The haze of the Milky Way gauzed over the night sky, as the last of the flames died out. The cool mountain air carried away the lingering odor of gasoline, replacing it with a fresh smell of cold and pine. The silent forest looked on and waited.
Denton lay on his back, feeling his body temperature fading. He had climbed out of the murky water and collapsed on the bank. The cracking and crumbling of the ice had saved him from the fire. It seemed as though destiny had decreed he would die from the burning cold, not the burning heat.
How much longer before hypothermia set in? It couldn't be long, unless his body refused to quit. Could the cold kill him now? Would it have killed Kaling or Radnor, if they had made it out of the fire? But he wasn't completely taken over by the virus yet. Who knew what protections the alien organisms in his blood granted him at this stage? The infinity of stars stared down at him, but all he could see was the glob of the moon. His glasses were lost at the bottom of the lake.
If the disease was curing his eyesight, it still had a long way to go.
He held his hand up in front of his face. Frost was forming on his trembling fingers. They were blotched with red and white and ached with a searing pain. He had heard once that pain was good; it meant frostbite hadn't fully set in. He wished he could dry them, but he was soaked to the bone. Rubbing them against his coat only released the icy water and gasoline trapped in the wool, drenching them anew.
The legs of his pants were in tatters. He tried to feel the burns on the raw skin of his legs, but it was numb flesh on numb flesh. His skin was so devoid of sensation, he might already be a corpse.
Despite the red welts, Denton was able to twirl his ankles and bend his knees. Perhaps he could make it to the car. But that wasn't the point, was it? He was the last link. Everyone else was gone. Even Kaling hadn't been able to escape. Fate had stepped in and drew him back to the flames.
Denton raised his head and, with his limited vision, searched for any sign of the men's bodies. The lake was a black void in the middle of the snow. Chunks of ice and burnt debris floated in its waters. It was so quiet and peaceful it was easy to forget the violence that had taken place there. The carnage that had consumed Stephen and Cole and the disease with them.
Now it was Denton's turn. It was time to turn out the lights and let the infection disappear with him. He closed his eyes and sunk deeper into the snowbank. He could feel darkness welling up inside of him, grabbing him from the inside, and pulling him down into the deep abyss of oblivion.
His eyes flickered open in panic. He sat up, breathing raggedly, overcome with nausea. He tried focusing on the light in front of him to avert the sensation of vertigo.
Light? There was a light in the woods. Could the fire have spread to the trees? Through tightly squinted eyes, Denton saw that the light was small and stationary. It hadn't been there earlier. Someone else was out there.
He should run in the other direction. Flee all other people. He couldn't risk being rescued or accidentally contaminating any others. But the longer he stared at it, the more convinced he was that it was there for him. Somebody was in the woods waiting for him.
Denton managed to pull himself out of the snow and stand, channeling some power—some strength—he never knew he possessed. Trudging toward the light, his overcoat weighed him down as if it were made of lead.
His feet stumbled onto the trail leading back to the road. The light must be coming from the shed. He staggered toward it, each footfall feeling like a marathon.
There was a rusty oil lantern on a hook by the shed's door. Its small flame shone out into the darkness like a great beacon, warning sailors off the rocks, drawing moths to their demise. The lamp's fire was protected from the wind whistling through the trees by a dome of warped glass.
No, it wasn't the wind whistling. It was a tune. Oh! Susanna.
Someone was inside.
Denton pulled open the door, too physically and emotionally numb to have any fear of what was behind it.
The whistling faded and switched to a murmur of singing, "...so hot I froze to death, Suzanna, don't you cry."
In the open doorway, Denton blinked at the blur of light and shadow. He was looking into the unknown, the other side of the looking glass. "Come inside and close the door," the voice said. "You're letting all the heat out."
Wasn't that something his father used to say? Probably something everyone's father used to say. Still there was something about the phrase that made him follow the directions unquestioningly and feel small and childlike in the process.
"There's a heater in the corner. Go warm yourself." A hand rose up and provided a signpost for Denton to follow. The man spoke with a voice that was smooth and strong, like a beam of polished oak. He couldn't be a young man, but there was no trace of age weighing down his words.
Ignoring the directions, Denton went closer and inspected his host. He peered at the short man standing before him. The lines on his face placed him somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty. His hair was black with streaks of gray. It was long and slicked back with natural grease. His skin was filthy, and he wore dirty, battered clothes. Behind him was a bed or something that resembled a bed. Lost in the shadows, blankets and rags pooled over a hidden base that might be a mattress, or a pallet, or maybe just more blankets.
Was he one of the men from the shelter? No, there was nothing familiar in his features.
"Do I know you?"
"In a way. But we've never met, if that is what you mean. Go," he said again, handing him a ratty, old blanket. "Warm yourself. Before you catch your death."
This time Denton did as he was told. In the far corner, crammed in a space between the wall and a table, there was a small propane camp heater giving off an ozone smell. Grateful for the soothing warmth, he crouched down in front of it and tried not to knock over any of the spare canisters of fuel with his knee. There were four of them by the legs of the tall, narrow table that at one time may have been a workbench.
Denton started undoing the buttons of the coat with clumsy fingers, anxious to let its weight drag it to the floor in a sloppy, wet mess, and eager to wrap the dry blanket around him despite its scratchy texture and odor of mildew.
"What are you doing all the way out here?" Denton asked. "Living. Waiting." He answered simply.
"Waiting for what?"
"Visitors like you." He took a breath through his nose that sounded like a sniff. "You," he repeated.
"Me?" Denton turned to face him. The coat's third button was undone. His hand felt the weight of the flask in the breast pocket pulling against the fabric.
"I've been calling to you since last night." Teeth flashed in the light, possibly a grin at Denton's confused expression. "Come now. Did you think it is a coincidence that we are both here tonight?"
"Calling me? What do you mean?"
"That's a long story."
"I have time." The answer tumbled from his lips without thought, a cliché reply to a cliché statement. How much time did he have?
The man stood silently, his presence filling the space, making Denton feel claustrophobic. The only noise was the hum of the heater and the occasional flicker from the lantern, which sat on the table and cast a yellow light over the gray-green planks of the shed. The flame crackled on the wick, sucking at the room's musty oxygen.
"Who are you?" Denton pressed.
"My name is Ray." With that declaration, he sat down on the bed, putting his face level with Denton's.
"Ray," Denton repeated, as though it were some foreign word. Something from some mystical volume of lore passed down since Aramaic times, translated from tongue to tongue but never spoken in any modern language.
Ray living on Mt. Nazareth, he thought. That night in St Fillan's, the coughing man had said something like that. What was it he said?
Under the bridge, Ray had told him he was leaving and could be found on the mountain.
But he never left. He had stayed behind and was killed at his camp. Or was he?
The man at the shelter had been adamant, it wasn't him.
He kept saying it. I wasn't listening to him. I only heard what I wanted to. He wasn't telling me the man had been changed by the virus. He was telling me it was a different man.
But the police had identified the body.
There were only a few sheets of paper in that file. The burned remains in the morgue were unidentifiable. No fingerprints to test. Dental records and DNA weren't on file. But the police had expected it to be a particular person living under that bridge, just as Denton had. Assumptions had stood in for proof.
"Alfred Reynolds?" Denton said standing up, feeling the need to gain height and perspective at the revelation. Forgotten, the tattered, gray blanked slipped from his loose fingers.
The man's head bobbed. The light from the lantern painted his features in grotesque blacks and whites.
"So what now?" Denton asked in a tone of defeat. He was there, in a shack, in the woods, on Mt. Nazareth, talking with a man he believed to be dead. He felt an unraveling taking place at the edge of his consciousness. He skirted his thoughts away from it, afraid of what new horror was taking shape there.
"This would have been better if we had this conversation earlier. I was certain you would come in this afternoon. Just goes to show, no matter how much I see, I can't be right about everything." He twisted his face into a smile, as though finding humor in his own modesty.
Denton contemplated the words. It was more of a riddle than an answer.
I've been calling you here. How much I can see.
"What is it you can see?" Denton asked.
"I can always see what is. I can sometimes see what will be."
Had the virus made him clairvoyant? Did he even have the virus? Denton struggled to remember that this wasn't Patient Zero, who the boys burned. This man was someone else—something else.
"So what? You're supposed to be psychic," Denton said with the skepticism bred into him from years immersed in science.
"My grandmamma called it having your third eye open."
The coughing man at St. Fillan's said one night in the early fall, he had met Ray. He had been excited about figuring out some truth and he wanted to share it.
"So this third eye of yours just opened last fall?"
Ray chuckled, but the laugh was devoid of humor. "No, I've had it all my life. Born with it." He shifted on the bed, making himself more comfortable. "You see, I always had the gift. Some people said I was cursed. Others said, possessed. No one much liked it. No one much liked me. My father walked out two days before my ninth birthday. And when I was old enough, I left too. People caused too much pain, so I stayed away from them. I kept to abandoned places as much as I could."
"Like the train bridge."
"Yes, like that. No one else could stand being there for too long because of the noise." He nodded to himself, remembering how good things had been there.
"You see, I was born with my third eye open." He pointed to a spot on his forehead just above where his eyebrows came close to meeting and left his fingertip pressed there. "It let me to see into people. Read their souls. Nothing anybody wanted me to see. Nothing I ever wanted to see. Did me no good whatsoever knowing the truth about everyone. Made me hate them. Made them fear me."
His hand made a small circle, as though it were getting tired of pointing at his forehead.
"But then something miraculous happened. A few months ago, my fourth eye opened." His finger moved up half an inch to a new spot, pressed the skin against the bone, and then drifted back down to his side.
Denton felt as if he were struck with a current of otherworldly energy. He felt his legs wobble. Two mystical eyes, one above the other. "Now this fourth eye..." Ray hesitated. "It solves that problem." "What does it do?" Denton's voice was barely a whisper, a ghostly rasp competing with the sputter of the lantern.
"The third eye allowed me to see. The fourth allows me to reach out. It lets for me show people their true selves. It lets me reveal their true cosmic potential. With it, not only can I see the truth, but I can make you see it to. And I can make you transcend it."
What had Radnor said in his apartment? I have looked into the eyes and I have seen the truth.
"Is that what made them insane? What did you do to them?" Denton's voice grew in volume. No longer tremulous, each syllable hit the air like the thrust of a knife.
Ray brushed his upper lip with his thumb nail. "They don't go insane. Not really. The truth takes a while to comprehend. The ego fights it. There's a transition period as the power of the eyes burns into them. But it passes. Then you become stronger both physically and mentally. You become the person you were always meant to be." "So what are you saying: you've been creeping around Bexhill, casting spells on people? Or did you call to them too?" Anger gave his words mass. The knife transformed into a club in the small echoing cabin.
Ray shook his head and laughed. "I don't cast spells, son. And I haven't been in Bexhill since I discovered what I could do. I came here. I only share this gift with people who want it. People who come here and ask for it."
"What? Did Kaling, Radnor, Radcliff, and the others all come up here for your gift?" Denton spoke with as much incredulity as he could manage, trying to demonstrate his disbelief, even though it was no more outrageous of a concept than aliens and viruses. A belief he held wholeheartedly only moments before. An idea he had found completely preposterous when Eddie had spoken of it only a few days earlier.
"Word of mouth has spread. People learned that I could teach them how to escape the shells that trapped them. Break them out of all the fears and sins that held them down. Each one came to be reshaped into a higher form of human being. A being that would reshape this world we live in."
Ray leaned forward and gazed up at Denton. "The only one I called to was you, because I hoped to tell you the truth before any more of my children came to harm. But I failed."
Could it be possible? It was a stretch to think of Radnor seeking out a guru in the forest, but Agatha Radcliff he could easily see coming up here filled with hope, eager for some new avenue to enlightenment. Were they all just some cult? Did they come up here and drink in this man's madness and bring it back to Bexhill with them?
Kaling had been scared when he mentioned the mountain. Was he worried that Denton's plan was to come here to kill this man? Did he fear for his spiritual leader?
"I only wanted to talk to you and let you know there wasn't a virus spreading through the town. Let you know that nothing harmful was coming for you or Linda. Tell you could put your misguided quest aside."
The room's smell of mold and lumber burned his sinuses. It had become stifling hot. Denton's body was coated in a prickly sweat. None of this made sense. How could this man know these things?
"Who told you about me? Who told you I was trying to stop a virus?" He leaned down and shouted in his face. He would have grabbed him and shook him, but the dread of his very existence made Denton keep his distance.
"You did. I can see your soul, Denton Reed. I know you. Now the question is, are you ready to know yourself. You are soaked in guilt. The truth will wash you clean. Will you accept it? Are you ready to find out who you really are?" There was a smugness about Ray, as though he already knew the answer. As though Denton had no choice but to accept, like it was all preordained.
Denton turned. He kept himself from falling over with a hand pressed against the wall, as he looked into the heater's shimmering orange burner. It stared back at him like some satanic eye.
Ray sat patiently, waiting for his answer.
What a fool he had been. Instead of following the evidence, he had blazed a trail. He had made the clues fit the story he was telling himself. A story built on the inanities he heard while imprisoned at the lodge. A story where he was both the hero and the victim. A story of a man trying to save the world while something inside of him slowly ensured his own death. He was as guilty of using the Gasher story to justify his crimes as Danny was.
Now, he stood there, the punchline to his own horrifying joke. There was no virus. No aliens. There was only Ray. And there had been the people Ray changed.
He should just walk out, leave without another word to Alfred Reynolds. He could go back and accept punishment or treatment, or whatever they decided to do with him. He could go back and admit he was wrong. Tell Linda he was sorry. See her beautiful face again, even if it were only on visiting days.
But if he left, would this all be over? Would it really be the end? No. It would keep go on and on without end. Yesterday it was Eddie and his friends, today it was him, tomorrow it would be someone else. Who? Perhaps Bill. Perhaps between Denton and the Knowles woman, they had managed to infect him with the idea.
Whether he intended to be or not, Alfred Reynolds was a monster. So long as he kept spreading his truth, there would be someone out there trying to stop it, someone who saw the diabolical in the behavior of his followers. There was a virus out there, but it wasn't one built on germs. It was constructed of ideas.
"You are a very stubborn man, Denton Reed," Ray said, shattering the silence. "Most people would leap at the chance to be released from their guilt and their fears. Can't you see what I wonderful gift I will bring to the world? Join me. Spread my word, and we will rebuild what you have destroyed."
Such confidence—it were as though the man could read his doubts. There was no going back for Denton. He feared a mental ward too much. Just as he feared death. That only left one other alternative.
In that moment, Denton could feel the distance between them contract.
We are each playing an equal part in this story. We are two sides of the same coin. Two rings in the same eight.
His brother's advice came back to him—a whisper fighting against the tide of years.
No. Denton would never let this man change him. Did Kaling or Radnor seem enlightened? This man's truth was a poison. Besides, he already knew enough of the truth. He knew all the truth about himself that he could handle.
Ray was right; he was stubborn. "So I'm bullheaded," he said to himself. The phrase invoked the memory of his dream. His lip twitch into an uncomfortable smirk.
There is a virus in this shack. And now there is a demon.
He took his overcoat off. It was a horrible mess, even more tattered than it had started out that morning. Removing the flask, he lowered the soaking mess to the floor and picked up the blanket. Nothing had ever felt more real between his fingers than its rough fibers.
Instead of wrapping it around himself for warmth, he draped it over the heater and the spare propane tanks.
He looked down at the flask in his hand. The cheerful blue Kerosene sloshed in the glass container, like a Kool-Aid childhood memory.
"Can you really see everything?" Denton asked.
There was a sharp intake of breath behind him and Ray sprang to his feet.
In his mind, Denton could see the glass vial slipping from his hand and tumbling end over end in slow motion, until it shattered against the heater's protective cage. But in reality, he threw it against the heater's metal top before turning to pursue Alfred Reynolds. Shards of glass burst outward and the oil sprayed the orange eye and the gray blanket.
Denton caught Ray as he was fumbling with the door. Denton pulled him away and slammed him into the corner, holding him in a desperate hug. Ray struggled to free himself but was outmatched by Denton's size and determination. He screamed as he tried to claw his way free.
"Shh," Denton whispered in his ear. "Isn't this the real reason you called me here?"
The world erupted in blinding light, as the blast pressed them both into the shed's corner.
Denton could feel burns scorching the back of his head and neck. Something sharp was embedded in his back just below his rib cage. The blood tickled as it caressed his skin and flowed down to his hip. The flames crackled behind him. The small shed filled with smoke. Ray coughed and made one last effort to free himself, his strength ebbing with the oxygen.
He clenched his eyes tight against the pain. Memories of Linda flooded his mind and he was back with her at the party in Brooklyn where they first met, gazing at her from across a table overlooking Market Square, somewhere dancing with her—endlessly twirling with her across the floor.
Denton held Ray closer, pulling him tighter into the embrace. It would all be over soon. He just had to hold a little longer. Another minute and the truth would never be able to escape the silence of the forest.
***
Author's Note April 4, 2014:
I want to thank all my readers for making it to the end. I want to especially*** thank those of you who took this journey with me and supported me with your votes, comments, and camaraderie, while I wrote it. I honestly couldn't have done it without you. You drove me to write a better book than I planned to write and to write it better than I thought I could.
I hope you found the ending satisfying on some level, although I suspect many of you won't. I had thought to write an afterword explaining some of the decisions that went into the creation of this ending but decided I would prefer to let it stand on its own -- at least until some time has passed.
Please share all of your thoughts with me both positive and negative (I can take it, honest). I will be editing this whole darn thing in a few months' time and truly welcome any and all critiques.
Thank you all again. It has been a very special time writing this book on Wattpad, it is sad to see it end.
--DJ13 April 4, 2014