I saw lights in the distance, like paper lanterns through a forest fog, dancing in and out of the obscuration of trees and undergrowth. My head ached fiercely, and for a moment there was nothing but the movement of these colored lamps, without sound or designation impressing itself upon anything.
And then I felt the cold again, and suddenly the sharp claws of a brisk wind lifted me out of the haze of confusion and into waking life. I saw that the dancing lights were small colored tea candles set on a desk in a small room. I found myself laying, not fully reclined, on an old couch that didn’t offer much comfort. I recalled the doctor’s words, “…find some kind of comfort,” and would have found it humorous had another gust of cold wind not blown through the open window.
In a chair, close to what seemed to be some kind of altar, was a man that was somewhat recognizable, wearing turquoise jewelry. Memories flooded back. I recalled picking him up from the roadside- rescuing him from a broken down fate on a highway in the new cold hells of Kansas.
“Why in the blazes is that window open?” I tried not to sound ungracious, but I had chills and my skull still pounded with a lashing pain. “I don’t mean to be rude, I am just having trouble-” I struggled to organize my thoughts into langage, looking at the man with the topknot and dark eyes. I noticed what appeared to be something in his topknot. It seemed to be a small box made of a kind of metal. I realized I was staring and met his eyes again with some discomfiture.
He waved his hand briskly, “It’s not important. Memory comes and goes. Recall is compounded, it is bound to phenomena and supported by circumstances, just like everything else. More important is that you are here.”
Then I remembered the vast sky, and the parasol the size of a grand city. And the smiling harbinger of something dreadful. I recalled all of that, and the drive before, and suddenly met the man’s gaze again.
“Oh my god, I was driving and then- are you ok?” I asked with a sudden understanding of what could have been.
“Yes.” He said matter of factly. He didn’t explain further. He nodded toward the window and I gazed outside, into a small gravel lot in front of wherever I was. Two vehicles were there and one was mine, not a single scratch other than the ones I had put there myself.
Before I could ask for further details, the door of the room opened, and an older woman, with gray hair but a timeless face, came into the room with two cups of tea. She handed one to the man in front of me, and put another on a small nightstand beside the couch.
“You woke up sooner than we thought.” And she gazed at the man in front of me.
“We could have been killed, I still don’t understand-”
“No, we weren’t very close to that, and won’t be for some time.” He said very softly, in a way that was almost difficult to hear.
“Where am I?” I asked, giving them the question I realized probably should have come first.
“My trailer. Between Oakwood Falls and Menard,” She said. “But, please, stay the night, it is too cold and maybe not a good time to be alone, yes?” She asked very kindly, motioning with her hands again to the tea that she had given me.
“My name is Alejandra. And you are welcome here,” Again, an unexpected tone of kindness, something too real to be given to a stranger.
“Sonam was telling me that you are a detective?” She inquired, breaking my distracted thoughts, and bringing me gently back to the present.
“Yeah, from Oakwood.” I said matter of factly. I was somewhat grateful to be alive, but again the answers were absent, and I could feel the blind spots in my knowledge growing larger than my understanding. I turned again to look at Sonam for a moment, and then leaned forward, took some of the tea to drink and leaned back again.
The libation was unexpected, savory and full, like bone broth and some kind of oil. The surprise made it difficult to swallow, but it wasn’t unpleasant. When I got it down the aftertaste was like some kind of herbal mixture that I could not identify at all. It sank into my body like fine alcohol that didn’t burn. Warmer than any fire. It was the only thing in days that cut through the twisted, bitter cold.
“Thank you.” I said, and for the first time in a long time it came from my heart, and was not some perfunctory social necessity.
She smiled and said, “Please, drink!” And I did. And it was like drinking morning sunlight after a night with good friends, it was like the glow of the hour after being married, it was like drinking what should be and what should have been. It was like everything was rearranged and wonder had returned to the world. The sudden rush of emotions would have caught me and overwhelmed me had I not had such practice in silencing them.
I coughed slightly, catching myself and returning the well worn mask of the deadpan detective.
“Alejandra, If I may ask, how did you and Sonam meet one another? He said he was here on business, if I remember,” and I paused, trying to bring everything back. “But he didn’t say if you were involved in this… business.” I hesitated at the end, remembering the distrust he had shown around my initial questions.
“No, the business isn’t me and I am not involved in the business,” She made a kind of soundless laugh, just staccato breaks in the air, “Not this time.”She said, and looked back at Sonam. There was a stillness then, and they both looked at each other for a few seconds, as if having an unspoken conversation in a mutual language of silence I could never know.
“We met so many ages ago. Less lines on my face,” He pointed to his own face with a smile, “And about the same on hers. Some people don’t even need to make deals with time. TIme comes to them and begs.” He said, with a half grin.
“In any case, I was in Saltillo on-”
“Business,” I said, finishing his sentence and nodding in a way that indicated I knew he wouldn’t go deeper than that.
“Indeed.” He said.
“That’s my hometown,” She said, “We met. We had some adventures,” She put her hand on his shoulder, not romantically, I noticed, but with the care one might give a brother or sister. “And then he went back home. After that I visited when I could, if I could, and he would do the same. But letters and distance, mostly.” She finished and then he pointed to the phone on the small table beside.
“Until the age of that damned thing.” He said, “In any case, it has been ten years since we last saw one another, and despite the,” He searched for the word, “Complexities of this business, this has been the upside.” He smiled and looked up at her.
“Well,” I said, not knowing much else to say and not wanting to be rude, “Thank you for keeping me from being dead and frozen. Out there.” and I pointed to the open window. Alejandra walked over and closed it.
“Would you like another cup of tea?”
“Is that what that is?” I asked, and she smiled in return, saying nothing.
“No, not right now. I think I’ll take you up on your offer and stay the night.”
“I’ll get some more blankets.” She said, and left the room. Sonam stood and looked at me, his expression suddenly intense and piercing, but not unkind. When he leaned over to stand from the chair I saw another necklace, under the outer turquoise one beneath his shirt. It was some kind of multi-sided dagger, made of a dark metal with strange swirls of patterns and colors.
It disappeared back under his shirt as stood and walked over a bit closer to me.
“Sleep well, my friend. When you wake up, maybe you’ll ask about the place you went, and what you saw there. And maybe I’ll have some answers.”
I should have been surprised, overwhelmed with the instinct to interrogate, to find answers, and to understand how he knew anything about my blackouts and visions. But I wasn’t. The drink had provided warmth and washed away the black hole of confusion that eats light and time. And I knew that I could finally sleep, maybe for the first time since Wen left, maybe for the first time since some years before that. And I did.
–
And for a long time there was only the endless, restful black. Directionless and timeless, without grasping or a need for control, it welcomed me and gave me the renewal of nothingness.
And then I was in the house I had shared with Wen. Despite us agreeing to not have children there were two of them there and I knew their names, Robert and Anna. In the dream it was summer and the sky was clear and I was outside cooking on a grill. They were chasing each other, not yet ten year olds, fraternal twins. Wen embraced me from behind and I lost the ability to know what had been and only knew the dream.
I could hear the children laughing, “Tag, you’re it!” And the chase began and I smiled and turned, kissing Wen gently as she moved and began setting a table outside. “I love you and love you still.” I said, and tears ran down my face. She looked up curiously and concerned and moved toward me but stopped. Thunder rolled in the distance and small pellets of rain began to fall.
I looked as some of the drops fell on my arm. The drops were like mirrors and they reflected scenes of life and memories in them. I recognized a few of them, but most of them I didn’t. As the rain ran down my arm they would melt and fade. I saw different children with different names, I saw births and funerals, promotions and moves and diseases and sudden deaths. And all of it fell and all of it faded.
And I looked up and saw that Wen was blurred in my eyes as the rain fell more heavily. “Wen?” I asked, not understanding what I was seeing. And suddenly the rain began to wash her away too, as if she was made of the same water, she dissolved and splashed and pooled upon the ground. I screamed her name, “Wen!” But she was gone. I looked to my side and saw the children melting into water too, and the ground and the yard and house and finally the sky and itself and I was moving down a torrential river of water, the only luminous thing flowing into the darkness of forever.
And then I washed ashore, and found that the coast of my dreams had become a bathtub in a motel room, green and white tiles, a chipped mirror and a sink that would never be clean no matter what acid or chemical was thrown on it.
The bathroom of the scene of the murder at the Bluebird motel. I heard voices coming from the adjoining room, tense but familiar, and I listened:
“Do you think it is really so bad as to come all this way, Jim? My god, he is your cousin!”
“It’s bad Kat. Just trust me on this one alright! You never really trust me, Kat. I am trying to save us here.”
Jim Espie and Kat Parr. The two unhappy dead from the previous day’s case. I stood up from the bathtub, covered in still in the illusory water of memory and dreaming, and made my way out into the room, unseen in my perplexing vision of the past and its characters.
Kat was now sitting on the bed of the motel room closest to the bathroom and the enigmatic back door. She had her arm around her partner, and their bags were still unpacked between the beds.
“Everyone gets in a bad spot sometimes, Jim. I think if you call, if you reason with him, if you tell him we will both work and work hard- well, what’s he going to do, kill his own cousin over a few grand?”
“It ain’t the money, Kat.” He looked at her and his face was pale, his eyes sunken and his long brown-blond hair was greasy and slick from days without a shower. “It’s what I saw.” He said and his voice trembled and shook, it deepened on the last word as if it would break and he would cry out in terror.
“I know, honey, you had a bad dream or something, but the doc said-”
“It wasn’t a fucking dream!” He yelled and stood up and put his hand on throat and breathed in strongly as if he was having trouble finding air.
“It wasn’t a dream,” He said, more quietly this time but still perturbed. “I blacked out in the middle of work, fell down a flight of stairs, and god knows how I didn’t break my damn neck! And I can’t even describe what I saw then, Kat. I don’t got words for it.” He stopped and looked at her.
“But I will tell you what I did see, in the other part. While I was out. My cousin at night with a bunch of fuckin’ nutjobs doing something in the woods outside the city. Far outside the city. And when I told Seth what I saw you should have seen his fuckin’ face, Kat. I knew it wasn’t just some dream then. The way he just left our conversation. ‘See ya round, pal.’ He said as if I was already dead to him. We are in trouble here cat. Bad trouble.”
And she stood and walked up to him but both of them began to fade and turn into shadows that moved formlessly around the room, as outside the window I could see the sun of previous days rise and set, and rise and set again, and I could hear as if from a long distance the conversations grow louder and angrier with time.
And suddenly the shadows again became Jim Espie and Kat Parr.
He was looking out the curtain of the motel window toward the parking lot, half drawn to hide his face. I tried to look as well but the curtains were only barely open and most of my view was blocked. I looked back and saw the bags and the condoms and everything the way it was on the day I found them. “This is the day they die.” I thought, and sadness filled my body like a poisoned river.
He stayed watching for a time and then suddenly moved back and sat again on the bed closest to that damnable back door. As he quickly moved I could see a black SUV pulling out of the parking lot and Kat walking back.
Jim leaned over to the nightstand beside his bed and quickly put the handgun in his jeans behind him. As soon as the door closed he launched into a tirade of anger.
“I saw you meeting him!” He yelled. “I saw it! Was that Seth! Why the fuck was he dressed like that Kat!? What the hell! That black hat looked like something out of a damn western movie. You thought I was sleepin’ and you betrayed me! You killed us both Kat. Fuck you!”
And he pulled the gun and pointed it straight at her. She immediately panicked and threw her hands up.
“Jim, Jim, please!” She cried and tears started rolling down her face. “I called Seth. I did. But only because this is ridiculous. We can’t live like this. I can’t live like this! I can’t be on the run. But that wasn’t Seth, ok It was his man. I don’t know why he was dressed like that and I don’t know where he was from but look, baby, we are ok. We are good,” She stretched out the last word in an attempt to calm her manic partner.
“The guy out there, he said we can come back. The debt is forgiven. He didn’t even say nothin’ about your dream, baby.”
“IT WASN’T A FUCKING DREAM!” Jim thundered. As he was about to continue the hotel phone rang. The moment it did Kat turned toward the door to escape. Jim looked up, his face skeletal and gaunt and now decided.
But as he pulled the trigger and the spark of shell and powder exploded, thunder crashed outside, and again I could hear something like the sound of cymbals. And the rain started and the room began to melt. The soon to be dead but already dead also melted. And I was again rolling down the river of dreams and emptiness.
This time the shore was actually sand, and the water all around me was red. Dark red like the color of plum wine. In front of me was a forest and I could hear voices and see torches lit. Strange canticles pierced the night. I felt the sand move under my feet, but ignored it and walked forward. The further I stepped the further the chanting seemed to recede until all at once it went silent and the torches were extinguished. I looked up at the sky and saw only black.
I walked forward, now totally alone, until finally I came to a mausoleum. It was gigantic, like a great temple, at least thirty feet high. The design was Grecian in structure, tall and long like a place that should have been long set in ruins. The doors in the front seemed made of stone, and in the center of them each was a painted eye, lid half closed, with the eyes colored yellow and red, staring with complete knowledge. Each door had a large metal ring on it, tied with a massive rope, red and black.
As I went to open the door the rope slid into the stone itself, and like braided coiled serpents traveled to the space above and between the two eyes. Then another eye I hadn’t seen before opened wide in the center of the two others. As it opened, two smaller doors within the main doors opened as well. In the center of the long hall of this temple was a bowl suspended on a platform. The ground beneath was carved out to allow whatever was in the bowl to drain.
There were statues on both sides of the structure, but they were shrouded in darkness. On the far end was a golden statue of a man in robes, with a wide brimmed hat, tasseled in small ornamented skulls. Behind him was a brilliant painting, its colors cutting through the gray lifeless vision.
A parasol, painted in all the hues of the rainbow, surrounded by clouds. On both sides were the sun and moon, and written around the parasol in moving white was a script in letters I couldn’t understand or read.
Then, from the bowl, came thunder and water exploded like a torrent everywhere, melting the temple, and the forest and the shore, and all of my own features and faculties. And then again came the emptiness of dreamless sleep.