Via Dolorosa(76)

“You’re not—we’re not,” he stuttered.

But there was no one in the seat beside him. Iraq was gone and dead. Myles Granger was gone and dead. Bowerman was gone and dead, split open and stretched like human taffy across the sand, his books scattered about his prone body: Pynchon, Kosinski, Bukowski—all of them, strewn, wing-clipped and fluttering dead in the sand. Book-birds. Flightless and lifeless.

Dead.

And where am I going? he wondered. Home? Alone?

The Impala shuddered to a halt. His foot on the brake, the car strumming and bucking around him, he looked through the smeary, grime-caked windshield at the expanse of bridgework that lay ahead. An odd breeze rustled the trees. Even at a standstill, the cicadas were unrelenting, propelling themselves at the windshield, their tiny carapaces exploding in a burp of yellow fluid upon impact.

Home? he thought. Alone?

Lieuten—

Something thick, whole, and black loomed just over the western horizon. At first he thought it was a storm cloud…but on closer inspection, he realized it was too full, too tangible, moving too rapidly. An airplane? But there were no lights. Then he finally realized it was comprised of a million living, moving things, and he thought it was a flock of birds, must be a flock of birds fleeing the storm. It drew closer, ever closer, and he recognized it for what it truly was: a massive swarm of cicadas baring down upon the island in a plague. He had been driving with the driver’s side window cracked; now, aware of the onslaught, he quickly sealed the window shut. And he was just in time: a mere second later, the swarm collided with the Impala, pelting the grill, hood, windshield with hundreds of wriggling, buzzing shells. The sound was like a million gunshots. Most struck the windshield and disintegrated in an asterisk of yellow mucus. Others somehow managed to survive the impact, albeit for a brief few seconds, their cellophane wings zipping against the glass, their split torsos thrusting futile black legs into the muck of their unfortunate predecessors before dying. Behind the wheel, Nick turned his head and shut his eyes as if in preparation of a second shockwave attack. He could hear the swarm continue to strike the Impala, overtake it, even rock it slightly on its shocks. Like gunfire, he heard every pop, every explosion, every thud and crack and bump and twitter against the cast-iron body of the car. The chiding of their wings was like rain falling on a tin roof. Eyes still closed, he reached out and jerked the car into reverse, slammed down on the accelerator. The Impala shuddered then roared backward in a frenzy. Flipping open his eyes, ill-prepared for the speed at which the car had taken off, Nick pawed uselessly at the steering wheel. Somehow he managed to swing the car around—but not before he felt a jarring thud at his rear, the car seizing to a sudden standstill. A tree—he’d struck a tree. Slamming the car into drive, still spinning the steering wheel, Nick gunned the Impala forward. It lurched over a swipe of grass and mud, taking with it a section of azaleas, then propelled down the vacant expanse of highway back in the direction it had come.





—Chapter XXI—





He crashed the Impala into the base of a palm just outside the hotel. By this time, the entire windshield was covered in the remains of cicadas; the Molotov cocktail bursts of their tiny bodies dinging off the frame of the car were unrelenting. Shoving open the door, he stumbled out of the vehicle and, with his bandaged hand held up over his eyes, staggered back into the hotel.

The hallways and corridors stood on a tilt.

Riding the elevator to the sixth floor, he was conscious only of his heartbeat and the raspy squeal of his breath wheezing in and out of his lungs. On the sixth floor, it seemed many of the bulbs, designed in imitation of flickering candle flames, had gone dead in the candelabras. In fact, stepping off the elevator, Nick could see only a single light halfway down the length of the hallway. A soft yellow rectangle of light, spilling out onto the hallway floor, onto the opposite wall. The light was coming from Nick’s room; the door was open.

Emma, he thought.

He walked down the hall. He seemed to be the only living soul on the floor. As he drew closer to the open door, however, his ears picked up the slight sigh of shuffling papers—and, in his mind, he summoned the visage of his wife seated at the writing desk, working through reams of poetry, nearly possessed, nearly in obsession. Nearly in madness.

Emma…

It was not Emma.

He passed in front of the open door and stopped. He did not bother saying anything for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the bell captain, who was sitting on the edge of the bed surrounded by an autumn flutter of loose-leaf paper, spoke.

“It’s funny,” Granger said.

“What is?”

“How you can sum up a person in letters and keep them in an old shoebox. A shoebox like a coffin.”

Indeed, there was an old cardboard shoebox on the floor by Granger’s feet. The unfolding wings of old letters lay around the old man on the mattress, in his lap. A few of Myles Granger’s letters were scattered around the floor, too.

Granger said, “A person, whether they know it or not, truly defines himself in his writing.”

“Mr. Granger…”

The bell captain was crying—softly, silently, only the wash of tears tracing down the swell of his reddened, patchy face. He suddenly looked twice his age, or like someone who had died and had been resurrected by a god with designs on forcing the brain of his undead corpse into madness.