Ascending Read online

  And now they had come back to their own world. To wait.

  His world—Ryerson's world—had spit them out, had pushed them back.

  So now they waited.

  Waited to do what they had been created to do, to perform, to function, to be—just as the black widow spider waits for weeks under a porch for the hapless fly or the errant hand.

  So these two entities waited.

  Perhaps they were not even aware of time, or change. Did they have memories here? Ryerson wondered. Were they a part of someone's photo albums, boys dressed in white for their first communions, boys sniggering at cameras, boys growing into men, men growing into . . . this?

  To wait.

  To be—again—what this strange world had designed them to be.

  But he knew that he was only guessing.

  And he knew, as well, that if he waited here and watched, that this awful world, this place where evil was created, would take him for itself.

  "Ryerson!" Lenny called. "Come back to us!"

  He called back, "My God, I want to!"

  ~ * ~

  He had gotten himself into something far beyond his comprehension, Lenny realized. It made him feel afraid, alone, vulnerable. It made him feel as if he were blind and in a room cluttered with bottles of nitroglycerine. How could he move? Where would he go? He was stuck. The only thing he could do was reach out and touch whatever was near.

  He did it.

  ~ * ~

  Ryerson reflexively grabbed the hand offered him and yanked hard on it.

  It was like yanking at a wall.

  ~ * ~

  Dr. Lloyd, bending over Ryerson's body, whispered, "His face!"

  Tom, the medical technician standing by, said, "Sorry, doctor."

  "It's coming back," Lloyd declared.

  Tom leaned over for a better look. He saw a ghostly image in the darkness where Ryerson's face should have been, and he straightened and retreated, in awe, to the opposite side of the walkway.

  ~ * ~

  The hand Ryerson clutched was cold and hard, like the hand of a dead man. But it was himself, he realized, who was the dead man, himself who was trying to reach back into the world of the living.

  There was a ring on the hand; he recognized it. It was Lenny Baker's ring, and Lenny's hand. He held very tightly to it.

  ~ * ~

  Lenny thought that the hand he clutched in the darkness was barely there, as if he were clutching a leaf. "Ryerson!" he called. "Hold on!"

  ~ * ~

  The light vanished as abruptly as if a switch had been thrown.

  And with the darkness came again the distant muttering of many voices.

  "Lenny!" Ryerson called. "For God's sake . . ."

  He felt pressure at his arms, his rib cage, the sides of his legs, his temples, as if he were being forced into a tube.

  He was feeling the pressure of hands and legs and bodies against him.

  He was being pushed out. Expelled.

  Just as his world had expelled Steve Huckaby and Fredrick Dunn, so this world and its people were expelling him.

  The pressure increased.

  And he felt not so much that he was being pushed out as in. Into himself. Into his own soul.

  And still he felt Lenny Baker's cold hand, and he clung hard to it. "Help me!" he screamed. "For God's sake, help me!"

  ~ * ~

  "Dammit!" Lenny screamed. "Dammit, Rye!"

  Ryerson heard a low, grisly crunching sound. The sound of his own soul yielding to the pressure of the creatures that ruled here.

  Then the face of Fredrick Dunn was before him, within him in the darkness. And the anguish on it was like a layer of sweat. Words came from it; "Tell my mother I love her."

  Lenny felt Ryerson's hand melt away, as if it were water. "God, no!" he screamed.

  ~ * ~

  On the walkway over the railroad tracks, Ryerson Biergarten groped blindly at the air and struggled to his feet, pushed Dr. Lloyd away, stumbled to a window, and screamed.

  He had returned.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THREE DAYS LATER

  “Thank you, Lenny," Ryerson said, and shook his hand.

  "For what?" Lenny asked, because he had no concrete idea of exactly what had happened in the CN Tower. In his memory, it was like the bottom layer of graffiti on a wall that has fifty years of graffiti layered on it.

  "For being ... persistent!" Ryerson explained, and got into his Volkswagen. It was parked in a public parking lot on Front Street West, not far from the tower. Creosote—retrieved two days earlier from the Toronto City Pound—lay sleeping in the backseat. Ryerson closed the door, rolled the window down and looked at Lenny. "For being human," he added.

  "Sure I'm human," Lenny said, smiling. "Aren't we all?"

  Ryerson grinned and said, "See you."

  "Are you coming back?" Lenny asked.

  "Yes. I'll be back. This is a beautiful city."

  Lenny grinned. "We like it." His grin faded. He lifted his pudgy chin to indicate the CN Tower. "What's up there, Rye?"

  Ryerson shook his head. "Nothing's up there, Lenny." He shrugged. "Nothing unique, anyway."

  "I don't understand."

  "It's like . . . a blanket, I think. It covers all of us."

  Lenny stooped over and put his hands on the bottom of the driver's window. "I still don't understand, Rye. And I don't think you do, either."

  Ryerson smiled.

  "Well," Lenny coaxed, "do you?”

  "If I said that I didn't, I'd be lying. And if I said that I did, I'd be lying, too." He shook his head in confusion. "I'm a part of it; we're all a part of it." A pause. "We exist in it. We do what we have to do. We try to understand ourselves." He shook his head again. "Do you remember a speech I made once, Lenny?" He glanced at the sleeping Creosote. "About him, and the wolf inside him. About possession."

  "I remember."

  Ryerson grinned. "It may or may not have been bullshit. If it was, then it wasn't intended. I try to say the things that I think are true."

  "Don't we all?"

  "Yes." He paused, then; "Dammit!"

  "Sorry?" Lenny said, surprised.

  "We're thrust here from somewhere, Lenny."

  "I don't understand that."

  "Well I do!"

  Lenny straightened. He looked silently at Ryerson for a moment, glanced at the tower, then at Mario's Restaurant, a half-block south. "I'm going to get some lunch," he said.

  Ryerson ignored him. "We're thrust here from somewhere, Lenny. We do what we have to do, and then we go back to wherever we came from. It's simple."

  "If you say so, Rye."

  Ryerson looked at him for a couple of seconds, then he said, "No, Lenny. I want it to be simple. I want it to be easily pinned down. I want to say that there is this place"—he pointed at the ground—"and that there is that place"—he lifted his chin, as Lenny had, to indicate the area above the tower—"and we are all shuffled back and forth somehow between those places. It would be . . . orderly."

  "The universe isn't orderly," Lenny told him.

  "The universe is perfect," Ryerson said. "It works, so it's perfect. And there is nothing—anywhere—that says we have to understand it."

  "But you do?" Lenny asked.

  Ryerson started the Volkswagen. "Enjoy your lunch," he shouted over the clatter of the little engine, and realzed that "Enjoy your lunch" was one of the first things he had ever said to Lenny.

  "Sorry?" Lenny said because he hadn't heard him.

  Ryerson shouted, "Enjoy your lunch," and put the Volkswagen in gear. "Thank you for being there."

  Lenny continued to look confused.

  Ryerson pulled away, stopped at Front Street West, turned right, drove past the tower.

  Creosote woke, scrambled to the front of the car, and settled down on Ryerson's lap. Ryerson scratched idly at the dog's ears. Creosote gurgled.

  "Hi, pal," Ryerson said.

  bsp; Wright, T.M., Ascending