The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (13 page)

Minutes went by—or maybe hours—then a
face appeared in the narrow wedge of Plexiglas. It watched her for a time as if
she were a bug caught in a child’s magnifier box before finally opening the
door. A man’s shadow darkened the doorway, a white coat and tasteless polyester
slacks. Probably a doctor. “Hello, Ellen,” he said, voice candy-sweet.

He stopped over her and looked down,
his expression that of a man who has just discovered an amusing insect beneath
a bush while pruning. His glasses, lenses cut from the bottoms of Coke bottles,
crimped his face as if it were being pinched between two enormous fingers. “I’m
not sure if you recall our first meeting. I’m Doctor Chaulmers. How are you
feeling?”

“Sick.”

The doctor nodded while scratching a
hasty note on his clipboard. Had he even heard her, she wondered. And on the
heels of that, had she even spoken, or merely thought her answer in the silent,
empty corridors of her brain.

“I assume you don’t recall being
admitted to our facility. Is that correct?”

She nodded, physical movement somehow
more certain than speaking.

“You were quite upset when you first
arrived, but I want to assure you that you’re in good hands. We’re going to
take care of you, Ellen, and see to it that you get better.” Again, the
too-pleasant smile, so completely disingenuous, the flash of teeth as white as
ivory, sharp as razors, wide as a shark’s grin … and getting
wider
.

It’s happening again. Things are …
changing!

Please, no!

She heard the air whistling in and
out of her lungs: louder, deeper. Not breathing so much as the rasping of a
hurricane wind sucking in and out of a long tunnel, her ear to the track,
listening to the wind slamming ahead of a charging locomotive.

Dr. Chaulmers carried on as if
nothing was wrong. “Your father has had you committed, Ellen. I know how that
sounds, but he only wants what’s best for you.”

She could barely hear him over the
wind, the distant grinding of steel wheels along rails only a few feet away.
She could feel her entire body shiver with the vibration of the earth as the
iron worm stampeded up the tunnel towards her. She squeezed her eyes shut,
trying to concentrate on what the doctor—what was his name? Chaulmers?
Chummers?
Who cared?
—said.
So hard to think; so very hard.

“You don’t care about me.”

“Of course we do, Ellen. We all care
about you. You’re a good person, both capable and deserving of love.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking
about.” It was difficult to make her point, unable to hear her own thoughts over
the thunder of the approaching locomotive.

“Ellen, I think—”

The rest was lost to the scream of
the train’s whistle …

The Dreamline?

… as everything began to slow down.

“… here … at …”

She felt the slowness, the winding
down of the world synchronized with the scream of the train blasting from the
tunnel, a yawning canyon.
So loud! Why doesn’t he hear it? It’s impossible
to miss!

This isn’t happening, Ellen; you’re
simply going insane.

But she wasn’t! It was the Dreamline come back to pick her
up. And as it slowed to take on its passenger, the world slowed with it.

But how could Dr. Chaulmers—or
Chummers—not hear it? He must know it was coming, that it would take her away!
Away from here!

“… begin … with … a …”

Oh, God! Please, stop. Please!
Please!
Tears burned
her cheeks. Her mouth gaped open in an effort to scream, but no sound came out.
Nothing could be heard over the tornado wind of the Dreamline.
Pleeeeaase!

“… regimen … of … drugs …”

Was she screaming, or was that merely
a dream. Or was the doctor the dream, the soft room and straitjacket just props
on the stage of her mind. Just a dream of normalcy between endless rides aboard
the Dreamline from one destination to the next; none sensible; none sane; none
real
.
Maybe the dream wasn’t over. Maybe it would never be over. Maybe you’re dead,
and all of this will go on forever, trapped in a dream on the verge of ending,
a nightmare on the verge of beginning, locked in a state of neither.

Isn’t that what it is to be insane?

“… electro … convulsive …”

The brakes of the train ground in with a loud nails-on-a-chalkboard
screech that threatened to split her skull open like rotten fruit and peel her
fingernails up in raw, bloody scraps.

“… Ellen ???”

Oh, God!

It was
slowing
.

“E l  l   e    n     ?”

Please, no. Not now. Please!

Slowing!

“W h  a    t     ’     
s              w        r         o          n            g            ?”

Noooooooooo!

Slowing.

Ellen saw herself from outside of her
body, her mind pulled free and deposited two feet to the right. She saw herself
turn to one side and curl in a spasm of retching. From this vantage, she could
see the yellowish spew, even smell the curdled stink as it invaded the nostrils
of her home flesh. The doctor’s face twisted with disgust, but if he said
anything, she didn’t hear him. He was moving too slowly now. Sound could no
longer reach her; words tumbled from his lips and fell at his feet where they
cracked like brittle ice.

Behind her, a train, the padded cell
gone in favor of a blackened station wall made dark with nighttime. A night
train? Well, of course it would be. And she was lying upon the platform, bound
up like so much baggage, destination unknown.

The world turned sharply, her mind
caught for a single moment in the horrible fury of the maelstrom. She was back
inside of her own flesh, looking out through her own eyes. Hands spun her body
sharply, face pressed down upon the rough canvas, nose filled with the stink of
vomit, acidic and sour, so much sharper than before. Someone struck her between
the shoulder blades several times, and she gagged on something before letting
it drool out on the floor. Words were shouted around her, a language she might
once have known, but no longer. Something bit into her right buttocks, a sharp
sting then a kind of warmth, soothing and pleasant and warm and…

“All aboard.”

… just like that, the world was back
on track.

“Let me help you, miss.”

Only not the same track as before.

She twisted from the approaching
voice, fighting the passing wave of sickness and the tightly constricting
straitjacket. Behind her, the padded canvas walls, the door with its narrow
window, and the distant, unintelligible men in white coats and pajama pants.
They were leaving, their movements the agonizing struggles of insects caught in
resin. The men went away, taking the too-bright light away with them and
leaving only a narrow rectangle that shined from the world without. But all of
that, as real as it seemed, did not make sense in light of the train stopped in
front of her, the smell of diesel and burning oil and scorching hot metal, the
cool feel of concrete below her face.

“What’s happening?” she murmured.

“You’re moving too fast for them,”
the porter replied. “You’re beyond them, now. Beyond everything, including
time. Now hold tight, miss, or it’ll slip through your fingertips.”

She turned a moment too late, the dim
station allowing only his dark silhouette as he lifted her up in his arms—a
gesture more tender than heroic; an adult cradling a sleeping child, taking
care not to waken her.

The Dreamline had never been like
this before. Never.

“Things are different now,” the
porter stated, as if her thoughts were obvious, his ability to know them
unremarkable.

She took a last look at the narrow
window of golden light, the padded room, the asylum her father had committed
her to, then turned away.

Steam clouded about her as she was
carried aboard the train, a chance look in time to see the golden light fall
about a few fragments of this new reality.

“I can see myself in your tie,” she
mumbled.

The warming sensation that began in
her backside spread like sunlight, turning her legs and torso warm and gelid,
then her arms and chest. Her entire body was dissolving, disappearing, mixing
with the oceans of the universe. Looking up, she saw one final thing before her
head was reduced to seawater, slipping away with the rest of her body.

“
Kaleidoscope …
.”

TWO

Jack woke up to the room shaking as
if on the edge of some enormous machine. In the distance, a sound like a
tornado; a sound he remembered hearing just before the train at Cross-Over
Station.

And for just a moment, he hoped the
train was coming to take him back, back to that distant, sensible world where
no one expected anything of him, and he could fail quietly on his own without
dooming anyone for his inadequacy. But he knew better. Any trains now would be
dropping people off, the ones the Writer told him about, the ones he was
responsible for, the ones who would share in his fate.

Jack sat up, muscles stiff from
sleeping on the bench, and caught only a fleeting glimpse of the train in the
glare of the sunrise, metal skin as bright as chrome, a gleaming silver car
which remained only long enough to register against his retina before
disappearing, a ghostly streak down the polished steel rails that sailed out
into the great beyond. A single sound cut the air, a high whistle like
half-rotted wood as it burned, then silence.

Left behind on the platform as if
blown in on the wind, an angel bathed in the orange glow of the new day, her
eyes dreamy and introspective as she stood there, acknowledging no one and
nothing. And in the Saloon’s unique perversity, the angel wore a straitjacket
instead of wings.

Then, like a marionette whose strings
are suddenly cut, she collapsed.

Drawing on movies, Jack scooped her
up as best he could, cradling her in his arms and carrying her inside. He laid
her down upon the bench, chance more than design that he didn’t knock her head
against the doorframe or trip on the steps. He was not a man of spontaneous
action, but planning, planning, and still more planning. It was no real
surprise to him that Jools left; the only surprise was that she stayed as long
as she did.

Jack rocked back on his heels, trying
to decide what to do next. She was young, this Sanity’s Edge angel, with a
sweet face and wan features, sand-colored hair disheveled and matted with
sweat, dressed only in hospital-issue pajamas and a straitjacket. She didn’t
appear injured, her breathing low and soft like someone asleep. He thought he
should free her. It seemed like a good idea—provided she wasn’t a psychopath
determined to tear out his liver and eat it with a side of fava beans and a
nice Chianti. But staring at her, tracing the curve of her neck, the soft lines
of her face, he knew that wasn’t the case. She looked just the smallest bit
fragile, lying there in the orange shadows of dawn, just another victim lost on
this side of madness.

He fished his pocketknife from his jeans. It was small, but the blade was
extremely sharp. With a little effort, he was fairly certain it would saw
through the thick canvas of the straitjacket. So he rolled her on her side,
mindful not to let her head hit the armrest, and discovered something about
straitjackets that he had never realized before: they were easier to get into
than out of, the back opening with a series of buckles.

*     *     *

Ellen awoke to the mechanical buzz of
broken machinery, the sound like a swarm of bees trapped in a long, steel
shaft. She cracked an eye to a room of white walls stained with orange light.
Across from her, a magazine rack. Above that, a train schedule. The rude
buzzing was accompanied by a flickering light from a candy machine not a foot
away from her head, something inside the machine on the verge of breaking down,
the light burbling in intense spasms.

This was not the hospital room she
remembered with its canvas surface reeking of the captured stink of lunatics
and retards squealing inanities while their bladders emptied into the soft
padding. She was on a wooden park bench in a waiting room.

But how did I get to a place with a
park bench?

Her mouth felt dry and pasty, eyes
glued with a sticky crust that only came after an abnormally long sleep, or
riding down a really bad trip. But since she appeared to be on a park bench in
a train station waiting room and not the mental ward, she must still be aboard
the Dreamline; not riding down the high or finishing up the trip, but still on
board. She had recollections of a strange porter and a train with an
ear-splitting whistle, a Beatles song stuck in her head, and a doctor—his name
escaped her; probably didn’t matter anyway—telling her things, procedures they
would perform, things they would do. The details escaped her like a fading
dream; maybe for the better.

But all real, distinctive and clear; as
real as right now seemed real.

The hospital—staffed by imbeciles and
stinking of insanity—had to be real. She knew that. If there was one thing she
was good at, it was distinguishing realities, knowing which was real and which
was not. And this station was not. There was no rational purpose or explanation
for it. Probably just LSD and mushroom derivatives, nothing more. Alice was always eating or drinking something.

But there was no denying that this
place felt
real
, looked
real
, sounded
real
. Her senses
could be fooled—it had happened before—but never like this.

Maybe this is something new, a more complete break with reality than ever
before? Maybe this is what happens when you trip on the Dreamline one too many
times? Maybe you trip without dropping or shooting up? Maybe you can’t even
help yourself? Maybe you trip and don’t come back? Not ever.

Maybe?

On the floor, reaching from an
enormous hole gnawed in the wallboards, something completely out of place with
reality: a monster’s tail,

Maybe?

Oh God!

Fear freed her eyes from the bleary
plague of sleep as she stared at the monstrous appendage, scales liquid-smooth
and glistening, forked with an irregular split that bristled with straggled
tufts of fur like witch grass. It was the leftover trimmings of some separate
reality, a discarded prop to an unfinished tale, the surreal scraps of a lost
metaphor.

Not real
, she insisted.

A ripple surged through the thickly
muscled fragment of unreality, a flexing of that which did not exist …
but
wanted to
.

Please, don’t be real,
she thought furiously.
Not this
.

The tail flicked gently back and forth, an angry warning or maybe just
the unconscious tremors of a monster in the throes of dream; a dream within a
dream of a nightmare that she could not end.

The drone of the candy machine grew louder, a mechanical grinding like
teeth gnawing into the base of her skull. She squeezed her eyes so tightly they
ached, part of the ritual, part of the game. She used to play the game as a
child—back when it wasn’t really playing. You made the monsters go away by
hiding under the covers, by closing your eyes very, very tight, holding your
breath and waiting for them to disappear. If you couldn’t see them, they
couldn’t see you, couldn’t find you, couldn’t hurt you. That was the rule. That
was the point of the ritual. Shut it out; make it go away.

But the tail didn’t go away. If
anything, it was closer, the room shrinking, squeezing the tail out further and
further from the hole, crowding it towards her, the irritated twitch growing
more restless, inescapable.

It’s just a dream! It’s not real!
That’s why you’re in a little train station instead of the hospital, why you’re
not wearing the straitjacket. You’re dreaming. Just wake up and everything will
be okay. Just wake up. Just wake—

The tips of the tail coiled at the
leg of the bench, scales scraping like shark skin against the floor, whispering
upon the iron, coming for her.

It’s not working. Nothing’s working!
Just go away! You’re not real.
Hands clamped over her ears, knees curled to her chest,
reduced to a desperate fetal ball, her brain screaming:
Go away! Go away!

“Not real!”

*     *     *

Jack turned the corner of the waiting
room with a glass of water and a cup of coffee just as his first charge was
losing her mind.

“
Not real
.”

“What?” he asked.

“Monster,” the girl pleaded from the bench, her entire body crushed into
a frightened, shaking ball. “Make it go away.”

Jack looked about the empty room.
“There’s nothing here.”

“It’s there,” she hissed through
clenched teeth.

He stepped slowly into the room,
trusting her warning even if he didn’t know why, and set both drinks down on
the floor. He looked back at the chewed hole in the wall behind him, empty and
half-revealed in the slanted light of dawn: exposed planks and studs, some evidence
of dust, but otherwise nothing.

But once, maybe. Yes, he could allow
that once there might have been something. Reality at the Sanity’s Edge had a
way of being …
slippery
.

“It’s gone now,” he said. “There’s nothing there anymore.”

She opened her eyes, stray tears running down the side of her face, and
tried to stare past him to the empty hole beyond.

“See,” he said. “Nothing. Just you
and me.”

She stared at the empty hole in the
wall suspiciously, the mix of mescaline and Demerol keeping her from waking up,
from fighting this unreality. Lenny’s idiot fucking dream cocktail. “When I get
my hands on Lenny, I’m gonna kill him.”

You already did that
.

“What?” she jerked sharply.

“I said, who’s that?” Jack asked.

“No one important.”

An awkward silence settled between
them, one Jack felt compelled to fill. “I brought you something to drink. I
didn’t know what you would want, so I brought you a glass of water and cup of
coffee. The coffee’s black. I can get you some cream and sugar if you want,
though.”

The young woman continued to blink
and fixate upon the empty hole. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jack,” he answered, then added,
“Jack Lantirn. I arrived yesterday.”

She pushed herself up to a sitting
position, staring around bleary-eyed, absorbing the strange surroundings of the
saloon’s waiting room with a stony expression. “Could I have some water?” He
placed the cup into her hand and she sipped at it. “I don’t suppose you have a
sweatshirt or something?”

“There’s a blanket here if you’re
cold,” he said, and tried to drape it over her shoulders. She adjusted it,
holding the edges together, and continued sipping the water.

Jack allowed another awkward moment
of silence to pass before asking, “What’s your name?”

The question seemed to surprise her.
“Ellen.”

“Ellen, my name’s Jack,” he said
before remembering he had already told her. “I guess you came here on the
train, too.”

She looked at him for the first time,
staring into his eyes. “I don’t know. I remember a train and a conductor, but
I’m pretty sure that was a hallucination. I was in a hospital in a
straitjacket. That I remember. And now I’m on a park bench in a train station
with monsters hiding in the walls; probably a side-effect of the mescaline.
Unless I’m really crazy this time.”

“You’re not crazy,” Jack said, his answer
a little more forceful than he expected. “A train dropped you off on the
platform just a couple minutes ago. I brought you inside and took the
straitjacket off of you, then went to get you some water. But this isn’t a
dream, and you’re not crazy.” He offered her a smile. “Two people can’t share
the same delusion.”

“They can if one of them isn’t real,”
she answered.

Jack frowned. “I guess I can’t argue
with that. So who made who?”

She looked away, either unable to
answer or unwilling to argue with someone she was half-convinced might be a
product of her imagination. How could he prove this world was real when she was
convinced that everything in it, him included, wasn’t?

“I could show you around,” he
offered. “Maybe that’ll help.”

She shrugged indifferently and stood
up, blanket pulled up on her shoulders, the cup of water held in both hands
like a chalice. Jack took the coffee and led her out of the waiting room. “It’s
called the Sanity’s Edge Saloon,” he explained. “I’m sort of the caretaker, I
guess. But I just got here yesterday and no one has been around to tell me what
to do.” He decided not to tell her about the phone call from the Writer yet—the
dead
Writer—or the way things seemed to happen by magic; it wouldn’t
help dissuade her argument about neither of them being crazy or imaginary. “So
I guess you shouldn’t expect a lot of answers from me.”

“They gave you a job taking care of
this place, but you don’t know anything about it?” she asked dubiously. “Who’s
your employer?”

“I met him a couple days ago, and he
made me a really great offer. I didn’t have a whole lot else going for me, so I
agreed. He was supposed to be here to show me around, tell me what to do, but
…” He spread his hands as if to say,
these things happen. What can you do?
But then he wondered,
do these things really happen?
“Anyway, this is
the main room for lack of a better term. There’s a refrigerator behind the bar
with some food, and there’s probably some on the shelves, too. And there’s
always the candy machine back there—”