Eleven Twenty-Three (52 page)

“Wait, wait, wait—I don’t understand,” I
interrupt. “You’re saying that the eleven twenty-three, the
subliminal messages, the barricades and the people going crazy—it
was all just some kind of
experiment
? And that our
government allowed this to happen in order to break even on their
debts to others? That’s fucking
absurd
—”

“Layne, it’s no more absurd than granting
high-profile Nazi doctors and generals clemency after World War II
in exchange for their military and scientific knowledge. It’s no
more absurd than giving pardons to Japanese doctors who tortured
American
soldiers at Unit 731 in exchange for their data on
biological weaponry and human endurance. You see, exchanges such as
these have been ongoing for the past sixty years. The only
difference is that it’s been brought onto American soil this time,
and all the documents that could prove it were shredded the moment
they came off the printer. They learned from their mistakes.”

“But what’s the
point
of all this?” I
ask. “What knowledge could possibly be gained from making people
psychotic every twelve hours and killing each other? What the
fuck
is the point of sending messages to us on the TV
screens telling us we’re going to die? Or rounding up the last
survivors tomorrow morning and taking them off somewhere to be
shot—?”

“Gassed, actually, from what I’ve been
told—”

“What relevance does
any
of this have,
other than conclusively proving that the ones behind this are sick,
evil men who don’t give a shit about the lives of their own people?
There’s nothing scientific, let alone
political
, about any
of this. It’s just the torture and murder of innocent civilians and
then covering it up afterward. There’s no statement here.”

“Come on, my friend. You’re smarter than
that. You can’t tell me for one second that there isn’t
something
that someone could gain from a situation such as
the one in Lilly’s End. Think bigger, and think darker.”

I fight off nausea. Outside the truck, I hear
traffic merging, and car horn blasts from pissy northern tourists.
We’re pulling onto the interstate, toward the airport.

“It doesn’t matter what the relevance is,
really,” Mr. Scott says. “All political statements aside, the only
thing that really concerns you and Tara now is that the deals are
done and the truth is buried. Nothing more. Lilly’s End is already
forgotten, and someday soon a totally irrelevant country somewhere
in Asia will wake up to military retaliation for a bio-terrorist
attack that never took place.”

“I wish that when they pressed the button, I
could have slept all the way to the airport,” I say, lying down on
the bench and pretending to be dead.

Julie Hines places a tiny pill the color of
sky on her tongue. She swallows it and picks up a glass of water. I
watch her down the drink in one large swallow. The waiter
immediately comes by and refills her glass. I notice that his face
is scarred, and that one of his eyes has no pupils or retina. He
moves on to another table.

“I don’t feel normal yet,” Julie says. “But
soon, I think…”

“Maybe you should slow down on those,” I
suggest uselessly, lighting a cigarette.

“Maybe you should have saved me back there in
the forest.”

With that, she reaches into her pocket and
pulls out the prescription bottle. I can’t read the name on the
label.

“Did you know that ‘w,’ the twenty-third
letter of the alphabet, is comprised of two arrows pointing down
and three pointing up? Weird, isn’t it? And that on the beach,
every twenty-third wave is the strongest in a cycle? Or that the
twenty-third of November is the author’s father’s birthday? Yes
indeed, if one looks carefully, they start to notice that the
number twenty-three is everywhere.”

Julie pops the cap off the bottle and reaches
inside. Her hand emerges clutching two more sky-blue pills, both of
which she tosses into her mouth and gulps down. The thin layer of
skin next to her left eye cracks, and an almost invisible sliver of
blood runs down her cheek.

“It’s going to be all over,” she says.
“Programmed suicide. Death by corporate contract. Towns that
disappear and questions that never get asked. It’s lucky we’re
medicated. Otherwise, this might be rather difficult.”

She swallows another pill. Another line
opens, this one in her left cheek. Blood drips onto the floor. A
waiter scurries over and puts a damp towel down to soak it up.

Mr. Scott tells me that there are over one
thousand known ghost towns in the United States alone, and each of
them has a story to tell, if only we could listen.

Gulf City, Florida was founded by ruthless
pirate Ben Margoza in the 1650s and teemed with criminals and
ordinary citizens alike until the 1920s. The town now slowly sinks
out of existence somewhere in the swamps of Hillsborough County,
far from any state road. Somewhere out in the monotonous expanses
of Death Valley are the petrified remains of a mining village
called Chloride City. Among other bygone historical relics there
stands a single grave, that of James McKay, a man whose story was
long ago lost in the desert wind. Religious cult leader and white
supremacist William E. Riker laid the foundation for Holy City,
California in 1919, which should have been a modern paradise for
himself and his few hundred followers. Instead, it became a hideous
raging inferno when, in 1959, the town mysteriously caught fire not
long after Riker was exposed as a charlatan and fraud. Centralia,
Pennsylvania (population: 9) has been burning for twenty-seven
years, and will continue to burn for hundreds more. The crumbling
structures on the island of Gunkanjima, Japan have been vacant—and
forbidden—since 1974.

And every single one of those deserted towns
is haunted, Mr. Scott tells me. They all are, and will continue to
be as long as no one acknowledges the ghosts that roam there.

“Have you ever heard of Downard,
California?”

I shake my head and try to wake Tara. She
doesn’t budge.

“That’s okay,” he says. “No one will ever
hear of it. It’s been wiped off the map now. But that’s where I’m
from, anyway: a ghost town like yours.”

“Hold on,” I say, sitting back down across
from him. “What are you telling me? That the town you’re from was
subjected to the same experiment as Lilly’s End? And that it’s been
covered up now?”

“Well, not
exactly
the same
experiment,” he says. “It happened in Downard at every three
fifty-eight. The afternoon attacks weren’t so bad, but the early
morning ones—Christ. You know, if you think about it, the strike
periods in Lilly’s End worked far more to your advantage. Imagine
going to sleep one evening and waking up to your own spouse
stabbing you with a letter opener, Layne. That’s what I went
through, that first night. First I was getting weird messages on my
cell phone, and then I’m being attacked in my sleep by the woman I
love most...”

He goes quiet and inspects his nails. I let
go of the briefcase handle and rest my hands on my lap. Quickly
becoming nervous, I search my pockets for cigarettes.

“How many times have they done this?”

“They told me that I was the first courier,
so I assumed Downard was the first town as well. But there’s no way
to know for sure. Maybe this has been going on for years. Who
knows.”

“How did you get through it?” I ask, lighting
my cigarette. The smoke tastes acrid.

“Well…I killed her, Layne. That’s how I got
through it. I killed my wife, and in the coming days, two more of
my friends and a neighbor who once jump-started my car battery for
me. But I followed the messages and attached the case to my wrist.
I did what was necessary to survive, and a few days later, just
like they promised me, I was alive and everyone else was dead. The
end. You’ll be able to fill in the gaps soon enough.”

“How much farther is it to the airport?” I
mutter.

Chloe Tennille rests her suitcases on the
floor and approaches us. First she stops in front of her mother.
They exchange mother-daughter smiles and hesitate only slightly
before falling into a long, sincere hug. Tara glances at me and
winks. She squeezes my hand and pats her father’s shoulder.

“I’m going to miss you so much, Mommy,” Chloe
says into Mrs. Tennille’s ear, hugging tighter. “Take care of Dad,
all right? Try not to give him too hard a time when he’s out in the
shop all night playing with his train set.”

Mr. Tennille laughs and tugs Chloe away for a
hug of his own. They wrap their arms around each other and Bill
clenches his eyes shut to stave off the tears.

I glance over their shoulders to the
gargantuan windows beyond. A plane is waiting outside, and a Jetway
slowly unfolds toward the door. It connects, and the flight
attendant picks up the intercom to announce first class and
handicapped boarding only. The passengers for coach begin lining
up.

“She’s going to have so much fun,” Tara says
into my ear. “I’m so jealous, Sunshine.”

“Where is it she’s going again?” I ask, still
smiling.

“Oh Layne, you know where,” Mrs. Tennille
laughs. “Don’t be silly.”

Chloe wipes the sentimentality from her eyes
and slides over to her younger, slightly more together sister Tara.
The two siblings stare each other down with quivering, expressive
eyes. They say nothing at all, and eventually slide into a long
goodbye hug of their own.

I check my watch and notice that everyone
boarding the plane is carrying a briefcase.

“I love you, Sis,” Tara whispers. Chloe nods
and whispers something back, something I can’t hear because the
attendant is announcing all remaining rows.

When Chloe finally breaks away from Tara’s
grasp and regards me, I offer a disingenuous goodbye wave. I take a
hesitant step forward, holding my arms out for a hug. Chloe leans
away and offers her hand instead.

We shake hands.

“Don’t screw around on my sister,” Chloe
says. “She’s a good girl.”

“You’ve got it, Chloe. Have a nice trip to,
um—to um, wherever it is you’re going right now. Send us a
postcard, okay?”

“How about an e-mail instead?” she asks. “I
don’t know what a postcard is.”

The Tennilles laugh and give Chloe a final
quick hug each. Then Chloe picks up her briefcase and handbag and
heads for the tarmac. A flight attendant takes her ticket, and she
turns one final time and waves. We all wave back.

“Well,” Mr. Tennille says after she boards.
“Who wants Coldstone?”

Outside, the plane explodes.

Fireballs erupt from every window of the
aircraft. Entrails and viscera spew from the blast. The huge
airport windows shatter simultaneously, showering the attendants
and friends and family members inside with bloody glass. Somehow,
even through the massive explosion and glass popping and fire
eating away at the wreckage of the plane, we can hear Chloe
screaming somewhere inside.

In Jonas Scott’s case, it was a car
wreck.

He had been working in Beijing for just under
four months when he received a disturbing phone call. His estranged
best friend, whom Jonas calls Benjamin, was driving home from a
late shift at the warehouse when a long distance truck driver fell
asleep at the wheel. The semi swerved left into the opposite lane,
and fate played itself out. Benjamin’s tiny Miata was crushed in
the wreckage and he died instantly.

That was the McGuffin, anyway.

Jonas booked a ticket back to California the
following morning. He caught a flight out of Beijing at 3:58 in the
afternoon in early October.

“But I didn’t come back empty-handed, did I?”
he says, rubbing his face to keep awake.

“No,” I say. “You came back with a briefcase
stuffed into your bag…”

“That’s right. I came back home for Mi—I
mean, Benjamin’s funeral. I buried him in the afternoon. That night
it started all over Downard.”

I mull this over and suddenly my stomach
sinks. I try to swallow but only gasp for air. I try to breathe but
instead swallow. The blue walls of the truck become blurred and
spin out of control.

“Are you saying that—?”

“I think you know
exactly
what I’m
saying, Layne. But I’ll lay it out for you, anyway.”

As he describes the scene for me, I am
troubled by how readily I envision it.

My father was drinking alone in a hotel bar
in St. Helens, Oregon the night it happened. He asked for another
Tangueray and Tonic with a lime, which I recall was always his
favorite drink. Mom used to keep limes in the fridge door. Not long
after his first sip, the girl showed up, dressed to the nines and
swinging a white leather purse with a gold handle. My father
offered her a seat, and she accepted. She asked if he had any of
the Vicodin left, complaining of a pain she’d had in her back since
waking up that morning. Paul Prescott handed over his prescription
bottle and ordered her a cosmopolitan. They chatted for a while
about the war in Iraq, ridiculous gas prices in California, the
best time of year to visit Monterey, the last time she went to
check on her grandmother down in Rockford, and terrible dinners
they’d experienced in Mexico.

Sometime during all this small talk and
Paul’s sporadic trips to the men’s room, the girl who called
herself Clementine pulled a small vial from her purse. She emptied
the colorless liquid into his T & T and sent a single message
to her superiors ($), who never responded. They didn’t need to. The
plan had already been carried out on shredded paper; reality had no
choice but to abide.

By morning, Paul Prescott was dead, his
valuables had been stolen to further the story, and the female
agent was on a plane back to Copenhagen. Phone calls were made.
Paul Prescott’s wife Cindy was notified in Portland, along with his
ex-wife Meredith down in Florida. His only son was contacted in
Suzhou, and he booked a flight out of China shortly thereafter.