“Your old mom wouldn’t lie to you, would she?”
“Not my old mom.”
“Precious…boy.”
He told her that he loved her, and she slipped away upon his words. As she went, the haggard look of the terminal leukemic patient passed from her, and before the gray mask of death replaced it, he saw the beauty he had preserved in memory when he was three, before they took his eyes, saw it so briefly, as if something transforming welled out of her, a perfect light, her essence.
Out of respect for his mother, Barty struggled to hold fast to his eyeless second sight, living in the idea of a world where he still had vision, until she had been accorded the honors she deserved and had been laid to rest beside his father.
He wore his dark blue suit on the day.
He went in a pretense of blindness, gripping Angel’s arm, but he missed nothing, and etched every detail in his memory, against the need of them in the coming dark.
She was forty-three, so young to have left such a mark upon the world. Yet more than two thousand people attended her funeral service—which was conducted by clergymen of seven denominations—and the subsequent procession to the cemetery was so lengthy that some people had to park a mile away and walk. The mourners streamed across the grassy hills and among the headstones for the longest time, but the presiding minister did not begin the graveside service until all had assembled. None here showed impatience at the delay. Indeed, when the final prayer was said and the casket lowered, the crowd hesitated to depart, lingering in the most unusual way, until Barty realized that like he himself, they half expected a miraculous resurrection and ascension, for among them had so recently walked this one who was without stain.
Agnes Lampion. The Pie Lady.
At home again, in the safety of the family, Barty collapsed in exhaustion from the sustained effort to see with eyes that he didn’t possess. Abed for ten days, feverish, afflicted with vertigo and migraine headaches, nauseated, he lost eight pounds before his recovery was complete.
He hadn’t lied to his mother. She assumed that by some quantum magic, he had regained his sight permanently, and that this came with no cost. He merely allowed her to go to her rest with the comforting misapprehension that her son had been freed from darkness.
Now to blindness he returned for five years, until 1983.
Chapter 83
EACH MOMENTOUS DAY, the work was done in memory of his mother. At Pie Lady Services, always, they sought new recipes and new ways to brighten the corner where they were.
Barty’s mathematical genius proved to have a valuable practical application. Even in his blindness, he perceived patterns where those with sight did not. Working with Tom Vanadium, he devised strikingly successful investment strategies based on subtleties of the stock market’s historical performance. By the 1980s, the foundation’s annual return on its endowment averaged twenty-six percent: excellent in light of the fact that the runaway inflation of the 1970s had been curbed.
During the five years following Agnes’s death, their family of many names thrived. Barty and Angel had brought them all together in this place fifteen years previously, but the destiny about which Tom had spoken on the back porch, that night in the rain, seemed to be in no hurry to manifest itself. Barty could find no painless way to sustain secondhand sight, so he lived without the light. Angel had no reason to shove anyone else into the world of the big bugs, where she’d pushed Cain. The only miracles in their lives were the miracles of love and friendship, but the family remained convinced of eventual wonders, even as they got on with the day at hand.
No one was surprised by his proposal, her acceptance, and the wedding. Barty and Angel were both eighteen when they were married in June of 1983.
For just one hour, which was not too taxing, he walked in the idea of a world where he had healthy eyes, and shared the vision of other Bartys in other places, so he would be able to see his bride as she walked down the aisle and as, beside him, she took their vows with him, and as she held out her hand to receive the ring.
In all the many ways things are, across the infinity of worlds and all Creation, Barty believed that no woman existed whose beauty exceeded hers or whose heart was better.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, he relinquished his secondhand sight. He would live in darkness until Easter of 1986, though every minute of the day was brightened by his wife.
The wedding reception—big, noisy, and joyous—spread across the three properties without fences. His mother’s name was so often mentioned, her presence so strongly felt in all the lives that she had touched, that sometimes it seemed that she was actually there with them.
In the morning, after their first night together, without either of them suggesting what must be done, Barty and Angel went in silence into the backyard and, together, climbed the oak, to watch the sunrise from its highest bower.
Three years later, on Easter Sunday in 1986, the fabled bunny brought them a gift: Angel gave birth to Mary. “It’s time for a nice ordinary name in this family,” she declared.
To see his newborn baby girl, Barty shared the sight of other Bartys, and he so adored this little wrinkled Mary that he sustained his vision all day, until a thunderous migraine became too much to bear and a sudden frightening slurring of speech drove him back to the comfort of blindness.
The slur faded from his voice in minutes, but he suspected that straining too long to sustain this borrowed vision could result in a stroke or worse.
Blind he remained until an afternoon in May 1993, when at last the miracle occurred, and the meaning that Tom Vanadium had foreseen so long ago began to manifest.
When Angel came in search of Barty, breathless with excitement, he was chatting with Tom Vanadium in the foundation’s office above the garages. Years ago, the two apartments had been combined and expanded when the garages under them were doubled in size, providing better living quarters for Tom and working space, as well.
Although he was seventy-six, Tom still worked for Pie Lady Services. They had no set retirement age for staff, and Father Tom expected to die at his work. “And if it’s a piecaravan day, just leave my old carcass where I drop until you make all the deliveries. I won’t be responsible for anyone missing a promised pie.”
He was Father Tom again, having recommitted to his vows three years previous. At his request, the Church had assigned him as the chaplain of Pie Lady Services.
So Barty and Tom just happened to be chatting about a quantum physicist they had seen on a television program, a documentary about the uncanny resonance between the belief in a created universe and some recent discoveries in quantum mechanics and molecular biology. The physicist claimed that a handful of his colleagues, though by no means the majority, believed that with a deepening understanding of the quantum level of reality, there would in time be a surprising rapprochement between science and faith.
Angel interrupted, bursting into the room, gasping for breath. “Come quick! It’s incredible. It’s wonderful. You’ve got to see this. And I mean, Barty, you have to see this.”
“Okay.”
“I’m saying, you have to see this.”
“What’s she saying?” he asked Tom.
“She has something she wants you to hear.”
As he rose from his chair, Barty began to reacquaint himself with the feeling of all the ways things are, began to bend his mind around the loops and rolls and tucks of reality that he had perceived on the roller coaster that day, and by the time he had followed Angel and Tom to the bottom of the stairs and into the oak-shaded yard behind the house, the day faded into view for him.
Mary was at play here, and the sight of her, his first in seven years, almost brought Barty to his knees. She was the image of her mother, and he knew that this must be at least a little bit what Angel had looked like when, at three, she had initially arrived here in 1968, when she explored the kitchen on that first day and found the toaster under a sock.
If the sight of his daughter almost dr
ove him to his knees, the sight of his wife, also his first in seven years, lifted him until he was virtually floating across the grass.
On the lawn, Koko, their four-year-old golden retriever, was lying on her back, all paws in the air, presenting the great gift of her furry belly for the rubbing pleasure of young Mistress Mary.
“Honey,” Angel said to her daughter, “show us that game you were just playing with Koko. Show us, honey. Come on. Show us. Show us.”
To Barty, Mary said, “Mommy’s all hyper about this.”
“You know Mommy,” Barty said, almost desperately sponging up the sight of his little girl’s face and wringing the images into his memory to sustain him in the next long darkness.
“Can you really see right now, Daddy?”
“I really can.”
“Do you like my shoes?”
“They’re cool shoes.”
“Do you like the way my hair—”
“Show us, show us, show us!” Angel urged.
“Okaaaay,” Mary said. “Koko, let’s play.”
The dog rolled off her back and sprang up, tail wagging, ready for fun.
Mary had a yellow vinyl ball of the type Koko would happily chase all day and, if allowed, chew all night, keeping the house awake with its squeaking. “Want this?” she asked Koko.
Koko wanted it, of course, needed it, absolutely had to have it, and leaped into action as Mary pretended to throw the ball.
After a few racing steps, when the dog realized that Mary hadn’t thrown the ball, it whipped around and sprinted back.
Mary ran—“Catch me if you can!”—and darted away.
Koko changed directions with a fantastic pivot turn and bounded after the girl.
Mary pivoted, too, turning sharply to her left—
—and disappeared.
“Oh, my,” said Tom Vanadium.
One moment, girl and yellow vinyl ball. The next moment, gone as if they’d never been.
Koko skidded to a halt, perplexed, looked left, looked right, floppy ears lifted slightly to catch any sound of Mistress Mary.
Behind the dog, Mary walked out of nowhere, ball in hand, and Koko whirled in surprise, and the chase was on again.
Three times, Mary vanished, and three times she reappeared, before she led the bamboozled Koko to her mother and father. “Neat, huh?”
“When did you realize you could do this?” Tom asked.
“Just a little bit ago,” the girl said. “I was sitting on the porch, having a Popsicle, and I just figured it out.”
Barty looked at Angel, and Angel looked at Barty, and they dropped to their knees on the grass before their daughter. They were both grinning…and then their grins stiffened a little.
No doubt thinking about the land of the big bugs, into which she had pushed Enoch Cain, which was exactly what Barty had suddenly thought about, Angel said, “Honey, this is amazing, it’s wonderful, but you’ve got to be careful.”
“It’s not scary,” said Mary. “I just step into another place for a little, and then back. It’s just like going from one room to the next. I can’t get stuck over there or anything.” She looked at Barty. “You know how it is, Dad.”
“Sorta. But what your mother means—”
“Maybe some of those are bad places,” Angel warned.
“Oh, sure, I know,” Mary said. “But when it’s a bad place, you feel it before you go in. So you just go around to the next place that isn’t bad. No big deal.”
No big deal.
Barty wanted to hug her. He did hug her. He hugged Angel, too. He hugged Tom Vanadium.
“I need a drink,” Father Tom said.
Mary Lampion, little light, was home-schooled as her father and mother had been. But she didn’t study just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Gradually she developed a range of fascinating talents not taught in any school, and she went exploring in a great number of the many ways things are, journeying to worlds right here but unseen.
In his blindness, Barty listened to her reports and, through her, saw more than he could have seen if never he had lost his eyes.
On Christmas Eve, 1996, the family gathered in the middle of the three houses for dinner. The living-room furniture had been moved aside to the walls, and three tables had been set end to end, the length of the room, to accommodate everyone.
When the long table was laden and the wine poured, when everyone but Mary settled into chairs, Angel said, “My daughter tells me she wants to make a short presentation before I say grace. I don’t know what it is, but she assures me it doesn’t involve singing, dancing, or reading any of her poetry.”
Barty, at the head of the table, sensed Mary’s approach only as she was about to touch him. She put a hand on his arm and said, “Daddy, will you turn your chair away from the table and let me sit on your lap?”
“If there’s a presentation, I assume then I’m the presentee,” he said, turning his chair sideways to the table and taking her into his lap. “Just remember, I never wear neckties.”
“I love you, Daddy,” she said, and put the palms of her hands flat against his temples.
Into Barty’s darkness came light that he had not sought. He saw his smiling Mary on his lap as she lowered her hands from his temples, saw the faces of his family, the table set with Christmas decorations and many candles flickering.
“This will stay with you,” Mary said. “It’s shared sight from all the other yous in all the other places, but you won’t have to make any effort to hold on to it. No headaches. No problems ever. Merry Christmas, Daddy.”
And so at the age of thirty-one, after more than twenty-eight years of blindness with a few short reprieves, Barty Lampion received the gift of sight from his ten-year-old daughter.
1996 through 2000: Day after day, the work was done in memory of Agnes Lampion, Joey Lampion, Harrison White, Seraphim White, Jacob Isaacson, Simon Magusson, Tom Vanadium, Grace White, and most recently Wally Lipscomb, in memory of all those who had given so much and, though perhaps still alive in other places, were gone from here.
At Thanksgiving dinner, again at the three tables set end to end, in the year of the triple zero, Mary Lampion, now fourteen years old, made an interesting announcement over the pumpkin pie. In her travels where none but she could go, after seven fascinating years of exploring a fraction of all the infinite worlds, she said she sensed beyond doubt that, as Barty’s mother had told him on her deathbed, there is one special place beyond all the ways things are, one shining place. “And give me long enough, I’m going to find how to get there and see it.”
Alarmed, her mother said, “Without dying first.”
“Well, sure,” said Mary, “without dying first. That would be the easy way to get there. I’m a Lampion, aren’t I? Do we take the easy way, if we can avoid it? Did Daddy take the easiest way up the oak tree?”
Barty set one other rule: “Without dying first…and you have to be sure you can get back.”
“If I ever get there, I’ll be back,” she promised the gathered family. “Imagine how much we’ll have to talk about. Maybe I’ll even get some new pie recipes from Over There.”
2000, the Year of the Dragon, gives way without a roar to the Year of the Snake, and after the Snake comes the Horse. Day by day the work is done, in memory of those who have gone before us, and embarked upon work of her own, young Mary is out there among you. For now, only her family knows how very special she is. On one momentous day, that will change.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
To achieve certain narrative effects, I’ve fiddled slightly with the floor plan and the interior design of St. Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco. In this story, the characters who work at St. Mary’s are fictional and are not modeled after anyone on the staff of that excellent institution, either past or present.
I’m not the first to observe that much of what quantum mechanics reveals about the nature of reality is uncannily compatible with faith, specifically with the concept of a created universe. Several
fine physicists have written about this before me. As far as I am aware, however, the notion that human relationships reflect quantum mechanics is fresh with this book: Every human life is intricately connected to every other on a level as profound as the subatomic level in the physical world; underlying every apparent chaos is strange order; and “spooky effects at a distance,” as the quantum-savvy put it, are as easily observed in human society as in atomic, molecular, and other physical systems. In this story, Tom Vanadium must simplify and condense complex aspects of quantum mechanics into a few sentences in a single chapter, because although he isn’t aware that he’s a fictional character, he is obliged to be entertaining. I hope that any physicists reading this will have mercy on him.
To Gerda. In the thousands of days in my life, the most momentous was—and always will be—the day we met.
As I wrote this book, the singular and beautiful music of the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole was always playing. I hope that the reader finds pleasure in my story equal to the joy and consolation that I found in the voice, the spirit, and the heart of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.
As I was finishing this book, Carol Bowers and her family spent a day here, under the auspices of the Dream Foundation. Carol, having read this book, you’ll understand why your visit, coming when it did, reinforced what I believe about the uncanny interconnectedness of things and about the profound and mysterious meaning in all our lives.
BY DEAN KOONTZ
77 Shadow Street • What the Night Knows • Breathless
Relentless • Your Heart Belongs to Me
The Darkest Evening of the Year • The Good Guy
The Husband • Velocity • Life Expectancy
The Taking • The Face • By the Light of the Moon
One Door Away From Heaven • From the Corner of His Eye
False Memory • Seize the Night • Fear Nothing
Mr. Murder • Dragon Tears • Hideaway • Cold Fire
The Bad Place • Midnight • Lightning • Watchers
Strangers • Twilight Eyes • Darkfall • Phantoms
Whispers • The Mask • The Vision • The Face of Fear
Night Chills • Shattered • The Voice of the Night
The Servants of Twilight • The House of Thunder
The Key to Midnight • The Eyes of Darkness
Shadowfires • Winter Moon • The Door to December
Dark Rivers of the Heart • Icebound • Strange Highways
Intensity • Sole Survivor • Ticktock