Deeply Odd(30)
In high school, the spirit world frequently distracted me from science studies, and my interest in higher mathematics was no greater than my interest in self-immolation, but I scored well in English. I possessed the ability and the skills to write about the coexistent garages. But I sadly lacked the knowledge to intelligently express a theory explaining how such a thing could be—or, for that matter, why fire makes water boil.
If two garages existed in the same place, in different worlds or dimensions or whatever, I seemed to be, for the moment, in the world/dimension/whatever that was different from mine. And the two men whose voices I heard had evidently driven the Ford van away into the world from which I had come.
In Shower 5 at Star Truck, in the basement machine room of that same facility, and now in the garage of this industrial building, two realities crossed. Shower 5 Elsewhere had not been a shower room at all but a barren place, just as Basement Machine Room Elsewhere had been devoid of machinery, and this garage in Elsewhere was likewise a stark concrete box. I had been shot to death in the Elsewhere shower but remained alive in the real Shower 5. Now the rhinestone cowboy parked his truck in Elsewhere and, with some associate, drove away into my reality, perhaps fearing that authorities were looking for the ProStar+ because he had run me off the road with it—or for a reason I couldn’t fathom. This guy was able to do things that people failed to see, like shoot an innocent cantaloupe to bits, and he could step out of reality into Elsewhere when it suited him.
My skull hurt. My brain felt abused. I needed a plate of my own überfluffy pancakes to restore my full cognitive function.
The cowboy might have as many paranormal talents as I possessed, or even more. Maybe. Except … Well, it seemed to me that anyone with such astonishing abilities would not dress so ridiculously. Not that I’m saying that every superhumanly gifted person ought to wear jeans and sweatshirts or T-shirts, as I do, or all Ralph Lauren. But boots of carved leather with fancy snakeskin inlays? A black sports coat with red lapels and collar crusted with sequins, as if he was a Grand Ole Opry wannabe? The Joker, Bane, Lex Luthor, the Green Goblin: They all had better taste in clothing than this guy.
Besides, in the real world, as opposed to the worlds of comic books, a guy with paranormal powers would not want to draw attention to himself. Trust me.
Alone with the eighteen-wheeler, I decided to check it out. He had left a set of keys in the ignition, evidently certain that there were no thieves in Elsewhere. The driver’s compartment contained nothing of interest other than the string of red beads and little carved-bone skulls, which hung from the overhead CB radio.
On closer inspection than I had been able to do previously, I found that the long vertical latch bolts on the back of the trailer were secured by custom shackles. One of the keys released them.
When I opened the tall doors, a row of LED bulbs brightened along the center of the trailer ceiling, front to back. Immediately inside the doors, a two-panel stainless-steel gate blocked entrance. Into a series of vertical one-inch bars, a talented metalworker had incorporated three pentagrams, a Celtic cross, a Maltese cross, a Latin cross, an ankh, two swastikas, and perhaps a dozen symbols that I couldn’t name. Work by an artisan this masterful—not a weld showing, the steel regrained after construction, the dazzling design harmonious in spite of its disparate elements—would have cost many thousands of dollars.
Beyond the gate, the three walls, the floor, and the ceiling of the trailer were painted with the same symbols, sun-yellow forms on a black background. The lighting revealed no cargo.
In fact, it looked like a trailer that never carried freight, and if that should be the case, I wondered what purpose it served for the cowboy. Evidently, he wasn’t a true trucker after all, just a man who drove a truck. He must earn his living in some other way, though I doubted that, even in this transgressive age, anyone could sustain a paying career as a burner of defenseless children.
Although no lock was apparent, the halves of this gate were firmly secured to each other. I could neither pull nor push them apart.
Only as I began to close the doors did I suspect the trailer might not be as vacant as it appeared. Through the steel filigree issued a disturbing scent as sweet as incense and yet suggestive of decomposition, like nothing I’d ever smelled before. Perhaps it was an odor lingering from a previous cargo, but I had not detected it initially. With the malodor came a sudden chill, not internal to me, less than a draft, a mere breath, an icy effluence that, like spicules of sleet, prickled my face.
Convinced that whatever the cowboy hauled, he didn’t merely deal in loads of consumer electronics or goods for the Pottery Barn, I closed the trailer doors. Shot the long bolts. Engaged the shackles.