Chapter 29

Jimothy Whyte

Jimothy sat with his back against a tree, on the grass, near the sidewalk. He closed his eyes and smelled the cool night air. That spring smell was present, the smell of freshness and new beginnings. It smelled like something about to happen.

Jimothy imagined looking at himself at that moment through the eyes of an observer. He pictured the scene, transmuted into a painting. How would he layer the colors for the darkness of the yard behind him? What brushstrokes would be best for these leaves? How to do the halo of light around the nearby streetlight? The painting would be kind of sad, but also a little exciting. Jimothy realized he was excited. Excited for what? He wasn’t sure. But that springtime-at-night smell was in the air, and it was hard to paint. But he wanted to try.

Jim closed his eyes for a long minute, and hung his head to his chest. He breathed deeply through his nose.

When Jim looked up at the sky, he noticed that the stars were swarming over each other like millions of bright ants. When he looked back down, he saw that he sat in a boat, out on a vast dark sea. Thick salt air swirled about him, and thunder rumbled in remote places. He saw ahead of him an immense pyramid, the size of a mountain, a grim monument rising up out of the black water. Spiraling upward around that pyramid was a river. It rose up out of the ocean like some cosmic serpent. The river pooled at the tip of the pyramid and dripped up into the star-swarmed sky in globules as large as lakes.

Jim paddled toward that pyramid. He had no idea how to paddle a boat, but he tried. He had an oar, anyway, and he was dipping it into the water and moving it around.

As he neared the pyramid a man came up alongside him, walking on the water. The man wore dark clothes, and was faintly visible because of his outline against the near-constant glinting of lightning in the distance.

Jimothy stopped paddling, but it was okay because the current now carried him steadily toward the pyramid. The man stepped casually into the boat. Jimothy clutched at the oar as the boat rocked with the new weight. “Hello,” the man said, as casually as if they were just passing on the street.

“Hello,” said Jimothy. Then, “Are you real?”

“Of course.”

“Oh,” said Jimothy. He thought about it. He saw the Line in his mind. Yes, this person was real. But wait. Wasn’t he really sitting under a tree a few streets over from his house? After a moment of dizzying bafflement, Jimothy decided to worry about that later.

The man laughed a soft laugh and sat down beside Jimothy like an old friend. The paint-peeling grey rowboat had followed the current to the river which rose up out of the sea. The boat began to ride the river up into the dark sky. Jimothy tried to look at the man to see what he looked like, but he couldn’t make much out. It wasn’t that the man’s face was shaded, or blurry. He was just hard to look at, somehow.

Jimothy waited for him to say something, or explain who he was or why he was there. But he apparently had nothing to say. That was fine with Jim. This guy seemed cool. He lounged in relaxation on the other end of the rowboat, enjoying the view.

After a few minutes of watching the distant lightning Jimothy chanced a look over the edge of the boat. They had been moving steadily, and had made several loops around the mountainous pyramid. They neared the top, and the ocean was so far below now that Jim could hardly make it out.

They rested in silence as they floated onto the mass of water accumulating at the tip of the pyramid. They sat upside down, comparative to the sea below. Gravity seemed to be taking the day off.

“Don’t go home,” said the stranger as the vast drop of water detached and floated upwards toward the sky. “There’s someone at your house waiting for you.”

“Oh, that’s Mike. He lives there too. He’s harmless.”

The man shook his head. “Someone else. Dangerous. You’re lucky your brother’s n ot harmless.” Something was familiar about this man’s voice. Had Jimothy heard it before somewhere? He wasn’t sure.

Jimothy nodded hesitantly. “If you say so. Wait a minute—” at that moment the floating lake joined the inky sky with an immense rush of water, and Jimothy found himself submerged.

Then he became distracted by the stars. They shimmered, balls of light the size of his fist, drifting around him and looking at him with curiosity. They approached like a school of fish.

And then Jimothy jerked to wakefulness. He sat up.

For a few seconds, confusion reigned.

And with timing so perfect that Jimothy instinctively doubted its reality, a vehicle skidded around the corner of the block to his right. He recognized Mike’s car. The headlights were on bright, and Jimothy squinted and put a hand up to shield his eyes.

Jimothy fell sideways as the car screamed to a halt by the sidewalk, narrowly missing him. It stopped close enough that Jimothy, lying on his side, was able to kick a tire with his left foot. It seemed real enough. This close up, he noticed some scratches and black spots on the exterior that he was pretty sure hadn’t been there this afternoon.

The door flew open, and before Jim knew what was going on Mike was there, helping him up. He smelled like smoke.

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“Hey, Mike,” said Jimothy as he was manhandled into the passenger’s seat. “I was just thinking about you.”

Mike slammed the door, cranked the car into drive, and peeled out. The car fishtailed down the road before stabilizing.

Jimothy carefully buckled his seatbelt.

“Hey, Mike,” said Jimothy as he rolled down a window. Their speed was already great enough that the resulting roar of cool air drowned out any reply, so he rolled it back up again. “Mike, what’s wrong?” Jimothy noticed that he was sitting on a notebook, so he pulled it out from under him. He twisted around and put it carefully on the backseat, noticing as he did so that Black was still back there.

Jimothy could tell from Mike’s glances in the mirrors that they were fleeing from something, so he peered into the rearview mirror, looking behind them. All that was visible were streetlights, porch lights…and an ominous red glow in the atmosphere.

Jimothy knew the answer to his question before he asked it, but he asked it anyway. “Is that our house?”

Mike remained focused on the road. Jimothy decided that this was a good thing. They were slowing down, but still exceeding the speed limit by a lot.

Jimothy sat back in his chair, and sadness began to spread through him at the thought of their house burning. “I…there were…I liked my bed,” he said at last. “And my paints.” He looked back again, but the radiant flush in the sky was fading from view.

There was a long moment of silence. It wasn’t awkward silence, but Mike was wound up like a spring, and Jimothy felt the tension. Jimothy remembered that his phone had been in their house as well.

The brakes wheezed as they dug around a sharp corner.

“So this may seem like a silly question,” Jimothy said at last, “but—”

“I believe you,” said Mike. Jimothy looked at his brother intently and noticed that a tiny stream of blood had run down the side of his face and dried sometime recently.

Jimothy felt something roll around on the floor by his foot. He bent down to pick it up and whacked his head on the dashboard before succeeding on the second attempt. It was, of course, the ball.

“I’m glad you believe me,” he said. Jimothy looked back at the ball, and then at his hands. They were still blotchy in shades of red, brown, and orange. They still smelled like fresh acrylic paint. He imagined himself looking like that all over—not just in browns and reds, but in bright colors, perhaps reflecting his mood. He imagined them crawling, shuffling over the surface of his body like a chameleon. He imagined them glowing, illuminating the interior of the car like a multicolored disco ball.

He remembered the paintings he’d been doing for his friends. They would be all burned up. Well, they hadn’t been finished anyway. He could always do them again.

But what about…

“Hazel!” Jimothy exclaimed, sitting upright in his seat. He turned to look at Mike, eyes wide.

Mike bit his lip, fixed his gaze ahead on the road, and slowly shook his head. “Sorry, Jim,” he said quietly.

Jimothy looked out the window in the silence that followed, and tears tracked their way down his cheeks. Mike gradually slowed down to a reasonable speed, but the streetlights still flashed by with hypnotic consistency. In Jimothy’s mind their car became a tiny spaceship, flying away from everything. As Mike drove them out of the city, Jimothy saw the spark-lights of houses in the distance, peppering the empty curtain of space with evidence of forlorn souls—flecks of luminosity stranded out in a calm sea. The dark land seemed to reflect the star-sprayed sky above. Out there, in those wild empty lands, it was cold and lonely. But in the car was a warm, humming, comforting darkness. And Mike.

“Hey, Mike?” he said.

“Yeah, Jim?”

“I’m glad you’re real.”

Mike smiled.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I know.” Mike looked out his own window as he drove. “I’m glad you’re real too,” he said.

Jimothy carefully put the blue ball in the cup-holder between their seats.

“So where are we going?” he asked.

Jimothy wasn’t looking, but he could still see Mike shake his head.

“Okay,” said Jimothy, reclining his seat. “Tell me when we get there.”