American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,195

me what he’s going to look like.”

“No. I can’t really… translate what he looks like, what he can look like.”

“Is he big?”

“Big, or small. I know he could go into Wink without anyone ever knowing about it, if he was paying enough attention.”

“So what can’t he do?”

“I’m not sure,” says Gracie. She thinks about it, and says, “Well, kill, for one.”

“What?”

“He can’t kill. He told me so. None of them can. They can’t kill their own kind, at least. I don’t think they’re allowed to die at all, but he never came out and said so. The way he talked about it, though—it’s like they’re forbidden from it. From dying, I mean.”

“But Parson just died. We just saw it.”

Gracie winces awkwardly.

“What is it?” says Mona.

“I can’t… I don’t think I can tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

Gracie scrunches up her mouth. “Well. I guess you’re not really from here. So it might not matter. But they’re not… people.”

“Well, shit, I know that.”

“No, I mean—they wear people like you and I do clothing. But if the person they’re in dies, then they can just… change them. Change bodies.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But though I don’t think it’s ever happened, that’s how he told me it works.”

Mona’s mind begins to race. She can hardly feel herself walking. They can change bodies? Is that what Gracie means? At first the idea seems ludicrous, before Mona remembers how they came to this place originally—the sky opened up, and they were touched with lightning…

And if one of them dies, would there be lightning again?

She remembers the way the sky lit bright right after Parson died, and the roll of thunder… and she remembers the way the same thing happened when the Native American in the white hat blew his brains out.

Is that what he was doing? Just… changing clothes, taking off a ruined shirt and putting on a new one? It would almost make sense, wouldn’t it? After all, the body he was in was pretty fucked up. But which bodies do they go to?

Mary Aldren nearly has a heart attack when she hears the thunder. It’s the loudest thing she’s ever heard in her life, abominably, unbelievably loud. It’s so loud it knocks her over where she’s standing in her living room. She remembers what it was like thirty years ago, and she thinks—It’s more of them, isn’t it? More of them have come here.

But a second strike never comes. It’s just the one.

She stands up. Maybe it was just lightning—real lightning. How odd it is that that’s the good alternative.

Then she smells the smoke, and sees the wisps of white curling out of the hallway.

Her stomach drops. “No, no!” she cries. “Michael? Michael!” She stands and plunges forward into the smoke.

Michael Aldren has not been himself since he fell out of a tree seven months ago. If he had fallen just a little differently—maybe held on to the branch that loosed him just a millisecond more or less—then he would have simply broken an ankle, or an arm, or a collarbone. But Michael fell and hit the very crown of his head, and though he stayed conscious for the next two days, the swelling in his brain eventually became too much, and he lapsed into a coma, which the doctors in Wink—although quite friendly and wholesome—just aren’t able to treat.

And God knows Mary isn’t willing to approach one of Them about helping her. Their arrangements often come with so many hidden strings.

But it would be so abominably cruel, wouldn’t it, she thinks as she coughs and forges forward into the smoking room, for her little boy to have hung on for so long, with no sign of progress, and then to have it all end in a bolt of lightning? Could the world really be this unfeeling?

Yet as the smoke begins to clear, she sees an amazing sight.

Michael’s room is completely black—the walls, floor, desk, and picture frames have all been blacked out as if someone has come through and painstakingly given everything three or four layers of black spray paint. Yet Michael is completely untouched: his blanket, mattress, and pillows are fried beyond recognition, but her little boy, still dressed in his rabbit pajamas, is lying there safe and sound.

And more: he is awake, and sitting up.

“Oh my God,” mutters Mary. “My God—Michael?”

Michael is looking down at himself, probing his chest. He even unbuttons his shirt, and inspects the skin below it, as if surprised to find it’s whole. Then he looks up and stares