
overhead. But the two places could hardly be the same. Graffiti decorated a
nearby abutment, a chalk-scrawl on the ground, the outline of a body since
removed, more red stains.

Then blankness. No mention of the
people he was supposed to take care of; not who they were, or what they looked
like, or what he should do with them when they arrived. Not even names. How was
he supposed to tell the difference between them and the others, the ones the
Writer called the Tribe of Dust?

Maybe the Writer had been wrong about
him. Jack had never been very good at writing assignments. He had only done
passably well in an
Introduction to Writing
course he took in his
freshman year. He thought the assignments were stupid; he couldn’t write from
the perspective of a shoe, or imitate the style of a famous writer. He
preferred to write on his own, write what came to mind. He learned long ago not
to question where the Word came from or why. God, a Muse, the tooth fairy, what
difference did it make? So long as the Word came, he cared for neither where
nor how.

But he still had no idea what to do
with the five tickets, and was afraid to even start until he knew more. He
opened a new file instead, staring at the blank screen while the music slowly
lulled him into a kind of trance, the emptiness transforming into possibility.
He placed his fingers lightly atop the keys, letting them get a feel for how they
were spaced on the board, then started typing the first thing that came to
mind.

My name is Jack Lantirn and I
want to be a writer. So yesterday I left my job. I left my car. I left my
apartment.

Today I left the world.

I would like to say I arrived
at this decision with a great deal of forethought, but that would be a lie. It
was impulse, pure and simple. Gut instinct. I had had enough of my situation,
knew it was only going to get worse, and decided simply to leave it behind.
Cash
in my chips, dealer.
I’m outta here. I didn’t really think about where I
was going, or what I would do when I got there. I only knew that “there” would
be better than “here.”

Now, I’m not so sure. It is
quieter here, and I like that. But at the same time,
it is quieter here
,
and I’m feeling alone. Lonely. I would not have thought it possible yesterday.
Yesterday I would have sworn to you that I could live alone on a deserted
island or on some uninhabited refueling station on one of the moons of Jupiter.
But yesterday seems like a long time ago now.

Perhaps I should start back
at the beginning. It might make a bit more sense that way, to me if to no one
else. And I guess I should face the very real possibility that I may be the
only one who ever reads these words. Lucky me.

There was no rational purpose to
this, his message in a bottle set adrift in a sea of electronic ether, save the
appeal of self-clarification, understanding through writing, voicing the ideas,
making thoughts tangible then releasing them to see what came back.

Likely nothing. It was a fool’s
dream, and Jack Lantirn was the king of fools.

*     *     *

The first CD stopped and another one
started, the player changing by itself. Jack never thought to question it. The
coffeepot on the corner of his desk brewed a pot of hazelnut-flavored
coffee—strong the way he liked it. He didn’t wonder about that either, just
like he didn’t wonder how his Heavy Metal coffee mug managed to find its way to
the right side of the desk, sitting by the coffee pot as though it had always
been there instead of being in his duffel bag where he last remembered it. But
like his laptop and the beer and so many things, he simply stopped questioning.