Happy Slumbers

  "Good you are here now," Josefa whispered. "I am going out. I will be back, in an hour or two at the most. She will sleep the whole time. Do not worry."

  "I'm okay," Alex told her, and after she'd gathered her apron and tools and had left, he settled back down on the narrow red couch and resumed his own personal vigil. Right away he felt more at ease in his mind. He was where he should be, where he wanted to be, and everything would come to fruition as planned. He felt this so strongly that he even lay down, if just for a moment, he thought. But instead, he promptly fell into a very deep sleep.

  Instantly he was plunged into a dream. He was in his own car, yet not the same car as the real one. In this one he had his hands on the wheel and was actually steering, and had his feet on the pedals and was actually controlling the vehicle's velocity. How long it had been since he'd had this sensation! Self-driving cars were not only the norm, they were also the law and had been for a while. How he loved the old ways. He had basically driven for a living, always out on the road, chasing the railroad tracks from one junction to the next, making sure and then doubly sure that they were all in perfect condition, every joint, every switch, every rail. If he had ever felt truly at home, it was in his own car, all alone on the road. The dream began with that feeling, but quickly it changed.

  He had been driving in the desert on a straight flat highway going seemingly nowhere, but then the road veered off into the mountains and became much more windy and steep. Now it swerved and it dropped, now it twisted and turned, heading up, swerving left and then right and Alex had to grip on to the wheel, hold it tight and maneuver as best as he could. Daylight flashed into night, and then back into day in rapid succession. The weather changed too, now a fog, now a drizzle, and the road became icy, then wet. Out of the mountains he dropped and onto a narrow cliff road that wound around beaches and the next thing he knew he was driving straight into a blizzard and couldn't see anything but white all around. He felt the car buckle and slide and he clutched the wheel tighter and drove by sheer feel and by guesswork, amazed that the car still went forward, still had tires on the ground that were spinning.

  The road had developed an attitude and clearly it wanted him off it. It bucked like a bull at a rodeo as the wheels left the road, then clambered back down with a bang. The drive became a chase, only what he was after he never could tell. He only felt there was something right up ahead, outrunning him and trying its best to elude him. He stepped on the gas and relished the chase. "You won't lose me now", he yelled at the invisible thing, and back into the mountains they ran, up and down and skittering along the edges of sheer drops that seemed a thousand feet deep. The sun and night sky were talking turns in sudden alternations and the wind was whipping furiously around the car as its engine frantically roared and whined. All at once the car stopped and Alex felt in his stomach that moment before total free fall and knew that the road was now gone, that there was nothing beneath him but air and all he could hear was the pounding of wind in his ears.

  Chapter Ten

  The pounding was coming from the door to the room, and it was loud and angry and constant. Alex tumbled off the couch and awoke with a sharp pain in his shoulder as it took a few moments for the fact of the knocking to register. He got to his feet and looked over at the bed, where Etta was somehow still snoozing away undisturbed. Rubbing his eyes, he went to the door and opened it. There, with his fist raised for yet another bang, was Sergeant Romo and he did not look happy. He pushed right past Alex into the dark room, and turned on the light switch next to the door. Alex backed up to let him pass, still not completely awake.

  "What's going on here?" Romo demanded, taking in the room at a glance. "Who's the old woman? What are you up to?"

  "Sleeping," Alex mumbled. "It's a motel. Where you sleep?"

  "Then why?" Romo turned and came right up into Alex's face. "Tell me this. Why are you not in the room that you rented? Who are those people in that room, why are they there, and why are you here?"

  "Why are YOU here?" Alex snapped back, instantly regretting his tone, but Romo was making him angry and he was not yet alert enough to control his temper.

  "Doing my job," Romo snarled. "Or maybe you think it's all funny. Listen up, Mister Kirkham. This is serious business. Your brother is officially missing, and you are a person of interest. Now you go off and deliberately try and conceal your tracks, parking across town, ditching your phone, not using your cards, withdrawing a whole lot of cash from the bank."

  "It wasn't that much," Alex weakly protested. Romo was practically spitting in his face, forcing him back to the wall so his head was practically touching the Lord's heart in the painting.

  "What? You didn't think we were following you? I wonder just how stupid you really think we are. We've been on you all day, like tar on the road. Now you're in here and we want to know why. Who is the old bag, anyway?"

  Romo snorted and walked over to the bed, where he began to poke at Etta's arms trying to prompt her awake. She didn't show any response, not even when he started pushing her harder.

  "Leave her alone," Alex cried, but Romo ignored him. He picked up one of her arms and held her wrist between two of his fingers and stood still for several moments.

  "This woman hardly has any pulse," he declared, dropping her hand back onto the bed. At that moment, Josefa came rushing into the room and running up to Romo began jabbering at him in what Alex assumed had to be Spanish. He felt like an idiot, then, spending nearly all of his life near the border and never bothering to pick up more than a few words, and most of them names of various foods. Romo backed away from the tiny maid, but she pressed forward, stabbing her finger into his chest and most definitely cursing up a storm. Romo looked bewildered and hardly got a word of his own into the

  conversation, and before Alex knew it, Josefa had bullied him out of the room, back onto the sidewalk, and as she did so she turned off the lights and closed the door quickly behind her. Alex sighed in relief, and felt his way back to the couch. He felt a strong urge to sit down and just catch his breath.

  Chapter Eleven

  The moment he sat down something grabbed at his hands and held on with a grip like powerful claws. Alex yelped and turned to see what it was. It was Etta. Somehow she was not only awake but sitting beside him on the narrow red couch, clutching his hands in hers with a strength he didn't believe possible. It was pitch dark in the room but he could see her quite clearly, her halo of white hair glowing like phosphorus and her brown eyes somehow shining at him.

  "Hush!" she whispered. "Listen to me. Do you have what it takes? Are you one of us?" She seemed to be searching his face for an answer but it couldn't give any. His expression was blank.

  "Never mind," she went on. "You can dream. That IS what they want. We're like candy to them, like a crop to be picked, a cow to be milked, but forever, or at least a long time." She chuckled to herself as if recalling a joke.

  "Like candy," she decided. "Like a lollipop. That's how they do it. They suck on our dreams. Imagination, human imagination is their favorite food, though they do sometimes indulge in other creatures, it's true, but they'd rather have us." Here she snorted and paused.

  "Who are 'they'?" Alex managed to ask. Etta heard him, or at least she answered his question.

  "Who can say?" she replied. "They're so vast and there are so many of them. They overlap one another, it seems. Hard to tell. I feel them inside, all at once, but also as one at a time. They're not even here, or anywhere, really. They float. They're light as a feather and filmy as paper. They want to keep the spot clear for their traps. Their little lobster cages. It's how we go in. Oh, we want to. We certainly do. And such bliss! Oh, when you're in there, how wonderful, what joy! You feel so lost yet so perfectly found. You sink into it and you don't know where you are and don't care. Who would ever say no? Ah, but what are you willing to pay?"

  Etta drifted off into silence again, and Alex felt tense, as if the time was running out fast like the bottom-most sands of an
hourglass. He pulled on hand over on top of her other one and pressed down, hoping to prompt her for more. She perked up.

  "What if they made us?" she wondered. "Planted us here. Sugar cane. No, they say no, they just found us one day and they stayed. It's so slow, like an all-day sucker and their days are so long, very long. We dream and they relish the flavor. What flavor am I, lemonade? I like to think I am like lemonade. Sour yet sweet like my dreams, like my love. Where is my love? Are you here?"

  Etta suddenly released Alex's hands and got to her feet, looking around in the darkness, and calling out, over and over again, "are you here, my love? Are you here?"

  "There's nobody here," Alex told her, now also standing and trying to get her to sit down again, but Etta seemed stuck on her notion and pushed him away, but after several more queries she did return to the couch and quieted down. Alex sat down beside her and asked her again.

  "Who are they?" he asked but she shook her head.

  "Might as well ask yourself who are the stars?" she muttered.

  Chapter Twelve

  "Put your hands up, both of you!" barked Lieutenant Liliana Vasquez as she burst into the room, followed closely by her partner, Sergeant Romo.

  "On your feet, hands in the air!" Romo shouted, "Now!"

  Alex did as instructed at once, but Etta seemed not to hear or comprehend, and before Alex could turn and encourage her to follow their orders, Romo barged forward and, grabbing her by the elbow, yanked her to her feet.

  "Tranquilo!" came a pleading voice from the doorway and Alex saw Josefa hovering just outside.

  "That's enough out of you," Vasquez yelled without looking around. "You've jerked us around enough as it is."

  "If you know what's good for you, get lost!" Romo added, and launched into what Alex assumed was a similar tirade in Spanish, but he didn't have to get very far because Josefa was already backing away and leaving the scene with her palms up in front of her face. Alex caught her eye for a brief moment, and thought he detected a slight shake of her head and felt he understood the message.

  "Move it!" Romo said and Alex saw that in his free hand he was holding a gun. Confused but not stupid, Alex headed for the door still holding his own hands up high. Romo shoved Alex's shoulder from behind, causing him to stumble out onto the street, and marched Etta out along with him.

  Vasquez herded them into the waiting police van and locked them in the back, while she and Romo climbed into the front and ordered the vehicle to return downtown to headquarters. Alex wisely decided this was not the time to ask questions, but inspected Etta closely to make sure she was essentially unharmed. Etta was in a fog, completely unaware of her surroundings. Alex thought it likely she was still fast asleep, and that she had been the entire evening.

  He resigned himself to waiting, and as it turned out, he had a lot more of that yet to be done. At the station, he and Etta were separated and he was locked into a small office by himself for several hours, with only the steady ticking of a large wall clock to keep him company. Again he had time to consider and reconsider everything he'd heard from the delusional old woman. The creature, he thought (or was it creatures, plural?) was speaking through her. That's what Josefa believed, and she believed it was evil. Alex wasn't so sure. He didn't know if morality even entered the equation. If it did, then according to Etta the creature paid a fair price for the trade it was offering. Everything costs, even if you only pay with your time. Who is it once told him, he wondered, that time is really the only true currency we possess?

  How much are you willing to pay? Etta had said this more than once, and it occurred to Alex that so many people confuse value with money. They absorb the common myth that all things are measured in coin, and the more the thing costs the more worthy it is, and yet you never pay cash for what matters the most. He sighed, thinking of the few dollars that remained in his pocket until the desk sergeant took it away. He realized now he'd been foolish with his earlier antics, and had only drawn more attention to himself. Nevertheless, he figured they would probably have gone through pretty much the same turmoil regardless of how he'd returned to Happy Slumbers. The police had their reasons though they refused to share them with him.

  At least they hadn't yet. He slept for a time, though the chair he was stuck in was extremely uncomfortable. He was thankful not to dream any more. At around four in the morning, the door opened and Lieutenant Vasquez walked in, bleary and tired and definitely not cheerful herself. She pulled up another chair and sat close to Alex, leaning over to peer into his face.

  "Is there anything you need?" she asked but leaned back with a sniff, as if daring him to ask her for anything at all.

  "No, I'm fine," he retorted. He was not going to give her any cause for complaint.

  "So, tell me about the old woman," she said.

  "There's not much to tell," he replied. "At least not from me. I just met her today, or yesterday by now. The maid told me her name was Etta and she claimed to be more than a hundred years old and she liked to sit in the park but mostly she slept." He shrugged and added, "and that's all I know."

  "Her name," Vasquez informed him, "was Henrietta Henry, and she used to live on a street called Snapdragon Alley, with her husband, Mason Henry. She was friends with one Charlie Kirkham and she vanished more than fifty years ago, according to official police records. Does any of that ring a bell?"

  Alex blinked a few times, processing the data. "Of course," he said to himself. "I should have known that's who she was. Wait, did she say 'was'?"

  "Did you say 'was?" he asked her out loud. Vasquez nodded.

  "Henrietta Henry died about a half hour ago. Apparently she'd had nothing to eat for a long time, according to the physician who examined her. Decades, in fact.”

  "Decades," Alex repeated as tears formed in his eyes. "Died", he said to himself. "Passed away. Gone." He did not want to believe it.

  "Now," Vasquez continued, "as you sure you have nothing to tell me? Considering that you knew all the parties involved, had been to their house, was present at the scene when your uncle disappeared apparently in the same manner and fashion as this alleged old woman?"

  Alex shook his head.

  "I've told you all that I know," he said. "I never met her, you know. Her husband, yes, I knew him. We visited him at that house, that is true. He gave us root beer, I think. We liked root beer."

  "How nice," Vasquez scoffed, then she stood and pushed her chair back.

  "We've got nothing," she admitted. "So you're free to go. We'll be watching you, though. You can be damn sure of that. Now get out of here. The sergeant will take you wherever you want to go, back to your car or that stupid motel or wherever, within reason, of course."

  Alex didn't reply, and didn't bother to check in with Romo, either. He gathered his keys and his cash from the desk, and wandered out into the street. There was no one around and he looked up and down for a cab, figuring he'd ask its driver if he had enough cash to get back to the park. In the meantime, he walked in that general direction. The late night was gloomy and dripping with dew. His footsteps echoed in the empty downtown.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alex reasoned it was about three miles to the park, so it should have taken about an hour to get there, walking at a normal pace, but he found it took much longer though he felt his pace was fine. He couldn't trust his senses, however, after only a few ragged hours of partial, lousy sleep. He probably looked like a zombie, staggering around out there on the otherwise vacant sidewalks. At least his good sense of direction remained unimpaired, and he was going the right way. Near the break of dawn he reached the bench he'd claimed as his own since early the previous morning. It felt good to sit on it, as if the green metal mesh had settled in to greet him. The idea was laughable, but he found he wasn't even able to smile. He was simply too tired.

  He felt the presence of the old woman on the bench next to him, and therefore wasn't surprised when he heard a voice speaking. It was several moments before he realized that
the voice belonged to a man, and that the man was his brother, Argus.

  "Good morning," the voice was saying. "I had a feeling you'd be here."

  Alex turned and rubbed his eyes, not believing in what they were telling him. It truly was his brother who, despite being formally dressed in a brown suit, light blue shirt and purple tie, looked as exhausted and bedraggled as Alex imagined he himself appeared.

  "What?" he managed to stammer. "How?"

  Argus softly chuckled, stood up, and came over to sit next to his brother. The two men studied each other's faces, speechless for a time.

  "I admit, I saw you earlier," Argus finally spoke. "With Henrietta. That was Henrietta, I assume."

  Alex nodded, thinking, "how could he have seen us? I was certain there was no one around. Then again, I didn't notice the police on my tail either. Guess I'm not so observant after all."

  "She passed away," he said with a muffled voice, choking back sudden tears. Then he couldn't hold them back any longer, and began crying in earnest. Argus patted his brother's hand and sighed.

  "Well, she was pretty old," he said, trying unsuccessfully to cheer Alex up.

  "She was happy," Alex sobbed. "Such bliss, she said. She was so happy."

  "I'm glad," Argus said. "Mason would have been glad, too. It's all he ever wanted for her."

  "Mason," Alex repeated, remembering the old man they'd met so very long ago. He had missed his wife so much, waited for her to come back, every day. Long gone, now, done in by that greedy bastard, Daniel Fulsom and his vicious assassins.