Orphans of Wonderland (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Tell me what you remember, Joel.

What I remember isn't possible.

What do you remember?

The car…the field…but…I can see it like when it was happening.

Did the car come back, Joel?

Yes. It circled back for us and then stopped. We couldn't see inside because the windows and windshield were tinted dark. Only the back window was clear, but the way the car was parked and facing us, we couldn't see that yet. Everyone was nervous and didn't know what to do. Sal was the one that approached the car first.

What did Sal do, Joel?

He walked to the edge of the field and started yelling at the car, asking the people inside what they wanted and why they'd tried to run us down. But no one answered or got out. The car just sat there.

Did you try to run, Joel?

I wanted to, but I couldn't move. I couldn't stop looking at the car.

Did they take you, Joel?

I only remember wanting to sleep…needing to sleep.

Do you remember
The Wizard of Oz
, Joel?

It used to be on TV once a year when I was a child. I never missed it.

Do you remember Dorothy and the others running toward Oz through a field of poppies?

Yes.

They fell asleep before they reached Oz, do you remember?

They fell asleep in the field.

Yes.

Just like us.

Yes, Joel.

But Dorothy and the others woke up in Oz. We didn't wake up in Oz.

Where did you wake up, Joel?

They took us, they…

Where did you wake up, Joel?

We were in the car, but I don't know how they got us inside. I remember standing on the edge of the field and watching the car speed away. I wanted to do something. I wanted to stop them, but I couldn't because I was in the car too. I could see myself in the backseat, my face and hands pressed to the back window, my mouth open in a scream, I…I was standing at the edge of the field…watching myself being taken away with the others in that big black car.

Where did you wake up, Joel?

I can't breathe, I— I want to breathe, I—we didn't wake up in Oz.

Where then? Where did you wake up, Joel?

In Hell…

The rain fell in icy sheets, coming down hard and soaking the city. Joel hurried across the lot, visibility low in the darkness and downpour, feet splashing puddles as he went. He'd nearly made the curb when something separated from the darkness to his right, a blur that registered in his peripheral vision just seconds before it slammed into him with such violence that he left his feet and crashed to the wet pavement.

Landing on his shoulder and rolling through the fall, he scrambled to his feet, disoriented and trying to find his bearings as the form emerged from the dark rain. From behind it came a second figure.

A slash of headlights from a passing car glided past, briefly illuminating two faces otherwise cloaked in shadows and darkness: Novak and Kavon. Novak was smiling, but it was the knife in Kavon's hand that drew Joel's attention.

“You just couldn't leave it alone for me, could you, Joel?” Novak said, his voice barely audible above the rain. “So now it's dying time.”

Drenched and still trying to catch his breath, Joel took a step back. He could run for the street or try to make it back across the lot to the nursing home entrance, but neither choice held much hope.

“Go ahead,” Novak said. “Run.”

Instead, he raised his fists and held his ground. “Fuck you.”

Novak began to laugh.

Kavon rushed him, turning the knife back and forth and thrusting it at Joel as he circled away, trying to keep both men in his line of sight.
I'm in the middle of a city
, he thought.
How can this be happening? Where is everyone? Where are the police?
But the storm had forced nearly everyone indoors, and those on the streets were driving, their visibility limited and attention distracted by the rain.

He and the others were little more than shadows in the rain.

As Kavon closed on him, Joel threw a combination with everything he had. Both punches landed flush on Kavon's chin.

Unfazed, he walked right through them.

Stumbling away, Joel threw a wild backhand, but it was too late. The knife was already moving; he could see it coming for his chest as if in slow motion. At the last moment he spun away, and the blade struck his arm. What initially felt like a hard punch quickly turned to searing pain as Kavon yanked the knife free of Joel's shoulder. Ribbons of blood flew through the darkness, and Joel's arm went limp. Numbness exploded and spread all the way to his fingertips.

My God, I—I'm stabbed.

In shock, Joel froze, unable to believe what was happening even as Kavon slammed a granite forearm into his face, clipping him with the point of his elbow on the follow-through. Pain erupted across his brow, and Joel felt his knees buckle. Head spinning and stomach turning, he dropped and fell over onto his back, flopping onto the pavement in a splashing spray of blood, ice and rain. Vision blurred, he tried to will himself back to his feet, but his body refused to comply with his mind's frantic demands. The rain, cold and wet, fell across his face and into his eyes.

Kavon straddled him, pulled him up into a sitting position, then yanked his head back by his hair and leveled the knife at Joel's throat. The tip of the blade pricked his skin as Kavon pressed it harder against the flesh, ready to slash Joel's throat from ear to ear.

I'm going to die
, Joel thought.
Here, in the rain.

Suddenly a shadow dressed in black emerged from the surrounding darkness behind Kavon and, utilizing uncanny speed and efficiency, wrapped arms around Kavon's head, sliding one beneath his chin and across his throat, the other over his forehead. A single violent twist snapped Kavon's neck with a loud, gut-wrenching crack. His body collapsed, falling next to Joel in a heap, the knife clanging against cement as it bounced away into the night.

Still on his back, Joel squirmed away as the shadowy figure was absorbed again into darkness. Another passing car briefly illuminated the area, revealing Novak with a gun in his hand, spinning like a top while frantically trying to locate the phantom.

But there was no one else there.

Joel rolled over. Spitting blood, he raised his head and peered through the darkness. With Novak still distracted, he struggled back to his feet and staggered away. Light-headed, legs rubbery, and his face and shoulder throbbing with pain, he somehow managed to make it back to his car without falling.

Fighting the pain, and with one arm rendered all but useless, he sped off, letting the night hide him behind its curtains of darkness and rain.

Weak and bleeding heavily from his shoulder, Joel fled the city.

Driving through the heavy downpour, he struggled to remain conscious. Hazy, his vision still slightly blurred, he dropped the window and let the cold air and icy rain spray against his face. He couldn't go back to his hotel room, and he couldn't risk going to Sal's house or Dorsey's apartment without putting them in more danger than they were already in, so those options were out too. He had to go somewhere no one would think to look for him.

What seemed like hours but was only minutes later, Joel crossed the Braga Bridge and slipped into Fall River. Eventually he reached Lonnie's neighborhood, parked a street away, then stumbled through the rain to the apartment building.

Once inside and out of the rain, Joel looked at Lonnie's front door and felt a twinge of fear. He didn't want to pass by that door, and he wasn't sure he could climb the stairs in his current condition, but he needed to do both or he'd collapse right where he was and be at the mercy of whatever was wandering around in the building.

Keeping his eye on the door, he dragged himself to the stairs and began to climb. He hadn't gotten far when he heard rustling behind him. Either something had scurried across the foyer below or things were alive and moving inside that first-floor apartment.

Without looking back, Joel kept on, fighting to remain conscious until he'd reached Bea's door and managed two solid knocks.

Bea opened her door to find him slumped against the wall, battered and drenched, his face bruised and bloody, a gruesome gash more than an inch in length above his eyebrow, and his shoulder and coat covered in blood.

“Oh my God!” she said, reaching for him. “Joel, what happened?”

“I'm sorry,” he muttered. “No police, no ambulance.”

Then he fell into her as everything went dark.

Moving…motion…lights mounted in the ceiling overhead slide past. Lying atop a gurney that is being wheeled down a long hallway, he is not strapped down or restrained in any way, yet he is unable to move. His eyes look up and try to see behind him, but all he can make out in the periphery is the shape of a man dressed in white, pushing the gurney, a surgical mask covering his face.

Sounds. Strange sounds echo throughout the corridor from hidden speakers. Music and voices, but in short, peculiar bursts interspersed with loud noises—clangs and screeches and trumpeting—they assault his mind and make him uneasy, edgy, afraid.

Where am I?

The lights blink and he is in a room, a dark room.

Colors and faces appear, drift, sliding along the walls and ceiling like ghosts. Odd tones sound, coming from all around him, as if alive and flying about the room in circles. A severe burst of blinding white light suddenly fills the room, and Joel tries again to raise his head. He fails, and in an attempt to look away from the bright light flooding down on him, looks to the floor.

It is covered in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern.

His eyes drift upward, just before the bright light goes out, and he realizes the walls are covered in the same pattern. “What's happening to me?” he asks. Or did he only think it? He cannot be sure.

Everything stops. Darkness and silence fills the room.

All Joel can hear is the thudding of his heart in his chest.

But he is not alone. There are others here with him, hidden in the dark. He can't see them. He can
feel
them, their presence. Leering at him and coming closer and closer still, until he can smell and feel their hot, rancid breath against his face.

He wants to move, has to move; he needs to get out of here, but he can't move because they've done something to him and he doesn't know what it is or where he is or what's happening, but he's so afraid, so very afraid. He can't think straight and—

Please, dear God, help me!

Through the darkness, strange shapes converge on him.

They're touching me. No, I—I don't want them touching me—please make it stop, please stop touching me please—

Something is fitted to his head, affixed to his temples.

Please, what are you doing to me?

Fingers—smooth and tasting like chemicals—are forced into his mouth. He feels a liquid running across his tongue and down his throat. He chokes but it keeps coming, and just when he's sure he'll vomit, it stops and the hands leave his mouth.

And then, pain. The worst pain Joel has ever felt in his young life.

Were he able to speak, he would beg them for mercy, for death. But all he can manage are gurgling sounds and occasional wails of agony.

The torture stops, only to begin again seconds later.

In time, when Joel believes he will die—
is
dying from the daggers ripping through his temples and into his eyes—the pain gives way to something else.

Floating. He's floating. So peacefully floating. He's sure of it.

Like a butterfly,
he thinks.
I'm floating on air. How could that be?

It is then that Joel realizes he can see the air, the molecules and the atoms and the whole of the universe right there with him. His brain is burning and changing and becoming something else. Something more.

Spiraling down into the darkest pits of hell, he is reborn.

Through a fog and haze, a woman's pockmarked face and bleached-blonde hair came into slow focus before him, and Joel realized he was lying on a couch, covered in a blanket. “Bea,” he said, throat raw and sore.

Seated next to him, she gently stroked his forehead and told him again and again that he was all right and not to be afraid. “I'm right here,” she assured him. “It's okay. You're safe now.”

Joel tried to sit up. “How long have I—”

She placed a hand on his chest. “Stay there. You need rest.”

Exhausted and sore, Joel complied. His face hurt, and as he tried to move his arms, the pain in his shoulder reminded him of the knife wound he'd sustained. He winced. “Everything hurts. How long have I been out?”

“Couple hours.”

As Joel crept farther from unconsciousness, his other senses began to sharpen, and he smelled something good. Soup. Chicken soup. “You didn't call—”

“I didn't call nobody,” she said. “You got a bad wound on your shoulder. I cleaned it up and bandaged it best I could, but I don't know what the fuck I'm doin'. You need to go to the hospital. If that gets infected, you could—”

“No hospital, no cops.” He pulled the blanket away far enough to see that he had no shirt on. She'd done a competent job dressing the wound with gauze and medical tape. Blood had seeped through the bandage, but the bleeding had stopped.