American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,225

in a filthy blue rabbit suit.

Oh no, she thinks.

He seems to feel her watching him: he sits up, and turns to look. His face is once again concealed by the wooden mask. This time he does not take it off. Yet she gets the impression that he is very surprised to see her watching him.

He raises a hand to her. Then drops it.

She is a bit confused by this. Mona says: Hello.

The man nods slightly toward her. He stares at her a moment longer. (Where is she, anyway? How can he see her? It seems very hard, all of a sudden, to keep herself in one place.) Then he looks around at his chamber. The light is dull and dusky; here all things are yellow and crumbling, a world rendered in musty stone and fading parchment and rusting chains.

He points at her. Then he points at the walls. Then back at her. Then he cocks his head a little.

Mona is not sure what he means. Then she understands: You are imprisoned? Like me?

Mona says to him: Yes. Like you.

And immediately she understands that this is how she can see and speak to him, that this might be why he chose not to harm her when they first met: the two of them are alike. Not just in circumstances; not just because the two of them are currently captured. That’s just the start of it. The real reason is that Mona, like this ragged, filthy man, is a child left behind, neglected, and eventually forgotten, a sibling of a family she never got to know. They share the same story, the same nature: though he is much older than she, and she is the youngest, the two of them are connected. She understands this immediately, without words, without gestures: she understands this more than she has understood anything in her life.

She says: You are my brother.

He nods.

She says: Can you help me? I am trapped.

He looks at her. Then he shakes his head slowly.

What can I do? How can I free myself?

He lifts a hand and pats his chest, where his heart should be. Then he holds his hand out, and makes a fist. He clenches the fist so hard that his knuckles quiver, and trickles of blood begin to ooze down his palm. Then he relaxes it, reassuming his Indian-style position. His hand smears the canvas on his knee with dark blood. Then he hunches over, and resumes staring into the ground.

The connection fades. The vision falls away from her. And she is back in the trunk again.

She realizes she hasn’t breathed in quite a while, and takes a deep gasp that quickly turns to coughs. Apparently this astral-projection thing—or, rather, pandimensional thing—takes some getting used to.

But though he did not speak, there was no mistaking his message:

Rage makes your heart free.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

At some point in time she sleeps, because when the car starts she finds herself waking up. Then, to her concern, the car starts moving, cutting what feels like a very sharp U-turn before continuing in a direction that definitely feels upward.

If she had to guess, it would be upward as in away from Wink, and away from civilization.

Though it’s dark, Mona’s inner ear tells her the incline keeps getting sharper and sharper. They’re definitely going up somewhere high.

There’s only one place Mona’s been to in Wink yet that was this high: the road to the mesa, when she first went to Coburn.

“Shit,” she whispers.

The ride gets incredibly bumpy, which confirms her theory. She feels around for a weapon, anything, but all she finds are frayed wires from the taillights. How did things get so incredibly fucked so fast?

They drive for over an hour before the car slows to a stop. She hears footsteps around the trunk.

Now, Mona decides, would be the time to think up a plan.

She decides the plan is to jump out and punch someone somewhere soft, and she won’t be picky about who or where. She readies herself.

There is whispering outside the trunk. Then a soft pop, and light pours in, blinding her. She tries to spring out, but her body is so cramped and weak that she only manages to roll forward, falling onto very hard, hot stones as she blinks and waves her arms about.

When her sight comes back to her, she sees someone is standing over her: a very pale, very bloody, very defeated-looking Mrs. Benjamin.

Mona shields her eyes and squints at her. “Hey?” she says.

Then there is a sharp pain