Episode Twelve
“I need to find out who he is,” I said, thumbing through the pages of my newest book. In the last few days, I’d gone to every bookstore in town trying to collect as many texts about the Yucatan Mayas as I could get my hands on. I’d exhausted every option online, had spent hundreds of dollars having tomes shipped from every part of the world, but waiting for them to arrive was a useless game. My hands itched to hold something, to do something more than watch the minutes tick by until I could sleep again.
To my great relief, I still had a hold on my dream world. Every night when I closed my eyes, I’d find myself back in Alta California. But Mathias was nowhere to be seen, and I had no idea how to call him. Screaming his name felt foolish, though I’d admittedly tried it on more than one occasion. Yet so far, I’d come up empty in my attempts. If he was still there, still watching me, he would know what I wanted. And yet, he had not come.
I’d used the time in his absence to find out as much as I could about him. Who was the man in black? What purpose did he serve? And why was he targeting me? But if I’d hoped to find answers, I was sorely mistaken. I’d thumbed through every textbook, read every article online. There were passages in some that mentioned what they called a Shadow Man, but they told me nothing more than what I’d already known—that the man in black was real, and that he haunted the world in my dreams.
My mind drifted away from the pages before me, back to Meadow’s face as she lay waiting for death. She’d suffered more than any of us, had died just upstairs from me. She may have escaped death once, but would she be lucky enough to escape it again? Would I be fast enough to save her?
I didn’t have the answers. I’d made her a promise, that we’d be together again. At the time, it had been more of a wish than a solemn vow, but as the days passed it weighed heavy on me. If I couldn’t bring her back, if I couldn’t see her again, see her bright smile and her sparkling eyes, hear her witty quips and her relentless kindness…I’d realized that without her and Val, my life meant nothing to me. If I couldn’t find a way to bring them back, I had no interest in going on without them.
“Try to be patient, Rhett,” Maeve muttered.
I frowned at the remark. “How can I be patient when time is the one luxury I absolutely do not have?”
“I know,” she breathed, chewing her lip. “I’m sorry. It’s just stressing me out to see you stressed out. Maybe I could go back and talk to David and see if there’s anything he knows about the Shadow Man.”
I couldn’t help but smirk. “Are you sure that’s why you want to go back and see him?”
She feigned surprise. “Why, Rhett, whatever do you mean?”
“I think you know what I mean.”
For the first time since I’d known her, a blush crept into her cheeks, and she flashed a coy little smile.
“Even if I wanted to see him again in that way, I wouldn’t,” she said. “I have too much respect for you. I couldn’t do that while you’re…”
She didn’t finish, and I didn’t ask her to.
“Maeve…” I sighed. “Just because I’m dying doesn’t mean you have to stop living. If there’s a connection between you, then you deserve to explore that. Just…try to get something out of him that will help save us while you do,” I laughed.
She smiled, then placed a hand over her heart. “I promise.”
“You know,” I said, turning my attention back to the book, “if there aren’t answers about Mathias here, maybe there are in Alta California.”
Maeve’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can’t be the only one that’s seen him. I could go back to the towns where I saw him, back to the places where there could be witnesses. I can ask if they’ve seen him before, if they know who he is or why he’s there. Maybe they could tell us something more.”
Something that’s actually useful, I thought, though I dared not say it aloud. Hope was a fragile thing, one that threatened to break at the merest whisper of doubt. So far, we’d kept our hope alive by forcing ourselves to think of the next avenue, the next possibility for answers. But I knew that someday soon, those would run out. And what would become of us then, when the options to move forward suddenly ran out? I didn’t want to think about it.
“Okay,” Maeve said, nodding. “You go to sleep. Do your thing. In the meantime, I’ll visit David and see what I can find out from him.”
She rose from her seat, folding the book in her hands shut and placing it on the table. She stopped in the doorway, turning back to look at me with a small smile.
“One of these ideas is going to work, Rhett. I know it is. It has to. I can’t lose my sister, not after everything we’ve been through. And I won’t lose Meadow…or you. So, this has to work. It will work. I’m sure of it.”
The soft click of the door shutting behind her had all of the finality of death. She was right. It had to work. But whether or not it would…I wasn’t so sure. Closing the book on my lap with a snap, I replaced it on the table and made my way to my bedroom. I could feel the weight of time’s passing pressing against me. I could feel it in the ache of my muscles, in the hunch of my back. It felt as if time had its own particular kind of gravity, one reserved specially for me. It bowed me forward, that invisible weight, pushing me toward the earth. Toward my grave.
Gritting my teeth, I stood a little straighter. If time wanted to take me, it would have to try a little harder. I wasn’t going anywhere. Not any time soon.
The curtains hung limp and lifeless, long folds of regal blue staring at me as I balled them in my fist. Sunlight spilled over the windowsill, leaving a pool of golden warmth on the bed. I could lay in it, could languish in the warmth and close my eyes, could pretend that none of this had happened, that the nightmare wasn’t real. That all of this was just a terrible dream.
Instead, I pulled the curtains closed. The room descended into darkness, and I twisted round to fall on the bed. I welcomed the shadows that fell over me, wrapped them next to me as I pulled the covers close. Breathing in the darkness, I closed my eyes, and entered the dreamworld.
—
Alta California was not as I’d left it.
For one thing, I was no longer in the shed. I’d expected to find myself standing before the circle of ashes, expected to see slivers of light peeking through the gaps between the boards. But instead, I found myself standing in a field of wheat.
Golden stalks rose up to kiss the sky, which was strangely, perfectly blue. Gone were the clouds that loomed close, their murky gray like an inescapable fog. Instead, there was an azure ocean of open sky, a boundless brilliance. It was serene, to stand beneath the clear sky, to linger amongst the soft wheat as it rippled in the wind. But it was discomfiting, too. How had I gotten here? Why had the world suddenly changed? And what did it all mean?
It wasn’t long before I heard it—the faint rustle of movement. The soft crunch of footfalls against broken stalks, the gentle swishing of fabric over wheat. This time, there was no question of who I would find. I knew the truth of it in my bones.
He stepped free of the golden chaff, his cloak a long shadow in an otherwise unblemished world of light.
“Hello, Mathias.”
Mathias’s face remained impassive, but I’d come to expect as much from him. His face never spoke, never gave away his emotions. But his eyes…I had a far better chance of reading them than anything else.
“Where are we?” I asked, glancing around. Nothing had changed at his arrival, though suddenly everything felt more wan. “I know we’re not in Alta California.”
“What makes you think that?” His voice was a rumble, deep and silky. There was earnest questioning in his voice, and it was so very different from the usual anger I felt from him.
“For weeks, every time I returned here, I would start back in the same place I’d left last. But the last time I left, I was standing in that shed with you. And now I’m here. In a field of wheat. So, something has changed. I’m just not sure why.”
Mathias’s mouth twitched. “You’re no longer in Alta California, that much is true. But you’re still within the same universe. Perhaps that will give you comfort.”
I resisted the urge to scoff. How foolish to think any of this could give me comfort. “Where are we then?” I pressed. “And why are we here?”
“This was always your destination,” he said by way of explanation. “From the moment I touched your brow, you were meant to arrive here. Though I’ll admit I did not see you slipping away before reaching this place.”
Slipping away? What exactly was that supposed to mean?
“You’re saying I disappeared between leaving the shack and coming here?” I asked, my mind spinning in a thousand directions.
Mathias nodded. “You were meant to come here directly. I thought perhaps I’d miscalculated where you would end up. I went searching for you, to no avail. Then I returned to find you right where you should have been all along.”
“I didn’t disappear,” I said, thinking it through. “I just woke up.”
So, at long last I knew something definitive. This place still existed when I wasn’t here. Whatever this was, it was no dream.
“But why here?” I mumbled aloud, still lost in thought. “Why bring me here, to this place? Why not leave me near Os Onta?”
“Because you don’t belong there,” Mathias repeated. “You shouldn’t have come back.”
“You keep saying that, but I can’t control where I go. I never meant to come here. Hell, I don’t even know where here is.”
“And yet here you are,” the man in black countered, his face a dark scowl. “Your presence here is wrong. You are not of this place. The fact that you are here is changing the timeline, altering the course of history. Every time you ask a question, every time you probe into someone’s life, you are shaping their memories. You are changing this world, and not for the better.”
You are changing this world…
Did that mean what I thought it meant? That this wasn’t a dream…it was a place? It seemed impossible, but I had no other explanation.
“What world is this, Mathias?” My words were slow, mechanical, my mind torn into fragments of details and memories. In my chest, a drum beat louder and louder, faster and faster as I waited for his reply.
“There is only one world,” the man in black replied, his face now somber. “But there are infinite trajectories.”
Mathias took a step forward, lifting his hand toward me. “This time, when I tell you not to come back, take heed. I will not be so kind next time.”
“No.”
The word was guttural and stern, a sound ripped from the deepest parts of my soul. For a moment, the man in black hesitated.
“You can send me away, but I will come back again,” I said. “I don’t know why I’m here, or how this happened. This place isn’t my home. But my wife and daughter and two other girls are lost here, somewhere, and I won’t leave until I find them. Banish me, threaten me, do whatever you like. But I promise you I will keep coming back until I find them. I’ll find a way to come back until I can bring them home.”
Silence rippled in the space between us. It grazed the feathery tops of the wheat, swelling and rising and multiplying until it was all that stood between us. Mathias watched me, his dark eyes unreadable. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to measure my mettle, or if he was lost in his own strange thoughts.
It didn’t matter. In the end, I knew what I was willing to do to save my family. I didn’t have all of the answers figured out, but I was fairly confident that I could find my way back here with the parts I did know. We stood that way for some time, staring at each other. We were opponents poised and ready, waiting to see which of us would crack first. I refused. I refused to be the one to break, the one to be sent away without explanation. I’d wasted too much time already, lost in the field of wheat.
Then, to my surprise, he turned away without a word. The air shimmered around him, nearly indiscernible waves that fractured and twisted the space surrounding him, obscuring him bit by bit until suddenly there was nothing of him left, and I was alone in the golden grass.
—
When I opened my eyes, the room was nothing more than shadow. A thin sliver of silvery moonlight slipped through the folds of the curtain, and for several minutes I lay there, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I replayed the conversation with Mathias again and again, trying to wrap my head around it. He’d said that I was changing the world, and not for the better. But how was I changing it? And how could he know if it was for the better or not?
It seemed that every time I spoke with the man in black, the truth became more convoluted, the way forward on the path to enlightenment less and less clear. For the first time, I got the sense that he knew far more than he’d ever divulged, and that perhaps, I was only beginning to scratch the surface of things.
When at last the shadows lifted, leaving indistinct outlines in their wake, I rose and slipped into a nearby robe. I thought of heading to Maeve’s room, of waking her and telling her what I’d learned. But the middle of the night hardly seemed the time, especially when I wasn’t entirely certain what it was I’d found. Still, I was restless, unable to settle and unwilling to return to an empty field.
Heading down into the kitchen, I was surprised to find the light on. The yellow glow skewered the surrounding darkness, holding it at bay, writhing shadows waiting just beyond the circle. I found Alyssa standing before the oven door, a white apron wrapped about her waist.
“Oh, Rhett,” she said softly, “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
Stretched across the countertops were bowls in various states of disarray. Some were filled with dough and batter, others with curd and jam. Squares of pastry had been placed on floured sections, a great canister of coarse sugar sitting at the edge of the island.
“What’s all this?” I asked, making my way over to the coffee pot. Fresh brew sat inside the glass canister, something I hadn’t expected, and I was grateful for it.
“I bake, when I’m worried,” she admitted with a sheepish smile. “Always have. I’m not especially good at it, but it keeps my hands from fidgeting, and it keeps my mind occupied.”
“Well, you must be very worried, judging by the amount of baking you’ve got going on here.” I peered into the closest bowl, bits of glistening chocolate chips staring back at me from within their lumpy cookie dough.
She chewed her lip, and I was reminded of Valerie in that moment. All of the Salvo girls had a habit of biting their bottom lips when they were nervous, or worried, or stressed, but Val bore a striking resemblance to her mother. They both had high cheekbones and a proud jaw, with wide, round eyes and wide smiles. It was easy to imagine what Alyssa might have looked like at Val’s age, or even younger. She was the blueprint, the mould for Valerie, and seeing her now made me ache for my wife.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried, Rhett,” she said, untying her apron and setting it on the counter. The chair’s legs squealed against the tile as she pulled it from the table and flopped down, burying her face in her hands. “I’m worried about everything. I’m worried about Val and Meadow. I’m worried about you. I’m worried about how work is getting by without me, and I’m worried about the girls.”
“The girls?” I asked, filling a mug with coffee and joining her at the table. “You mean Asia and Amara?”
Alyssa nodded. “I called, to let them know what happened to Valerie.”
I didn’t need to ask to know how the conversation went. It was written on her face.
“They aren’t coming,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “They aren’t.”
I paused only a moment before giving a half-hearted shrug. “Did you really think they would?”
“She’s their sister for Christ’s sake,” Alyssa snapped. “They should want to be here. What if—” She broke off sharply, hand flying to her mouth. Fingers trembled against her lips, and she drew a shuddering breath. “What if Valerie dies? Are they going to miss her last days, her last moments, all because of some stupid fight?”
“That fight is decades old,” I pointed out, taking a sip of coffee. It was strong, and bitter, made to put hair on your chest. It wasn’t the way I would have made it, but as the adage goes, beggars can’t be choosers.
“They’re still family,” she said, her voice rising. “I don’t care if they’re older and they have their own kids to worry about. They might not have been raised together, but I raised each of them better than this.”
I didn’t have to listen hard to hear the frustration in her voice. I slipped my hand over hers, wrapping it tight. “I can’t imagine how hard it would be, to have such a rift between your children. As a parent, you take on their hurts, their aches and their pains. To have so many among your own kids must hurt like hell. But they’re grown women, Alyssa. They’ve made their choice. You can’t force them to do anything they don’t want to do.”
“I know,” she moaned. “But I wish they’d grow up. For Val’s sake.”
I nodded, but I didn’t share her sentiments. Frankly, it was a blessing that Asia and Amara had stayed away. They were chaotic at the best of times, a torrent of emotion and activity. I couldn’t imagine how much more difficult things would be with them here, even if they came to show their support.
“You have to make peace with what’s happened, Alyssa,” I said quietly. “You have to accept that your girls will never be best friends, or even close sisters. You have to accept—”
I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t tell a mother to accept that her daughter might die, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop it. Not when I refused to accept it myself.
But Alyssa was no fool. She knew what I meant to say, and she shook her head.
“I’ll never accept that, Rhett. No matter how old she gets, she’s still my baby. She always will be.”
My throat was too tight to speak, so I simply nodded. I felt foolish having ever thought such a thing, especially when my own daughter was in the same position. My world was precariously close to tipping over, to being upended in every way that mattered, and I wish I could blame it on that, or the lack of sleep, or the stress of it all, but I couldn’t. Because the truth was, there was a small part of me that wondered if I should try to accept it. To try and accept that one day soon, Valerie could be gone, and Meadow could follow, and I could live just long enough to have my heart ripped out and torn apart, before I, too, died with them.
Much as I didn’t want to acknowledge it, the truth was getting harder to evade. It had been weeks since I’d spoken to Dr. Hartford, weeks since I’d found out what we were facing. And I was still no closer to finding an answer, no closer to saving them. Worse still, I could feel my body giving up. Each day it broke down a little more, withering and dying and fading away. It made me wonder how much time I had left, before my mind and my body were too far gone to be of any use at all.
“At least Maeve is here,” Alyssa said, pulling me from my reverie. “I hope she’s been a comfort to you. I know you two have been spending a lot of time together.”
“She has been. She’s been a godsend. Truly. I know…” I sucked in a deep breath. “I know neither one of you really believe me, or believe what I said about my dream world. Honestly, there are times when I question it myself. It seems impossible, the whole damn thing. But, at the very least, it’s given me something to hold onto. Something to do. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life, Alyssa.”
My voice broke, and a dam within me burst. The weeks of pent up frustration and anger and sorrow and pain spilled over to drown me, to pull me beneath the tide of emotion and swallow me whole. Tears fell with abandon, but I hardly noticed them. I was lost, adrift in the water, my face held below the surface. I tried gasping for air, but there was none to find, and so I wallowed in the heartache instead.
It seemed as if every bone in my body was breaking, as if every organ had shriveled and died. I hurt in ways and in places I’d never imagined, ached as if I’d been tortured. I wanted nothing more than to lay on the floor, broken and alone, to let the emotion take me, and bury me, and leave me for dead.
I don’t know how I ended up back in my room, or when I’d had the strength to stand on my own. All I could remember was the sound of Alyssa’s voice, and her soothing whispers that told me everything would be all right.