The Antarcticans (27 page)

“What about you?” Gavin asked her.

“Go, go, go. I got ma Condrites. I be just fin.” She pointed at the three huge flaps that met at the back of her neck. Two extended down and connected to the back of her heels; one was much shorter and hung loosely. She put her arms down to her side, and the two larger flaps wrapped around her, with the loose flap covering her head. She looked like a tree with no branches or leaves, the top of which had been cut off.

Satisfied she would fend for herself, Gavin ran for the doorframe. It looked as if someone had propped it up in the middle of the forest and forgotten the door; the steel threshold was covered with sticks and moss from the forest floor. When he reached it, he tried to see through it, but it was dark, a room with no lights on. He turned around to look behind him. The woman had blended into the forest; he wouldn’t be able to find her if he tried.

The storm was lashing the edge of the forest, blasting sand and turmoil through the treetops, toppling branches, and stirring up soil. Gavin stepped through the doorway. Everything was calm now; he was inside a cozy room in a quiet house. He fumbled on the wall for a light switch and found one. When he flipped it, a Pittsburgh Steelers lamp on a nightstand, next to a twin-size bed with a sheet set to match, turned on. The yellow lampshade cast a sickly hue onto the room. He recognized it immediately—this was Joshua’s room when he was a small boy, before his teenage years, before the voices, when he was a tidy, quiet boy who loved football and big toy trucks. He was the boy with the most awesome hair; his nickname with his friends was Corky, due to his corkscrew hair.

Outside the window was the orange tree Gavin had planted in the yard. It was much smaller than when he had been here last, with fresh dirt mounded below it. He remembered when he had planted it; Joshua was around six. Joshua’s prized toys were displayed on a shelf against the wall, his others neatly put away in gold and black cubbies at the end of his bed. Gavin turned around to look outside through the door, but it was now the door to Joshua’s room, and it was closed, his small jacket and multiple baseball caps hanging from a rack attached to the top of the door. He went over and sat down at the desk, looking through the drawings in Joshua’s sketchbook. He paged through them—there were animals and creatures he couldn’t imagine, along with humans with strange enhancements to their bodies; most of them looked like superheroes. Then he came to the drawing that looked like the woman he had just met. In shaky, large, red-crayon letters above her head, Joshua had written, “Miska.”

The doorknob rattled for a moment, and then the door swung open, and Joshua walked through. He looked the same as the day Gavin had picked him up from school. The shaved head and the medical suit were gone. “Dad? What are you doing here?”

“Hey, buddy. I just met Miska.” He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to let him know that they were actually lying on beds aboard a ship somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

“Oh, yeah. She’s cool, huh? I don’t see her much, and sometimes, well, she’s…”

“What?”

“She has a mean streak, that’s all. How did you find my room? No one’s supposed to know about this.”

“Miska pointed me toward it.”

Joshua gave him a confused look. “She doesn’t know where it is.”

Gavin thought back; she had merely pointed in the direction of it, now that he thought about it. He shrugged. “I dunno.”

Dr. Cristofari’s voice piped into his head. “Don’t get lost in the world you’re in. You have to get him to let you see Margie. She’s the one that acts as a conduit for the other personalities.”

“So can I meet some of your friends here?” Gavin asked Joshua.

“That’s not a good idea. You really shouldn’t be here—they do some terrible things.”

“Was that storm in the desert part of the terrible things?”

“That’s nothing.” Joshua sat down on his bed then threw his head back into the three pillows. “Wait till you meet the Samson twins. How long are you staying here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really have a schedule.”

“Look out the window. You’ll see some pretty unbelievable things,” Joshua said before he got up and went over to his desk to turn his computer on. Images flashed on the screen—some of them were pictures from his youth; others were beautiful seascapes and flowering trees and plants. The images were gentle, positive, and reaffirming. Joshua stared into them, clicking his mouse to move faster or slower through the images.

“Can we go outside? I want to meet Margie,” Gavin said.

“Margie?” Joshua shook his head. “You can’t just meet her—she has to come around. She’s in trouble. The others are trying to get rid of her.” He looked up at Gavin. His eyes had gone blank, and tears were forming in them.

Gavin sat down at the edge of the bed. “Well, then, if she needs help, let’s go find her.”

“Like I said, that’s not how it works. I’m not in control here. Don’t you know that? Margie comes when she wants.”

“Okay, well, can we go out there?” Gavin pointed to the door.

“Go for it. I’ll meet you in a few. I have to finish looking at these. Dr. Cristofari said it’s important, and I know she’s trying to help me, so I want to do what she says.” He continued clicking.

Gavin opened the door. The hallway in his house was in front of him. As he stepped across the threshold, he was assaulted by flying branches and debris. A sharp piece of bark with an overgrown thorn pierced his pants and lodged into his leg. He cried out in pain and instinctively pulled it out of his flesh. Blood seeped out, and he looked back to go into his son’s room, but the doorway was gone. He was in the forest again, in a storm that felt like a Florida hurricane. He put his forearm up to cover his head and hurried over to a large pine tree. He stood behind it, seeking shelter from the wind. Pieces of the forest flew by him on both sides. He pulled his hood up from his sweatshirt and hunkered down against the violent weather. As the edge of the storm passed him, he saw swirling winds and destruction about twenty feet in front of him, then felt air being sucked from behind him.

When the storm was some distance away, Gavin wandered back out of the forest to the desert, where he first had landed. He heard a woman screaming and felt his adrenaline pumping. He proceeded slowly; ahead of him, the ground was moving. As he got closer, he saw it was a river of white scorpions migrating through the desert. It was too wide for him to jump over, so he walked alongside the scorpions; as he did, the screaming grew louder. The arachnids followed a defined path, as if there were guardrails on either side of their trail. At the base of a small hill, a woman was tied with rope to a saguaro cactus. Her sequined purple dress was torn down around her waist; her full breasts were restrained and contorted unnaturally with the knotted cord that cut through them. The cactus’s spines had pierced through her hands, which had been bound behind her back and were caked with her blood. Her orange hair was styled into long, hard spikes, but pieces of it hung around her painted face, which was streaked and tormented.

The first scorpion reached her foot and climbed under her dress, then poked through at her waist and followed her body until it came to rest on her cheek. Her eyes looked to her cheek in fear, and she froze. The encroaching mass reached her high-heeled pumps, which matched her purple dress. She moved her feet up and down, trying to ward them off, a desperate last attempt. A few of the scorpions squashed beneath her heels, causing the remaining onslaught to be whipped into a frenzy and crawl onto her legs, under and over her dress, covering her bare arms and chest and nesting in her hair.

On the hill above her, a man sauntered to the crest and gazed down on her with black eyes. He looked weathered, with dark crevices running from his forehead to his jaw. He wore a long black coat and black cowboy boots adorned with ostrich feathers. He looked like an image from a dark western movie. His voice was cracked and rough. “Poor little fucking Margie, always trying to ruin my fun.” He put a lit cigarette in his mouth and sucked hard, burning half of it away. “I can’t understand why she hangs around for that little piss-poor piece-of-shit kid. Guess she’s got a soft spot in her for him.” The smoke wrapped his words. He held up a staff with a scorpion sculpted into the top of it, with eyes made of red jewels. It reminded Gavin of the dragon icon on the ship. The man raised the staff in the air. “Finally she’ll be gone.”

The sinister figure flew forward and crashed down on top of the cactus, his staff clattering into the mass of scorpions still flowing toward Margie. Joshua appeared at the top of the hill. He jumped into the scorpions, which stung his legs and arms with their rapidly moving tails. He tried to swat them away but focused more on untying Margie and sweeping them off her body. She was swollen and red from their pincers and stings. He pulled her dress up and tied the two straps together so they would cover her nakedness. Then he grabbed the staff from the weathered-looking man and threw it into the river of scorpions. They scattered and vanished from the dusty desert floor. Margie’s skin returned to its pale milky hue from the burning red of the scorpion stings. The man was disoriented as he tried to dislodge himself from the cactus.

“Thank you, Joshy baby. Seems like you’ve been rescuing me every time we meet.” She looked at Gavin but ignored him. She gave Joshua a hug and held him tight. “You’d better get outta here before Victor starts again. It won’t be long.”

“What about you? I’m worried about you,” Joshua said.

“Awww, sugah, don’t be. I’ll get through it.” She pecked him on the cheek and headed toward the butte in the distance.

“What the heck was all that?” Gavin asked.

Joshua hadn’t seen him standing there and was taken off guard. “Uh, it’s just the way things are. The others are always after Margie. They’re always trying to tear her down and get rid of her. I think it’s because she’s so good to me. It’s hard to tell sometimes why things happen in here like they do.”

“I think you need to let her go. She seems to do fine on her own,” Gavin said gently.

“Are you crazy? They’ll torture her. No way that’s happening while I’m here.”

Gavin felt the earth beneath them warming. Small flames popped from the ground next to him.

“Leave,” Joshua said loudly before a burst of flames came from beneath his feet and singed his pants. “Fuck.” He danced to the side then looked at his father. “It doesn’t get better, ever. If you can, go.”

Gavin moved to Joshua’s side and put his arm around him. “I’m staying with you,” he said, then muttered a prayer for himself and his son.

Fire opened beneath Victor, who was now lying on the ground, and engulfed him, dragging him into unknown depths. The earth closed up then did the same to the cactus that Margie had been tied to.

Gavin stood frozen, staring at the fire. Joshua pulled him out of his trance, grabbed his hand, and began to run. The earth ejected fire at random points around them. Joshua’s feet were moving as fast as they could, and Gavin didn’t have any trouble keeping up with him; he had to keep reminding himself this wasn’t real. Volcanic lava erupted next to him, setting his shirt ablaze. The heat seared his arm, and he smelled his hair burning.

“Dad, you’re on fire!” Joshua screamed. He kept running trying to bat out the flames on his father’s head with his sleeve. The flames leapt to his shirt and snaked up his arm. As soon as he tore his shirt off and threw the flaming flannel to the ground, another fire belched in their path, and they had to separate to run around it. As the flames scorched Gavin’s scalp, he instinctively grabbed at his head, but the flames burned his hands. He and Joshua were beyond the butte now, approaching a small grassy knoll with bushes and mulch that looked like it belonged in a corporate park in a burgeoning suburb. But here it stood by itself. Gavin ran for it and dived into the mulch, burying his head as far as it would go. He knew the moist mulch would extinguish the flames. He rolled around in it to make sure the rest of his body wasn’t on fire as well.

Joshua tapped Gavin’s leg. “I think you’re good, Dad.”

Gavin pulled his head out; the mulch was sticking to his melted skin. Through overwhelming pain, he tried to open his eyes, but he could only see out of one of them. And what he saw was disturbing: Joshua’s horrified look.

“Oh, my God. We gotta get you to someone. Margie, Margie, someone, help!” Joshua screamed, as he looked at this father’s melted scalp. His injured eye had disappeared under skin that had come down from his forehead. Joshua forgot about his own burns, as he was used to dealing with the excruciating pain he often encountered in this place.

“No, no, don’t do that,” Gavin said quietly. “You’re going to attract attention. It hurts, but…” The pain was so intense that he had to stop talking for a moment to muster the strength to finish his sentence. “I’m sure I’ll be okay when we get back.” He closed his one eye and prayed for relief, for some assistance; he visualized cooling waters, which helped a bit.

Joshua saw a bright-white figure in the sky coming closer. As it approached, he realized it had wings. She eventually flapped her feathered wings and landed next to them. She dug her hand into a small leather satchel attached to her side, pulled out a golden jar, and unscrewed the top. She dipped her fingers into it and rubbed a salve on Gavin’s head and face. Then she gently pulled off his scorched shirt and generously applied more of the salve onto his arm, where the fire had licked him. She pulled a canteen from her belt and handed it to Joshua.