Neverworld Wake(8)

Quite pleased now, he nodded and took a deep breath.

“This phenomenon is not specific to you. There are such moments occurring simultaneously in the past, present, and future all around the world and across the universe, known and unknown, crumpled and unfolded. Time does not travel in a straight line. It bends and barrels across tunnels and bridges. It speeds up. Slows down. It even derails. Well then. This hitch, as we might call it, is where each of you exists at the moment. And it is where, until further notice, you will remain.”

He bowed like the longtime ringmaster of a down-at-heel traveling circus, with gracious ease and a hint of exhaustion.

“I am the Keeper,” he said. “I have no other name. The way I look, act, the tone of my voice, my walk, face, everything I say and think is the sum total of your five lives as they were lived. Think of an equation. This moment equals your souls plus the circumstances of reality. Another example? Imagine if each of your minds was placed inside a blender. That blender is turned on high. The resulting smoothie is this moment. If there were someone else with you? It would be a slightly different moment. I’d be saying something else. I’d have different hair. Different hands. Different shoes. Docksiders rather than Steve Maddens.

“I digress. The circumstances of reality. You’re doubtlessly wondering what I meant by that. Well.”

He sniffed, smiling.

“Each of you is, at present, lying kinda sorta dead on the side of a coastal road. This is due to a recent head-on collision with one Mr. Howard Heyward, age fifty-eight, of two hundred eighty-one Admiral Road, South Kingstown, who was driving a Chevrolet Kodiak tow truck. Time is standing still. It has become trapped inside an eighth of a second like a luna moth inside a mason jar. There is a way out, of course. There is one means by which the moth can escape and time can fly irrevocably free. Each of you must vote during the last three minutes of every wake. You must choose the single person among you who will survive. This person will return to life. The remainder of you will move on to true death, a state permanent yet wholly unknown. The decision must be unanimous, save one dissenter. There can be only one who lives. There are no exceptions. Do you have questions?”

No one said a word.

All I could think was that he was senile after all. He also seemed to have once been an actor, because he had intoned his speech like the baritone narrator of some old 1950s TV Western starring John Wayne, his voice lilting, old-fashioned, and grand. There was an effortlessness to his every word, as if he’d given this memorized speech dozens of times before.

He was waiting for one of us to say something.

Kipling started to clap. “Bravo.”

“Hold on,” said Martha, scowling. “Is he selling Bibles?”

“What do you want?” demanded Cannon.

The man shrugged. “I am a simple resource. I desire no compensation, monetary or otherwise. Nonetheless, I wish for you to succeed.”

“Succeed at what?” asked Whitley.

“The vote.”

“Listen,” said Cannon. “It’s been a long night. Tell us what you want.”

“It appears my delivery was a bit rushed for your comprehension. Would you like the news a different way? Dramatic reenactment? Flash cards? A second language? Italian tends to soften the blow of even the most ominous prognosis, which was why Dante used it for the Inferno.” He cleared his throat. “Buonasera. Tra la vita e la morte, il tempo è diventato congelato—”

“That’s enough,” snapped Cannon. “Get the hell off this porch.”

The man was unfazed. He smiled, revealing small gray teeth.

“Very well. Good luck to you all. Godspeed.”

He hopped nimbly down the steps, striding out to the driveway. Within seconds he was drenched and vanishing into the yard beyond the lights. We listened to his footsteps sloshing through the grass.

“My brain just exploded,” said Martha.

“Worst door-to-door salesman ever,” said Kip, shaking his head. “I think he learned his sales techniques from Monty Python. What did he call us?”

“Dead,” I whispered.

“Right. I’ve been called many things. Deadhead. Deadbeat. Never just plain old dead. Has a sort of bleak ring to it.”

“He’s a Jesus freak,” said Whitley, nibbling her fingernail. “Right? In some cult? Should I call the police? There may be others out there. They might be waiting to break in here and slaughter us or something.”

“He’s harmless,” mumbled Cannon. Yet he seemed unnerved. Scowling out at the empty driveway, he suddenly seized an umbrella and barreled outside just as another monstrous clap of thunder exploded and the rain fell harder. He stomped into the yard, looking around, disappearing in the same spot as the old man.

We waited in silence, apprehensive.

A minute later, Cannon reappeared.

“Must have headed back to the road. No sign of him.”

“Let’s check the security cameras,” said Whitley.

They headed downstairs to the surveillance room, and Kip and Martha—muttering about needing “a stiff drink before the ensuing elderly zombie apocalypse”—shuffled back into the living room.

I remained where I was, staring outside.

There had been something legitimately upsetting about the old man. All the eloquence, the formal speech, the accent—at once like a cable newscaster’s and someone who’d spent a year abroad in England—seemed only to conceal a deep calculation. As if what he had told us were only one small piece of a grand plan.