The Wyrms of &alon

For the second time in my life, I was a hair’s breadth away from praying that I was the crazy one; that I was schizophrenic like my sister had been; that I was the one cast adrift by psychosis, marooned on an I-land a million miles away from anywhere real. The sudden appearance in waking life of a figure from your dreams could do that to a guy.

I straight-up spazzed out when Andalon appeared in the passenger seat beside me. It was a sucker-punch stacked atop a nightmare.

My arms went slack. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. My hovering car careened across the mag-lev highway like an ice cube on a griddle, swiveling side to side, fluxing along waves of wild magnetism. Andalon stared at me in puzzlement as the world went screaming by.

I flipped the switch to realign the wheels for street travel, cutting the power flowing to the magnets in the car. Gravity’s hand shoved us down onto the road, bashing the top of my head against the roof of the car. The wheels struck the glossy “pavement” like a kick to the gut.

I slammed my foot on the brakes. Rubber shrieked. Everything shook. I held tight to the steering wheel as the car rumbled to a stop on the slender space against the railing at the edge of the Expressway.

Tightness gripped my dead chest.

I flung open the door at my right with a press of a button and a tug on the door handle. Lukewarm air got hurled into my car in the wake of levitating vehicles zooming by at excesses of two-hundred miles per hour. The air had an electric tang—ozone from all the magnets. I breathed, letting the pungent wind wash me clean. Passing drivers yelled muffled insults at me, but I paid them no heed, and it wouldn’t have made a difference even if I had. The speed of their cars made low-pitched toffee out of their contumelies, stretching them across the Expressway.

With a great big gasp, I lunged to the side, and slammed the door shut, pulling on it with both arms. The gale-force winds died instantly, and I felt like I’d just been through a sand-blaster. A quick glance at the rear-view mirror showed my hair in complete disarray. I looked as crazy as I felt.

Look at that. I got what I didn’t even pray for!

“Oh God…” I muttered. Lowering my gaze, my hands flew to the steering wheel. I rested my forehead at the top of the wheel, smearing sweat onto the rubber.

The first time I’d wished I was the crazy one had been after learning of Dana’s schizophrenia diagnosis. I prayed to the Angel to spare her. Do it to me! I’d begged. Take me instead. But why would he? I wasn’t even half the person Dana was.

There was a reason Dad called Dana “Monkey”.

My sister was a spring that stayed forever sprung. There was an aura of motion about her, even when she was still. You could see it in her eyes, and in the sweep of her bangs dangling to her brow. No voice was as strong as hers—or as playful, or elfin. Even her silences were loud; you could hear them from across the room. She was a chest of whispered truths; she was where the lost things would go. She shared them with me when I was a boy. She had the gift of magic sight. In her eyes, everything sparkled. To hear her ramble on was to be regaled by enchantment and transfiguration. To her, everything was extraordinary, you just had to know where to look.

Dana was the first person—and so far, the only person—to ever call me a “superhero”. It was like I could hear her saying the words to me, even now.

Of course you’re a superhero, Nethgen! You’re a hero who’s super. That’s what a superhero is. If they were meant to have special powers, they’d call ‘em “specialpoweros”. You try your hardest, Nethgen, you try to make a difference even when you can’t—and that’s pretty darn heroic if you ask me.

‘Nethgen’ was one of the many nicknames Dana had given me—and all of them anagrams of my name.

I wished I could have lived up to the potential she’d seen in me.

I tightened my double-handed grip on the steering wheel. The sweat beneath my fingers smeared slippery over the rubber handle.

“Breathe, Nethgen, breathe,” I said, muttering under my breath.

Just breathe, Nethgen. Breathe like a superhero.

Even now, her words still buttressed me. I wouldn’t have become half the man I was without her guidance.

Digging my fingernails into the steering wheel, I lifted my head and looked to my left.

Holy Angel…

My spine tingled.

She was still there. A living, breathing hallucination sat beside me, staring at me with eyes like a stormy sea.

She tilted her head to the side. “Mr. Genneth?” she asked.

Make it stop. I silently mouthed the words. Please, make it stop.

I was not the sort of person who would (or could) keep driving down a highway while a figment of my dreams rode shotgun alongside me.

Andalon glanced downward, ill at ease. “Cat got lost, and he seemed so scared,” she said. She tensed her arms. “I wanna know if he made it back. That he found the way home… back to his mama.”

I kept on breathing, trying to pay as little attention as I could to my newest personal demon. I emptied my thoughts, getting rid of everything but stillness.

But the deadness was tenacious.

The deadness—what else could I call it?—was going on tour. It had begun to percolate through my body, like a poisoned IV drip. The creep was palpable, like a rash, but both sides of my skin—outside, and in.

“Why… why won’t you answer me Mr. Genneth?” She turned to face me. “I’m here. I’m right here.” Andalon pointed at herself vigorously.

She really was the spitting image of the figure from my dreams. The pale nightgown. The bare, dainty feet. Cerulean tresses, like a midsummer sky.

She started crying.

“I don’t know who I am,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

The tears trickled down her cheeks. Beyond the reach of the bay, the sun sank below the sky. Its fading rays lit the phantasmal girl’s tears, making them glow like fire.

Shivers scampered up and down my spine as she put her hands on my thigh and shook me, and I somehow felt it, even though my leg remained perfectly still.

“Mr. Genneth?” she said, looking into my eyes. “Mr. Genneth?”

I tried my best to not move; to not react in any way.

Leaning back, coming to rest on folded knees, Andalon clasped her hands together and held them against her chest, as if in prayer. “I… I don’t want to be alone.” More tears began to flow. “Please,” she begged, “it’s been dark for so long. So so long. And now, finally… now, I’m not alone.” A smile cut through her tears, brighter than the dawn.“You saved me and you told the thing about Cat and it and I—and—and I—…”

She trembled.

“Please don’t… please don’t leave me alone. I don’t want to go back. The darkness…”

She beheld me like I was her savior. Genuine hope flashed in her blue, blue eyes.

And yet, there I sat, utterly unresponsive.

In surreal time, I watched desperation squeeze her. I watched the hope in her eyes begin to die.

Fear made for some mean emotional cocktails. Add a chaser of anger atop a base of fear with vanity crumble, and you’d get one of the most dangerous psychic states known to man. But if you wanted to do the most damage—if you wanted to really break a person—it was hard to do better than with a plain mix of fear with sorrow. Phantom or not, the plight of a child, pointlessly suffering was not one I could easily ignore. So I turned away.

Like I said, it wasn’t easy.

Andalon’s hope turned to panic. “Mr. Genneth! Please, Mr. Genneth!”Lunging at me, she shook me again and again. She struck me in the sides with her airy little fists. Her eyes watered as she leaned onto her knees. “I’m here!” she cried! “I’m here!”

My resistance crumbled in a matter of seconds. Unable to keep silent any longer, I turned to her and said: “Yes, Andalon, Cat makes it back home safe and—”

—But, be still my heart… she was gone.

Alone I sat, just as before. Heat rose up from the sun-warmed rubber of the seat where the girl had just been, once upon a never. And the death within continued to spread and crawl.