American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,196

around himself, and in a voice totally unlike the one he had before—like he’s trying to speak in a baritone register—he slowly says, “Well. This is very interesting.”

She rushes to him and takes him by the shoulders. “You’re all right? You’re awake? You’re awake!” She feels his limbs and torso, checking for injuries, which he seems to find quite startling. “You’re here! You’ve come back to me! My God, it’s a miracle!”

Michael clears his throat, and moves to push a pair of glasses up his nose, but the glasses are not there. “Madam,” he says, “I believe there has been a misunderstanding.” He gently takes her hands and pushes them away.

“What is it?” she asks. “M-Michael?”

“Not… quite,” he says. He looks at his hands, then looks around himself. He sighs. When he looks back at her, there is a fluttering at the edges and backs of his eyes. “It is possible I have landed myself in a very awkward situation,” he says to her.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Mona’s feet are beginning to hurt when the canyon curls around and she sees something different from more rock walls: the ground slopes down and widens a little until it disappears into a thick, cotton-white mist that is utterly impenetrable to the eye. It is completely unnatural, of course: this place doesn’t see enough moisture to make the ground damp, let alone produce a San Francisco–style fog. Its surface seems to catch the moonlight and glow, just slightly.

Mona has never seen anything like it. She remembers what Parson said: He is more like Mother than I am. Than any of us is. Her heart begins beating a little faster. She finds it hard to believe that she’s here, that she’s doing this.

Gracie stops. “This is it.”

“Yeah, it sure looks like it,” says Mona. She stares into the mist for a while. “So… what is it?”

“That’s where he is.” She nods toward the mist.

“Okay. Lead the way.”

Gracie looks at Mona, smiles sadly, and shakes her head.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” says Mona. “I’ve got to go in there alone? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Well, I… I didn’t want you to be mad at me.”

“Well I’m mad now!” says Mona. “Christ! Do I have to leave my gun here?”

“Oh,” says Gracie thoughtfully. “Hm. He didn’t mention that. I don’t think he cares.”

Mona rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms. “Jesus Christ.”

“I guess you know what it’s like now,” says Gracie.

“What do you mean?”

“What it’s like living here,” says Gracie. She turns to stare back into the mist, her pale, sad face lit by the pink glow. “We don’t get to choose where to go, what to do. Some think we do—some want to think we do. But one way or another, we’re told.”

Mona looks at her. She suddenly realizes that this pale little slip of a girl, with her moony eyes and skinny wrists, has probably seen and dealt with worse things than she could ever imagine.

“It’s not right,” she says.

Gracie just shrugs—What does that have to do with anything? “I told you not to stay.”

“You did?” asks Mona.

“Yeah. On the phone.”

“Oh. That was you.”

“Yeah. Bunch of good that did, huh?” She tuts. “I told him what I’d done, and he said it wouldn’t matter. He said you’d stay. And he was right.”

Mona wishes she would stop talking about this kind of thing. “Will you wait for me?” she asks.

“Sure. I don’t have anything else to do.”

“It might be a while. I don’t know how long this will take.”

Gracie smiles indulgently. “Do you really think that time in there works the same way as it does out here?”

“Shit,” she says. “Stop telling me this stuff.” Then she grabs the strap of her rifle to steady it and descends into the mist.

Though the mist looked like a sea of cotton balls on the outside, on the inside it’s a soft, chilly veil. Mona knows there are no lights outside the mist except for the stars and the moon, but light is filtering through from somewhere, like there are floodlights up above her or at the end of the mist. And she knows the canyon was tiny—she was just in the damn thing, after all—so it should probably end in a tight little cul-de-sac. Yet she feels like she’s walking across a huge field: this place is perfectly flat, with no walls in sight, and she gets the strong impression that it’s just going to keep on going.

“Hello?” says Mona.

But, of course, there’s nothing.

Then there