When he caught up with Melody, she was sitting on a dormer a few houses down across the street, facing out into the pine barrens. No moon that night but a wealth of stars again. “Where did you go?” she said. “I thought you’d been called back.” He told her about falling through the roof, and about the weird transaction of money for insects.
“I’ve seen it a few times lately,” she said. “Some kind of new drug. Big with the wealthy. Massospora, it’s called—a parasite that infects the rear ends of cicadas. It actually eats away their hind part and forms a shell around that area and produces a fungus. When ingested by humans, the fungus has the effects of psilocybin—like magic mushrooms. There’s a component of the chemical makeup that’s also an amphetamine.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I spend all night looking over people’s shoulders and reading what they read on the computer or in a book, I overhear conversations in dark corners, and I’ve seen quite a few of those drug sales going down in the last year or so.”
“There’s something wrong with it,” said Owen.
“You think?” she said, and then they sat in silence for a while and took in the beautiful night. He asked her, “What’s your life like during the day?”
“Oh, I work at a job. I have kids. I’m married. This year will be our fifteenth year.”
“What’s your husband’s name?”
“Marcus.”
“Does he know you’re a sleeper?”
“Why should he? This is my private thing. Like Shiela Tobac’s web of words.”
“Have you moved through genius to insanity?” he asked.
“Only at the holidays when the in-laws show up.”
They visited a veteran who couldn’t sleep. A photo of him and his unit somewhere in the Middle East hung on the wall across the room from where he sat at a table. He smoked cigarettes one after the other, and had three packs stacked up on the table next to a neat pile of issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The copy in his hands was from 1999. The pages turned rhythmically and he silently moved his lips with each word. It wasn’t so much as if he was taking in the story but more that the act of reading was a ritual that sustained him or took his mind off something.
From there, they went next door to where two old men had fallen asleep in front of the television—one in the recliner and one on the couch. Both sawed wood through late-night talk shows while the glow of the TV blended with the glow of Melody and Owen. On the hutch in the next room, barely visible in the dark, were photos that appeared to be from the old couple’s wedding. The two burly men, much younger, wrapped in each other’s arms, kissing, on the steps of a church, while friends and family threw rice. Their apartment was neat as a pin and there were shelves everywhere with classical music CDs and stereo records. In the corner of a room down the hall were an upright bass, an electric piano, and an array of five different saxophones, each on its own separate stand.
The night went on forever, visit after visit. He was beginning to understand what Melody had earlier alluded to. He still felt creepy about spying, but seeing what people were like when they were all alone with themselves was instructive. Owen confessed this to Melody as they drifted through the walls of an apartment building next to the grammar school. Again, the television was on and lit the scene of a young woman, sitting on the couch, feeding a baby with a bottle. She wore her hair in box braids and had on an orange tank top and gray sweatpants. Moving slightly forward and back as if in a rocking chair, she occasionally made noises to the child. The woman’s eyes were closed and she was somewhere between the world and sleep.
“The Madonna,” said Melody. She leaned over the mother to get a better look at the baby. Of course, there was no contact, but she looked at Owen and smiled. As she moved away, the glow of her arm passed over the wrist of the young woman, and he noticed a small black circle with a cross in it upon her dark skin. It was in the same spot he’d seen it on Helen’s killer, and where Mrs. Hultz said she’d spotted it on the gas station attendant. Melody pulled away but he asked her to light the area again with her arm. She did and it wasn’t his imagination. They looked at it together and turned to each other.
Melody said, “What is it? What does it mean?”
Minutes later, they were outside on the street in front of the school. Melody told Owen she had to go to get up early to do some work before the day began. “See you at the bench,” she said. Before he could tell her goodnight, she was gone, vanished like a light being switched off. He turned and headed home, wondering when he’d be pulled back to himself, as morning was near. He didn’t bound exuberantly in his usual manner, covering a lot of ground, but walked slowly as if his experiences of the night, witnessing the lives of others, acted upon him like gravity, holding him down. He went a long way, lost to his thoughts, until something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye—a flicker of pale blue. Looking up across the street, he saw a sleeper, not Melody, standing atop the roof of a two-story house.
The person—man or woman, he couldn’t tell from the distance separating them—had his/her back to him and was standing right on the ridge of the peak, leaning forward and back slightly as if shifting position as the breeze blew harder and softer. Owen was excited to see another traveler in the night world. He said nothing but walked over to the house and leaped up onto the roof, hoping the person would engage with him. As he came up behind the individual and was about to speak, he peered down into the backyard and was struck silent. There, filling and overflowing the confines of the yard, was a miasma, its yellow mist blotting out the bottom of the swing set, clothesline poles, and some small dogwood trees. It was a roiling, ever-undulating sulphur dream. He could hear it crackling and hissing.
The individual he’d approached took a step down the other side of the pitched roof. Owen watched, and as well as he could make out the details, the person was a middle-aged man. He heard the fellow praying and crying, and watched as he took two more steps on the downward slope.
“Wait!” cried Owen as it slowly dawned on him what was happening.
The man took off running the last few steps, launched himself high into the night, and as he gracefully floated toward the yellow fog, he turned in midair and looked back at whoever was behind him. There was a smile on his face as he descended, until his first contact with the miasma. It was as if he’d deluded himself into thinking this would be a painless close to a painful life. Wherever he touched it, his ethereal form turned to fizz, like the bubbles in champagne. They drifted upward and popped, amid the man’s screams, which resonated throughout the neighborhood. No one in the waking world could hear. The suicide’s mouth and eyes were wide with agony, and his pale blue glow flickered. He shot an arm out toward Owen, as if he’d changed his mind and suddenly wanted to live. The disintegration process drew out its work like a torturer. The clouds rolled up to envelop him, and minutes passed in torment before there was nothing left but the advancing miasma.
Owen bounded away and in his ascent was drawn back to bed.
8
OWEN WOKE TO THE memory of the man choosing to be erased from existence, and as he got out of bed, he wondered how bad life would have to be to throw it away like that. He promised himself not to think about it anymore and decided not to tell Melody what he’d witnessed.