It was Sunday, and the library wasn’t open, but he went in anyway to do some research. After performing a few simple chores left over from the preceding week, Owen sat at his computer and searched for what the figure of the circle with the cross in it could possibly mean.
He found numerous variations of the image and a lot of information. In Western culture, harking back to early ancestors in the Indus River Valley, and becoming more widespread throughout Europe in the Bronze Age, the symbol stood for the power and majesty of the sun, hence it was known as the solar cross. It often adorned rulers and powerful warriors. To Native Americans of the Mound Builder culture, it represented the four directions and the sacred qualities of each. In India and China, the arms of the cross were broken and turned to create a swastika within the circle, symbolizing the cycle of life. Later, this variation was appropriated by the Nazis and came to represent death. He found the search for a specific meaning interesting, just the kind of pursuit he enjoyed, but when he was finished, he still wasn’t sure what to make of it.
He did discover that a certain variation of the cross, where its arms extended a bit beyond the circumference of their circle, was known as the Celtic cross and widely used by Aryan hate groups. The form of the cross he was researching, the solar cross, adhered to the inner circle and was more like a wheel with spokes. There were so many variations of the design, it seemed like an idea humanity came into being with. The young woman with the baby they’d encountered the previous night made the idea of the tattoo being an Aryan hate symbol unlikely. He figured the group must have some larger purpose, but then remembered Helen on the floor behind the counter and the grim flower of her throat. That’s when he gave up his search, the information he’d already found having swamped him.
In the afternoon, the rain came down harder, and since there were no patrons, for lunch he sat on the adult side and watched the downpour through the big window while eating his sandwich. It was then he hatched a plan to get Melody to go downtown with him and visit the house of the gas station attendant on Margrave Street. If he had more time before being snatched back to himself the previous night, he could have searched the woman’s apartment for clues to her connection to the others marked with the tattoo. She didn’t strike him as very threatening or nefarious, considering how lovingly she had held and rocked the child. He wondered what Melody would think of the plan. He’d have to explain the whole tattoo connection and about his “stakeout” with Mrs. Hultz.
Still, he was almost sure she would go with him. Although he was getting to know her a little better every night, he felt she was holding something in reserve. Perhaps she was waiting until she knew she could trust him. On the other hand, he wondered if it was that he was uncertain of her. She was spending a lot of time showing him the ropes of the night world. He had to ask himself why. She did say it was sort of her duty to help a fellow traveler. Owen doubted most people would go out of their way for a stranger, but then, maybe that was one of the lessons the night world taught.
In the afternoon, despite the umbrella, Owen got soaked heading home. Once there, he made a dinner of a bowl of Frosted Flakes and a banana. To him, cooking was burning, and things rarely turned out edible. Every two weeks, he went to the grocery store, the only time he ever used the car in his parents’ garage, and he’d stop into the Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of town and have a decent meal. Otherwise, he subsisted on frozen pizza, macaroni and cheese, PB&J. Mrs. Hultz, who had him over occasionally for dinner, told him that at thirty-five, it was time to “join the adult world.” Every time he thought about her saying it, he smiled—but as quickly cringed. He didn’t understand what one’s diet had to do with adulthood.
From the time he ate until bed, he was occupied at the kitchen table, having brought out all his boxes of magazines, the scissors, and glue. He hadn’t worked on the project since the day Helen was shot. For the last few years, since he’d quit smoking, he’d been making collages from the figures and scenes of old books and magazines. The goal was a hundred collages. One for every night of a collage story to be called upon completion 100 Nights of Nothing. He’d stolen the idea from the artist Max Ernst after receiving a collage novel at the library—A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil. He thought the cutting of the scissors an appropriate replacement for smoking. With earphones on and classic country music crying in his skull, he toiled away. It took him months to do each page. Singing along to the songs was part of it, and a powerful concentration not even the persistence of nicotine craving could pierce. There was a story to 100 Nights, but Owen had yet to discover what it was.
He slept and suddenly found himself on a corner in town. He had no idea why he was there or how he got there, but the wind was high and the single streetlight half a block away made it darker than if it didn’t exist. He heard somebody coming from the west, dragging their feet, making slow progress. Owen worried it might be a member of the solar cross gang, coming for him. Adrenaline exploded in him and he tried to run, but his legs were too tired, as if they’d turned to stone. Instead, he backed up against the brick wall of an abandoned factory. The figure passed beneath the streetlight, an old shambling man, carrying on like a television zombie. When the stranger was upon him, he realized it was his father, or his father’s corpse or ghost, and it said in an everyday tone, “This is a dream. You want to go back.”
Owen woke on his back to sleep paralysis. It didn’t matter how many times it happened; it was always frightening and put him in a panic until his ethereal self let go of his body and he began to rise. When he passed through the roof of his house, he immediately heard the rain. He didn’t feel the cool drops, but the sound of them on leaves in the street, in puddles, sounded like music to him. The wind from the dream with his father followed him into the night world. This weather in his waking life would have drawn a scowl, but now the streetlight glistened off shimmering leaves and he found it enchanting.
By now, he was able to run without launching himself to the moon, and he bounded away to the yard with the picnic bench. His heart sank when he discovered Melody wasn’t waiting for him. The rain bounced off the tabletop and he wondered how it was he could sit at the table or run along the roofs but could also pass through walls unseen and unfelt. There were shifting abilities to his perceived mass, and they seemed to be at the whim of his newly discovered state. It was still true, though, that he couldn’t touch anything, and so it didn’t make much sense at all. In the house behind him, a child was screaming. The parents screamed back. Owen got up and walked closer to the back door. Finally, he heard the child yell as if she was falling off a cliff, “There’s a ghost in the backyard.” So the spirit couldn’t sneak up on him, he turned, and halfway through his spin, he realized the child was referring to him.
He passed through the hedge at the back of the property to hide. He shook his head while muttering to himself. There were so many exceptions to the rules of the night world, he wondered why there were even rules. He sat on the ground in the rain, peering through holes in the hedge, watching to see if Melody came. Eventually, after having time to think about it, he had to concede that there were just as many exceptions in the waking world. In fact, he loved those contradictions and sought them out for his reading online—Schrödinger’s cat, spooky action at a distance, the double-slit electron study. These so-called “anomalies” were the loaves and fishes of his days, allowing him to believe reality had a mind of its own. An hour passed and Melody never showed. Feeling unsure, he struck out on the night’s mission. It was too boring to just sit, staring through a hedge, not being able to control when he would awaken.