The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(38)

Finally, Stan quieted. X stood and removed both the purple shirt and the threadbare one beneath it.

“Oh, come on,” said Stan. “Again with the damn strip show?”

X stretched out his arms, and felt Stan’s sins gathering force within him. Images began to bloom on his back:

A car was stalled by the side of an unlit highway. An old man with a friendly, open face had pulled over to help, and was shuffling toward the car. He was wearing flip-flops, a pink Izod shirt, and khaki shorts. His legs were knobby and white as an uncooked chicken.

He rapped his knuckles on the driver’s window.

The driver was Stan.

He’d been lying in wait for a Good Samaritan. He thrust open his door, knocking the old man onto the road. The man looked up in confusion. He reached up a hand for help. Stan kicked him in the ribs.

The old man crawled into the highway to get away. Stan followed, laughing and kicking, until the man lay in the middle of the road, the double yellow lines under his back.

Cowering in the salon, Stan turned away from the images. He could not bear to watch.

X extended a palm toward a mirror, and the mirror jumped to life. The movie now played there, too. In an instant, it jumped to the next mirror and then the next and so on around the room, as if the mirrors were catching fire one by one.

X pulled Stan’s head up high and forced him to watch.

“I gave you your freedom on the lake,” he shouted. “I gave you your life! And this is what you squandered it on!”

In the movie, Stan was hooting with happiness as he slid into the old man’s car and peeled away.

His victim lay stranded in the middle of the highway. He tried crawling and rolling. He tried pulling himself across the blacktop with his fingernails. His flip-flops had fallen off and lay behind him in the road.

Now a truck could be heard coming around the curve. Its headlights were high. Its brakes were screaming.

Not even X could watch the rest.

He clenched his fist, and the movie vanished. Outside the salon, he heard police sirens, howling like cats. They were half a mile away and growing louder.

X looked at Stan with a glimmer of compassion. It was then that Stan knew he was truly about to die. He was so scared he could barely bleat out a word.

“Now?” he said.

“Now,” said X.

“Don’t you gotta take me back to that lake?” said Stan.

“No,” said X. “We can reach our destination from anywhere. We can reach it from here.”

X dressed slowly. When he had finished, he closed his eyes for a moment and the room instantly went dark.

“Why’d you turn out the lights?” said Stan.

He was stalling.

“Respect for the dead,” said X. When Stan gave him a puzzled look, he added simply, “You.”

He picked up Stan. He threw him over his shoulder.

He turned to the great round mirror at Marianna’s station.

“Will it—will it hurt?” said Stan.

“Only forever,” said X.

He leaped at the mirror. The glass exploded as he and Stan passed through it. The shards, rather than raining onto the floor, were pulled in after them. X left the shell of Stan’s body behind—a worn and ugly casing for the police to find—as he pulled his soul down into the dark.





ten


They fell into a half-lit void. The air rushed past them so fiercely that it obliterated all sound. X was accustomed to it, but he knew Stan would feel a crushing pressure on his eyeballs, a hammering in his ears. He saw Stan panic and resist the fall. He watched as Stan clawed at the air with his hands, as if he could climb back to the surface. As if there was a surface. The wind thrashed them in every direction.

X fell faster than Stan. He had tucked himself into a ball, like a diver. When he saw Stan struggling, he unfurled his body, reached up, and grabbed ahold of Stan’s ankle to steady him. Stan kicked ferociously, but gave up after one last pathetic spasm. X suspected his senses were so overwhelmed that they had stopped functioning. Stan let his arms drift over his head. He let X drag him down.

After they had fallen for a time, Stan recovered some of his equilibrium. X knew what would happen next. He could predict it almost to the second: Stan would be hit with a sadness so severe it was nearly blinding. Regret, remorse, and rage would overtake him, as they overtook all new souls. It was always at this moment that they realized they were not traveling down a holy tunnel toward a shimmering light but rather falling down a shaft to oblivion.

Stan began crying again, right on schedule. X was grateful that he couldn’t hear it this time. Just the distorted, wailing look on Stan’s face was enough to turn his stomach. All freshly plucked souls wept—never for their victims, only for themselves—and X found the self-pity galling. They all believed they were innocent, no matter what they had done. As the wind howled around them, Stan cried voluminously. His tears flew upward, like bubbles.

The air grew cold. It was the breath of the river rising up to greet them. The journey, X knew, was nearly over.

He looked down and saw the river that cut through his hive in the Lowlands. It was just a pale thread at first, but it came at them fast. There were only 1,000 feet left to fall. Then 500. Stan must have seen the roiling current, too. He shut his eyes, filled his cheeks with air, and clutched his nose like a child jumping into a pool. X closed his own eyes and pictured Zoe’s face, soft and welcoming. He promised himself again that he would return to her, that he would take that face carefully in his hands—that he would say, I forgot my coat.