TEN
This is not one of the easiest things I have ever done: leaving Jolie alone with the mummified remains in the yellow yet nonetheless dreary corridor, which could as likely be the path to Hell or, worse, one of those airport passageways that leads inevitably to a coven of transportation-agency employees eager to strip-search Grandma, anal-probe a nun, and invite one and all to submit to a body scan that will trigger either bone cancer or the growth of a third eye in an inconvenient place. My ghost dog isn’t even here to watch over her.
On the other hand, she has been alone in this hallway on many previous occasions. She is most likely safer here than anywhere in the Corner. Besides, although she is a girl and a child, she has as much hair on her chest, figuratively speaking, as I do.
With the mini flashlight in one hand and the pistol in the other, I retrace the route along which she led me: through pried-open doors, across two spacious air locks or decontamination chambers. In the stainless-steel walls, holes like the muzzles of rifles take aim at me.
When I arrive at the concrete culvert that previously we passed through in absolute darkness, I pause to sweep the narrow beam over the walls. I am reminded of a maze of such drains about which I wrote in the second volume of these memoirs; in that place I was almost killed more than once. Of course, I can’t allow myself to be wary of one place merely because it reminds me of another place where I almost died, because just about every place reminds me of another place where I almost died, whether it’s a police station or a church, or a monastery, or a casino, or an ice-cream shop. I’ve never almost died in a laundromat or a McDonald’s, or a sushi bar, but then I’m not yet quite twenty-two, and with luck, I’ll have a lot more years in which to almost die in all kinds of venues.
I start along the inclined drain, recalling the original version of Invaders from Mars, 1953, in which evil scheming Martians secretly establish a subterranean fortress under a quiet American town, and actors wearing costumes with visible zippers up the back pretend to be otherworldly monsters, lumbering through tunnels on one nefarious mission or another. In spite of the zippers, it’s an eerie flick, a minor science-fiction classic, but there’s nothing in it as scary as half the people on any Sunday-morning episode of Meet the Press.
Before I’ve gone far, I come to the first tributary drain on the right, which is as Jolie described it: about five feet in diameter, navigable only in a stoop. Because the girl previously explored this branch of the drains and knows that the end is sealed, I have no intention of taking a side trip.
As I’m passing the opening, however, a noise halts me. Issuing from a distance, echoing along that smaller tunnel, arises a low rumbling-grinding sound as though some heavy metal object is moving across concrete. The flashlight beam doesn’t reach far, and just as I wonder if I’m hearing an immense iron ball rolling toward me, set loose by a malevolent alien with a zipper up its back, the sound stops.
At once a draft springs up, smelling faintly of aged concrete. This is not the stale air of sluggish circulation through lightless realms. It’s fresh and clean, whispering against my face, ever so slightly stirring my hair, as pleasantly cool as morning air should be on a January day along the central California coast.
If the upper end of this drain was previously sealed, it is evidently not sealed now. Who opened it and why are of immediate importance, because the timing is unlikely to be coincidental.
No further noise ensues, no slightest sound of anyone descending.
Although no one is likely to have seen Jolie and me fleeing to the beach in the moonless dark, though the girl has misdirected Hiskott—and therefore everyone else—to the nonexistent cave, I am not enthusiastic about returning to the shore. Any other exit from this system might offer advantages over the vine-draped terminus of the main culvert.
With the frequently but not always reliable intuition of a clairvoyant fry cook, I sense that this alternate route might be safe and that whoever unsealed this side drain might possibly be my friend or at least might prefer that Norris Hiskott die rather than that I die, or might rather see both of us dead instead of just me.
I decide to act without delay on this unnervingly qualified perception. After all, the worst that can happen is that I will be killed.
Proceeding in a stoop, darkness ahead and behind, gripping the pistol and the flashlight, almost dragging my knuckles on the floor, I feel like a troll except that of course I don’t eat children, more like Gollum than a troll, Gollum leading Frodo the Hobbit into the lair of the giant, spiderlike Shelob, except that I’m more like Frodo than Gollum, being led rather than leading, which means I’m the one that will get stung, restrained by spun silken threads as tough as wire, and put aside so that later, at my captor’s leisure, I can be eaten alive.
Somewhat to my surprise, there is no Shelob, and after it seems that I’ve gone nearly all the way to Mordor, my calves aching from the strain of walking in this gorilla posture, I arrive at the end of the tunnel. An iron ladder leads up to an open manhole through which falls the first pink light of morning.
When I lever myself out of the drain, I’m standing in a four-foot-wide concrete swale. Behind me, to the east, a long slope leads up to guardrails and the coast highway. In front of me is the county road that leads to Harmony Corner, which lies perhaps two hundred yards to my left. As night spills away to the western horizon and the flamingo dawn flocks more of the sky, I can see the quaint service station, the diner where several vehicles are parked as the breakfast rush begins, but not the cottages in their haven of trees.
If one of the Harmonys happens to see me, I’m at such a distance that he won’t know who I am.
The hum of a motor draws my attention to the open manhole, where a series of stainless-steel wedges suddenly iris inward from its rim and lock together to form what must be a watertight seal. I’d like to believe that somewhere I have a friend. But instead I am troubled by the feeling that I’m being manipulated rather than assisted.
Every member of the Harmony family is a prisoner but also a weapon that can be used against me by Hiskott. I’m one. They’re many. During the morning shift, perhaps a third of them have to work the family business, but the others are available to search for me and to protect Hiskott, which they have no choice but to do; especially in a crisis like this, if they dare to resist, he will use them to slaughter a few of their own.
I don’t want to hurt any of them. Under current circumstances, I can’t slip past so many and make my way to the house in which Norris Hiskott resides. Therefore, it’s necessary to change the circumstances.
To the north lies the intersection between the county road and the exit ramp from the coast highway. As I walk toward it, I pocket the mini flashlight and tuck the pistol under my belt, against my abdomen, between my T-shirt and sweatshirt.
A hundred yards short of the intersection, I stop, drop to one knee, and wait on the shoulder of the roadway.
Within a minute, a Ford Explorer appears at the head of the exit ramp.
I pick up a small stone and pretend to be examining it as if it fascinates me. Maybe it’s a nugget of gold or maybe nature has weathered into it a miraculously detailed portrait of Jesus.
The Explorer slows at the stop sign, glides through the intersection without making a full stop, turns left, and accelerates past me.
A couple of minutes later, when an eighteen-wheeler looms at the top of the ramp, I drop the stone and get to my feet.
What I’m about to do is bad. It’s not as terrible as embezzling a billion dollars from the investment firm you run. It’s not as bad as being a public servant who gets rich over a lifetime of taking bribes. But it’s a lot worse than tearing the DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW tag from the cushions of your new sofa. It’s bad. Bad. I don’t endorse my own actions. If my guardian angel is watching, he is no doubt appalled. If any young people read this memoir someday, I hope they are not inspired by my offense to commit similar offenses of their own. The same applies to elderly
readers. We don’t need a bunch of badly behaved retirees any more than we need young hoodlums. I can explain why I have to do what I’m about to do, but I’m acutely aware that an explanation is not a righteous justification. What’s bad is bad even if necessary. This is bad. I’m sorry. Okay, here we go.
ELEVEN
Right there, right then, when he leaves me with Orc to try to get Hiskott, I think I love him. I never thought I could. Love some guy, I mean. Or maybe what I mean is that I never thought I should. Not after what happened these past five years. Not after the awful thing that happened to Maxy. My expectation, if you want to know, has been that I’ll go away and be a nun. I mean, if something were to happen to Hiskott and we were free again. A nun or a missionary in the worst slum in the world, where the cockroaches are as big as dachshunds and people are covered in festering sores and desperately need help. I know what it’s like to desperately need help, and what I think is it would feel really good to be on the other side, to be able to give help to people who need it, desperately or otherwise. If you’re going to be a nun or a missionary or even one of those doctors who work for nothing in countries that are so poor the people have no money, so they trade with one another using bricks of dry animal dung they can burn to heat their hovels and a few diseased chickens and maybe some edible tubers that they dig out of the floor of a snake-infested jungle … Well, what I mean is, if you’re going to be any of those things, there’s no time in your life for dating or romance or marriage, or anything. So what would be the point of loving a guy? Anyway, nuns aren’t allowed to marry.
I think I love him just the same. It sure feels like love or what I think love should feel like. You’d probably say it happened too fast to be love, though they do say there’s such a thing as love at first sight, so that’s my answer to the too-fast criticism. Well, I do have to admit it’s not the way he looks that knocked me flat. I think we could all agree Harry’s no Justin Bieber. Of course he’s not really Harry Potter, but it’s what I have, so that’s got to be his name for a while. Harry is adorable enough, he’s cute, but lots of guys are cute, I guess, you see herds of them on TV. Why I love him is, I don’t know, because he seems very brave and kind and sweet. All that stuff but something else, too. I don’t know what something else, but he’s different somehow, and what I’m trying to say is it’s a good kind of difference, whatever it is.
There go the lights again, fluttering, and that whummm-whummm sound. Old Orc doesn’t react this time. Orc doesn’t always do his thing when the sound comes. Mostly, he just lies there being dead. I don’t know why I like sitting with Orc. I’ve always felt safe with him. Maybe it’s because he’s dead and all, but I don’t think that’s the whole reason. He’s so big and ugly you’d think nothing could ever kill him, but something sure enough did. So if something can kill old Orc, something can kill anything, even Dr. Norris Hiskott, so maybe that’s why I really like sitting with Orc. I’m not a child—or at least I’m not a naive child who thinks whatever killed Orc will come along and offer to kill Hiskott for me. Nothing could ever be that easy. Hiskott says dying is easy and we should never forget how easy it is. But dying is never easy, and what he means is that killing is easy, at least for him.
The thing about me loving Harry is I’m twelve and he’s maybe thirty or thirty-five, whatever, so he’ll have to wait like six years for me to grow up. I mean if he kills Hiskott and sets us free, he’ll have to wait. He’ll never do that. As kind and sweet and brave as he is, he probably has a girl already and a hundred others chasing after him. So what I’ll have to do is I’ll have to always love him from afar. Unrequited love. That’s what they generally call it. I’ll love him forever in a deeply, deeply sad kind of way, which maybe you think sounds pretty depressing, but it isn’t. Being obsessed about a deeply sad unrequited love can take your mind off worse things, of which there are thousands, and sometimes it’s better to dwell endlessly on what you can’t have (which is Harry) than on what might happen to you at any moment in Harmony Corner (which is anything).
The whummm-whummm has stopped and the lights haven’t gone out this time, and Orc just lies there, and Harry hasn’t been gone long, though it feels like a decade since I last saw him. When you’re in love, I guess time gets all distorted. And not only when you’re in love. When my aunt Lois tried to kill herself and all, she said it was because she felt like she’d been trapped in the Corner for a hundred years, but that was two years ago, so it wasn’t a hundred, it was only three. Uncle Greg caught her before she did it, and the way he cried and cried, Aunt Lois realized what she almost did was pretty selfish, and she’s never tried it again. Mom says what keeps her from trying what Aunt Lois tried is me, the way I handle all this for a girl so young. Mom’s been saying that same thing for years, which is why I know I have to be tough and handle it without going nuts or bawling my eyes out. The thing is, if you get what I mean, by staying hopeful and not moping around in a black depression, I’m keeping both of us alive until something happens. And something will, something good, and maybe that’s Harry, who’s now been gone for like twenty years.
I get up from the floor, figuring I should pace the corridor back and forth until I wear the edge off my nerves or just collapse unconscious from exhaustion, so I don’t have to worry about Harry, and just then something pretty interesting happens. The fourth door, the one I was never able to pry open, now opens with a whoosh. On the other side there’s just darkness, which at first seems a little threatening, as you might imagine. I’m like, should I run or not, but there’s nowhere to run except back to the Corner, where Hiskott can find me as easy as a bird can find a worm, not that I mean he’s a bird and I’m a worm. He’s the worm.
Anyway, nothing comes out of the darkness over there, and after a minute or so, I don’t feel so threatened anymore. Walking toward the open doors, I say hello, but no one answers me. So I say that my name is Jolie Ann Harmony, as if maybe someone’s in the darkness but won’t speak to a stranger, which is pretty dumb when you think about it. But after five years as a prisoner of Hiskott, nobody should expect my social skills to be super-great or anything.
I’m standing right on the threshold, and still I can’t see ten inches into the room beyond, it’s so black in there. I have my little flashlight, so I can explore if I want, and let’s face it, there’s nothing else to do here except go crazy, which I can’t do on account of my mom. Anyway, crazy isn’t me.
I return to Orc to fetch a moving blanket, which I roll tight. At the doorway again, I lay the blanket roll across the threshold so that the doors can’t close behind me and I can get back from wherever I’m going.
Just then, far out there in the dark, a yellow light comes on. I wait, but it isn’t getting closer, it’s a fixed lamp somewhere, and maybe someone turned it on to let me know where I need to go and all, because they know I don’t have a clue, which I don’t mean as a put-down of myself, it’s just the truth in this particular case.
When I cross the threshold, the floor in this new place is like hard rubber, you almost bounce along it. When I say my name again just to see if maybe we can’t start some conversation after all, my voice sounds as though I’ve got a flannel sack over my head and am talking from the bottom of a dry stone well, though I don’t know why I’d ever be in such a situation unless some maniac serial killer stashed me down there for some unspeakable reason.
Also when I talk, the walls throb with blue light, so that I can see the room is maybe forty feet on a side. Those throbbing blue walls are covered with hundreds of cones sort of like what I saw once in a TV series where this guy was a talk-show host working in a sound booth in a radio station or somewhere. It’s like the big cones are soaking up my voice but at the same time turning the sound of it into blue light, which didn’t happen in the TV show. The faster and more I talk, the brighter the light becomes, sort of pulsing in time with my words.
If you want my opinion, it’s a weird room, but it doesn’t feel like a dangerous place. It’s even kin
d of peaceful, though it does make you feel half deaf and makes your skin look blue like the freaky people on the planet in that movie Avatar. I mean, it’s not the kind of room where you think maybe you’ll find dead naked people hanging on chains from the ceiling. Anyway, there’s plenty of blue light as long as I keep talking, so I start reciting a couple of Shel Silverstein poems I’ve memorized, and I verse myself all the way across the room to a big round opening you could drive a Mack truck through if you knew how to drive, which I don’t. I can see through it to the yellow light that first drew me in here, if you remember, and it’s still as far away as it ever was, as if it must be moving from me as fast as I head toward it.
When I try to go through this big round door, it turns out to be more of a window but not glass. It’s cold and clear and kind of gummy, and when I try to step back from it, I can’t. I’m not stuck in the stuff exactly, but it holds me, and then it seems to fold around me, which you can imagine sort of freaks me out, as if the stuff is going to seal me up in a clear cocoon and suffocate me. But then it turns out to be a door after all, and after it folds around me, the stuff unfolds, and I’m on the other side. I don’t know, that doesn’t quite explain how it feels. Maybe it’s more like the clear stuff that fills the doorway is some giant amoeba that sucks you in from one room and spits you out into the next, except it isn’t that, either.
Anyway, in the next room are six dead people all in those bulky white hazmat suits like you see on TV news when there’s been a toxic-chemical spill or clouds of acid vapor or something else that always reminds you why you shouldn’t watch the news. I pick them out one by one with my flashlight. Maybe these aren’t exactly hazmat suits but more airtight, like space suits, because the helmets aren’t like hazmat hoods, they actually lock into this rubber seal thing on the neck of the suit. They’ve all got tanks of air on their backs, like scuba divers. If you really need to know, through the faceplates on their helmets, I can see what’s left of their faces, which isn’t much, and they’ve been dead a long time. The room with the cones on the walls was weird but okay. This room isn’t okay. It’s trouble, and I’m all over covered with gooseflesh, and then someone says, “Jolie Ann Harmony.”