Vacation Read online

  I shake my head, slow. “You weren’t controlling me then. Not until Aubrey…Amina was captured by Blackbeard’s men.”

  Noh takes a deep, long breath. She stares down at her hands. “Did you notice anyone acting strange around you, Mr. Johnson?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did anyone act as if they couldn’t understand you?”

  I nod, though she’s not looking at me. It doesn’t matter.

  “They couldn’t understand you,” she says. “You were mumbling your words incomprehensibly. You were sleepwalking. I was in control of your body. I helped you untie yourself in Weis’ torture room and sneak out.”

  “No,” I say. “Aubrey freed me. I was following her the whole time.”

  She sits in silence for a while, then, “The manifestation of another human being is a common defense mechanism to battle feelings of helplessness.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It must have been easier on your mind for you to follow a person than to lose control again.” She sighs. “Once you perceived her to be in danger of being captured by Blackbeard’s men, you wanted more than anything to save her, therefore there was no explanation for running away other than to feel yourself losing control again. But you were never in control.”

  “She was real,” I say.

  But I’m already thinking of the priests and how they thought I was so innocent after hearing me speak.

  And I’m thinking of the way they ignored Aubrey.

  And I’m thinking of the girl standing beside Weis during the battle with the men in black, with her burned incomprehensible face.

  A face my mind didn’t want me to see.

  But still, I say, “I know she was real.”

  Now I’m tired.

  It’s so obvious now.

  How would Weis’ daughter know the direction of the new secret Garden stronghold?

  She wouldn’t.

  Why would someone like her want to marry someone like me?

  She wouldn’t.

  “Take it out of me,” I say, invading the privacy of her room. “Whatever it is that’s allowing you to fuck with my dreams and control my body, take it out.”

  Her pencil stands motionless atop the notebook on her lap. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t or you won’t?”

  “It’s not a simple implant that can be surgically removed. It’s alive. It grew inside you. It’s part of you now.”

  “Like hell it is.”

  “If I take it out, you’ll die.”

  “I don’t care!”

  This is the most anger I’ve expelled since…I can’t remember when.

  Maybe never.

  Did I ever scream as a child?

  Noh approaches, and stops close enough to touch me. But she doesn’t. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why didn’t you share your seeds with Weis?”

  Her pencil escapes her grip, but she doesn’t pick it up. “Those seeds are what we use to keep the Garden alive, both physically and economically. In other words, those seeds which aren’t used for food, fund our operations. As much as I’d like to, I can’t allow outsiders into our stronghold. The Garden is respected by Weis and people like him, but still, given the opportunity, even he would strip us of everything we have. In the end, we’ll do more good for everyone by keeping our seeds to ourselves.”

  I’m not questioning her about the seeds because I’m curious or because I really want to know.

  I’m doing this because I want a reason to hate her.

  Or at least to stop liking her so much.

  It doesn’t work.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Johnson,” she says. “I truly am.”

  So am I.

  This is a trauma I feel, but don’t know how to own.

  Piles of Noh’s notebooks and alternate reality newspapers consume Mrs. Royal’s library. The old books are not only gone, but devoured. I avoid stepping too close to the mounds for fear of paper tongues lashing out and pulling me into an abyss, where I’d become nothing but a name on a list.

  A dark faceless figure ascends from behind the counter.

  “Aubrey?” I say, and I’m not sure if I’m referring to my dead sister or to Noh pretending to be my dead sister’s spirit or to the Amina who never existed.

  “It’s me, Bernard,” he says. “Jack.” The black haze sharpens into a face and body, and steps out from behind the counter.

  “Jack?”

  “I tried my darndest to prevent this as long as possible,” he says. “But I knew the time would come. I’m sorry it has to be you.”

  And I picture him throwing me into one of the man-eating book piles. It’s too bad this place doesn’t have any windows or doors. There’s no chance for escape. Maybe I can prolong the inevitable if I keep him talking. “How are you doing this?”

  “Talking to you?” he says. “I have access to a dream machine. Because I’m an agent. Because all American Tour Guides are agents. I’m the one who acquired the device for Noh in the first place.” He jumps up onto the counter and looks down on me. “Here’s the truth, Bernard. I’m a double agent for the Agency. Not because I want to be, mind you. I was found out, and now my superiors are impatient for results. If I don’t give them what they want, they’re going to kill me.” He’s wearing a suit now, black and white. “It’d be nice if I could give up my life for the good of the cause, but I’m a coward. So. I need you to kill Noh for me. The Garden can’t survive without her, and that’ll make my superiors happy.”

  “I can’t kill her.”

  “You think that now, Bernard, but you’re hardly aware of what you’re capable of.”

  I remember Jack’s message to Noh. The one he told me in the hospital. “You hate her, don’t you? That’s why you want her to die.”

  “I know she’s a good person, and she doesn’t deserve to die. But she doesn’t exactly deserve to live either. She’s snuffed out more innocent folks than I have. Although I use that term loosely. Innocent.”

  “She did something to you. I know she did.”

  Jack nods. “There came a time when she was blessed with the opportunity to receive two acquisitions at the same time. She could have taken one and let the other one go, but that’s not the kind of person Noh is. She decided to lead them both to the Garden. She communicated with one and left the other on autopilot. The connection process takes time, so she couldn’t switch from one to the other. Therefore, I was left to travel the path alone, and my mind fought back the same way yours did. All the way there.”

  I remember the nightmare forest. Clowns chuckle from deep within the newspaper heaps, and I force the memories back deep inside.

  “It nearly killed me,” Jack says. “But I’m not doing this because of my malice. Malice, I can live with. Execution, I can’t. You have to kill her.”

  “I won’t,” I say.

  “Good. Now you’re speaking my language.” He cracks his knuckles. “You’re going to kill her, because if you don’t, I’m going to kill Krow.”

  “You can’t!”

  “She trusts me. It would be easy.”

  I rush at him, but by the time I swing my arm, he’s already behind me.

  “Sneak into Odin’s room when he’s away,” Jack says. “Search his stash and find the pills with the letters OM written on them. Crush up three of them, no more and no less. Put them in her food or water. Make sure it’s something she’s going to consume all at once. That night, go outside of the stronghold and I’ll use the device to direct you to the nearest safehouse. You’ll be back home in no time. Be out of there before sunrise tomorrow. Do this right, and Noh will die peacefully in her sleep. Do it wrong, and Krow’s going to die wide awake, and let me assure it, it’ll be anything but peaceful.”

  Part 15

  Here’s the conversation we never had, mom and dad.

  “I have dreams,” I say. “I’d like to follow them.”

  “We don’t think that’s a very good i
dea,” you say.

  “Why?” I say.

  “Because you’ll never make it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not good enough.”

  “But if I—”

  “And you’ll never be good enough.”

  “Oh.”

  “You have two options,” you say. “One, you follow your dreams. But if you choose this path, you’re on your own. We won’t support you financially or otherwise. We won’t pay for college. You can get loans, but do you really think you can pay them off while following your dreams? You’ll end up getting a job you don’t care for anyway. You might as well choose option number two. Which is, you follow our path into the wealthy world of the education industry. We’ll support you in any way we can.”

  We never had that conversation, because we didn’t have to.

  Now, here I am again, forced to choose between bad and bad.

  I can ignore Jack’s words.

  Take it as a dream dream. And when I learn about Krow’s fatal accident, I’ll tell myself it’s a coincidence, and part of me will believe it, because humans have an uncanny ability to deny and forget.

  But it wasn’t a dream dream, was it?

  And I have a feeling that if I go into Odin’s room and find pills marked with OM, well, then, there’s no going back to fantasy.

  But I do go into Odin’s room. And I do see the pills. And I was right.

  We picnic on a wrinkled blue tarp beside the garden beds. I sit across from Noh, and I’m the only one here who ever does. They don’t even talk to her unless they need her for something.

  “Jack gave me a message for you,” I say. “He said…” And I don’t want to say the words.

  “I know,” she says.

  “What did you do to him?”

  She picks at her food. “I kept him on autopilot for too long. He was suicidal by the time I woke him. He’ll never be the same man he was before the incident.”

  “Was it an accident?”

  She squirms. “I knew what would happen if I acquired him then, but I still made that choice.”

  “Why?”

  “For the sake of the Garden.”

  “What else have you done for the Garden’s sake?”

  “Many terrible things.”

  “Have you killed people? Innocent people?”

  She nods. “I’m responsible for numerous deaths.”

  And there’s really nothing else I need to know.

  My students learned that no matter how the protagonist encounters death, it always represents something important.

  The man murders his own identity, not his uncle.

  The woman’s suicide represents the agony of heartbreak.

  Those priests died to symbolize the corruption of the church. Not because some Tic fuckers were in competition with the Agency’s drug trafficking network.

  I’m not killing Noh because I think she deserves to die more than Krow. No, me killing her is a metaphor, a simile, a poem, goddamn onomatopoeia—anything but a man ending the life of a woman he admires, because he doesn’t know what the fuck else to do.

  Here’s me, sprinkling magic OM dust on Noh’s bowl of greens when she’s not looking.

  And here’s me in the desert that night, crying myself to sleep so hard, if my tears were magic, this whole place would erupt in trees.

  But there is no magic, and there is no metaphor.

  I killed her.

  Here’s another conversation we never had, mom and dad.

  “I did it,” I say. “I’m living the life you wanted for me.”

  “Good for you, son,” you say.

  “Thank you for saving me,” I say.

  “From what?”

  “My dreams. The truth is, mom and dad, I didn’t want to go after them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t think I’m good enough either.”

  “Oh.”

  “I feared being rejected by the world. Because when the world denies you your dreams, you stop dreaming completely. Now, at least I can pretend I had a chance. And I can blame you for not taking it.”

  “We’re happy you made the right choice, son.”

  “So am I.”

  We never had that conversation, because in real life some truths can only be cried out.

  Jack doesn’t direct me to the nearest safehouse. In fact, I’m headed into what has to be the most dangerous place for me at this moment. The Garden stronghold.

  They found me out, I’m sure. Odin’s going to turn me into fertilizer.

  But when I’m down there, a mummy among my own kind, Odin looks up from the plant he’s groping and says, “Dude, you killed her. Nice job.”

  I’m commanded into the electronics room.

  Noh removes her helmet.

  I wake up.

  But nothing changes.

  Noh really is alive.

  God.

  That wasn’t Jack at all, was it?

  “You made me kill you?” I say. “What the fuck is wrong with you!”

  “I didn’t make you do anything, Mr. Johnson,” she says. “You could easily have chosen to believe what you experienced was a meaningless dream, or you could have chosen to let your friend die. Many have taken such paths of inaction. Those individuals, however, are not Garden material.”

  “You were testing me.”

  “What you’ve proven today, is that you’re strong enough to do what you believe is right. This is a common trait among all of us in the Garden. There is, however, a large portion of humanity whose identities too easily deteriorate under the circumstances I’ve forced you into. Their old lives become a mere dream to them. A person like this doesn’t belong with the Garden. You, Mr. Johnson, belong.”

  “You’re a sick woman.” I try to hold onto my anger, but it keeps flitting away.

  I’m just so damn happy she’s alive.

  “You can slap me if you’d like,” she says. “I’ll understand.”

  But getting that close, I don’t think I could keep from hugging her. I stay away. “There are other ways to test people, you know. You don’t have to go to such extremes.”

  “I wish I didn’t.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “You may have justified every one of your tests and steps in your own mind, but I think you want me to hate you. That’s what this is all about.”

  “I assure you, everything I do is a necessary—”

  “You aren’t the good person you think you are.” I turn around. “You need help.”

  And I walk out, because that helper isn’t going to be me. I stand beside the archway and wait. For what, I damn well know. Then I hear it.

  Sniffling.

  I can tell myself she has a cold, and part of me will believe it, because human beings have an uncanny ability to deny and forget.

  But Noh’s right about me. I don’t forget the past, and I won’t deny the truth.

  Even the truths that can only be cried out.

  And it’s true that this free man has nowhere else to go, but he walks away, until the sound of her tears is nothing but a memory. And nothing and memory may not belong in the same sentence, but at this point I’ll take what I can get.

  “The test is over,” I say. “Now tell me what you really did to Jack.”

  “Everything I told you is the truth,” Noh says. “I sent Jack through the forest alone and I’m responsible for many deaths. If you’re interested, I could share the details concerning all the lives I’ve ruined.”

  “No. It’s fine.”

  If Noh were music, she’d be a song that gets stuck in your head. A song you don’t like very much.

  But usually when it plays over and over enough—if it plays enough—you start liking it. You notice things you never noticed before, or things you wouldn’t let yourself notice. You say, this is good.

  The problem is, you don’t know if you’ll get sick of it by listening too often, or if this is a classic.

  You have a choice
here.

  You can stop playing the music, and therefore not risk ruining the feelings you have at this moment.

  Or you can say, “I didn’t mean what I said. About you being a bad person. I don’t believe that.”

  “Yes you do,” she says, as if this is written on one her lists. Maybe it is.

  “No. You can control a lot about me, but not this.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “I don’t hate you.”

  “Okay. You don’t hate me,” she says, feeling both defeated and victorious at the same time.

  I hope.

  Part 16

  Noh motions for me to join her on the side of her bed. This consists of a mattress and blankets on the stone coffin in the center of the room. “Before we continue the indoctrination process, I want to show you these.” She hands me a stack of newspapers after I’m sitting. “I collected them during my years as a journalist. When I was a citizen.”

  Here are news stories, but they’re all wrong. The headlines blare out losers as winners and defeats as victories and vice versa.

  “These are the alternatives,” Noh says. “All major news institutions prepare stories for all of the probable outcomes of important events. What they deem as important.”

  I hand back the papers.

  She says, “In my citizen days, I found it intriguing to look at these papers and imagine how such alternate events would affect the world. At the time, I imagined a diversity of new realities with a diversity of problems. Today, I realize that the outcomes of these so-called historical events haven’t the power to change much of anything. I look at these papers, and see only the world as we know it.” She tucks the papers under her mattress, that much closer to the death below us. “Now, let’s continue.” She rotates herself and faces me, cross-legged. “Why was the Vacation first instigated? What is its true purpose?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Consider the photographs I showed you. They were taken by various members of the Garden community, myself included. What do they say to you, Mr. Johnson?”

  Normally, I don’t have a photographic memory, but the images flicker inside me. The potency of death emanating from this room and this place can’t compete with what bubbles in my head. “They’re sick,” I say and almost vomit.