He wasted energy trying to move, exerting his will. His exhaustion finally stopped him from struggling within and he rested. Time passed, and then he felt something different happening. Not sure what it was, he wondered if he was dying. His body, though still paralyzed, was flooded with a strange sensation of lightness as he slowly slipped the clutches of gravity and floated toward the ceiling. Fear rose in him and he flailed his arms. Miraculously, they moved, and so did his legs. He was hovering in midair. Somehow, without even thinking to do it, he turned so he was looking down at his bed and his sleeping body. The scene was lit by a pale blue glow emanating from him.
At this point, he knew he should have been really frightened, but he felt not the least bit of worry. He noticed that his body, asleep in the bed below him, was breathing peacefully, and he gave himself over completely to the will of whatever was taking him up. The ceiling was no barrier in his ethereal state, and he rose through it, through the attic. He saw the moon shining in the attic window.
Then he found himself on the sidewalk in front of his house in his gym shorts and T-shirt—no shoes. The wind was as high as it had been the previous morning on his way to the library. It rustled the trees and sounded like running water. Owen’s hair was tossed in the gale, and he knew he should have felt colder in such meager clothes. He looked down and could see through himself, just barely. Holding up his left hand, he saw the outline of the full moon through it. For all intents and purposes, he might as well have been a ghost.
And yet he could smell the spring night, heard the insects buzzing at the streetlight two houses down. Creepers sang and a night bird, far off, cried shrilly. A dog barked. He looked around and saw the living room light on in his next-door neighbor’s house. Mrs. Hultz, seventy-five, who’d lived there his entire life, had recently confided in him that she never slept anymore. Instead, she drank gin and watched old mystery movies all night. Up the street, he saw the Blims’ dog, Hecate, a mad Sheltie—in silhouette by moonlight—shitting on the Rogerses’ lawn. Music came from some house, Nat King Cole, singing “Too Young.” Owen took a few steps and felt as if he were gliding along the sidewalk. The movement was strange but pleasant for its unexpected lightness.
Since he took the entire experience to be a dream, he decided to draw closer to Mrs. Hultz’s house and see what she was watching. The lighted window looked in over her shoulder. She sat in an old armchair upholstered with pink flowers. He saw her blue-white hair, the frame of her enormous glasses, and her arm bending, bringing the crystal gin to her lips. One glance at the TV, and he saw she was watching some old black-and-white movie. The quiet scene was a tableau of loneliness, but Owen felt it peaceful. There was a quick flash of Orson Welles’s face emerging from the shadows, and he knew it was Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Upon noticing Welles, he heard, very faintly, as if being played by a mosquito, the sound of zither music. He leaned his head closer to the window to better hear it. The classic tune came much clearer. In the next second, he realized he was leaning through the side of the house into Mrs. Hultz’s living room like something from a cartoon. The experience made him shudder, which shook loose a memory of Helen dead behind the counter. In an instant, he was reeled in, rolled up, and everything went black.
3
THE NEXT MORNING, Owen ate breakfast and drank his coffee at the kitchen table instead of stopping for a roll. He’d plotted out on his phone a new route that didn’t take him anywhere near the Busy Bee. There was one lone sparrow on the feeder. The weather was cool and breezy but the sun was bright. On any other morning, he’d have thought it a perfect day, but now he thought of nothing except for what had happened to him the night before. He’d obviously had an episode of lucid dreaming, but the look of the dream was sharper, as were his senses during it. It was a twin for real life, except he was some kind of spirit who could pass through the walls of houses and was truly conscious while doing it. He promised himself he would write down the experience as soon as he returned from work that evening. He put on the brown suit. As it grew time to leave, he felt an ice ball forming in his chest. He hoped not to speak to anybody about the death of Helen Roan.
At the first corner on the walk to town, he turned west onto another tree-lined street that looked like the one he lived on. There was something “skulking” about the fact he had changed his route. He felt like a thief in the night, and walked swiftly, keeping his eyes on the cracked concrete. There came a spot where he had to walk along a dirt road that led into the shadows beneath the cedars and blackjack oaks. It was as if all those things he didn’t want to think about might be hiding in ambush behind the trees and underbrush. He heard their murmuring, the distant gunshot, and caught, in a side glance, Helen darting into a thicket. He finally came to the old railroad tracks and crossed them. A few steps later and he was clear of the woods, walking across the field of weeds toward the library.
Owen spent the morning on his office computer. First, he checked the local TV listings and found that The Third Man had actually been on the previous night. Then he read up on lucid dreaming and the astral plane. Everything he read had a tangential connection to what he’d experienced, but none of the experiences of others, in their descriptions, were close to his. He determined that what happened through the night was an out-of-body experience, an OBE. He’d read on more than one site that the phenomenon could be brought on by a head injury or great stress. He rubbed the wicked bruised bump on his jaw and envisioned a type of spirit persona leaving his body in order to wander the night world of reality, not dreams. The experience of a phantom—a silent, incorporeal witness to the workings of the world. As this conclusion dawned on him, he heard the chimes at the library’s front door. It would be the first patron of the day.
He walked out to the front desk to see a man in a tweed jacket and dark glasses standing with a camera in his hands. Before Owen could speak, the man said, “I’d like to ask you about the robbery at the Busy Bee.” He leaned his elbows on the counter, trying to appear familiar.
“I gave a statement to the police yesterday at the hospital,” said Owen. “You can go to the station and check it out. Use that for your copy. I’m not offering any interviews.”
“Not even for your local paper? People want to hear about you. You’re a hero for trying to help.”
“I’m not a hero,” said Owen. “The whole thing happened so fast, I was hit in the face and unconscious before I even knew what was going on. I was a helpless bystander. Seriously. Go write that for the paper. It’s the truth,” he said, knowing full well it wasn’t quite.
“I’ll take it,” said the reporter. “That’s something no one else is writing.” With this, he lifted the camera and snapped a quick shot of Owen.
“These are business hours,” said the librarian in his sternest voice.
The man backed away toward the door. “Thanks,” he said. The chimes sounded again and he was gone.
The remainder of the afternoon was dead, as if the library’s usual patrons assumed the place was closed from having heard the news about the robbery. It was fine by Owen. He took up the usual work chores—reshelving, sending overdue notices, and weeding the collection for books that could be sacrificed to make room for newer books. This was the most difficult part of his job. He held in his hands a book from the children’s section with duct tape holding it together. Even with all the obvious repairs, the cover was still half torn off from the spine. You could no longer see the illustration of an old woman in a rocking chair with kids gathered around her. The book was titled The Daily Reader. It was one of his favorites when he was a kid. It told stories about a family—husband and wife with a girl and a boy, six and seven, and a new baby. There was a story for every day of the year. Some were involved and some were very brief, like the entries in a person’s diary. The reader got to be there for the big events and for the inconsequential. Owen, as a child, found the latter the nicest of all. Still, his warm memories of the story year he spent with that story family were not enough to stay his hand from tossing the decrepit volume into the trash bin. It was to be replaced on the shelf by a book about a boy who lived on an island and what happened when a coffin washed ashore. He hoped the kids who still came to the library would enjoy it as much as he’d enjoyed The Daily Reader.