In the Presence of the Lost
by Harrison Kim
part 1
Leon heard his wife’s voice calling: “I am here!”
He breathed in the scent of fir, opened his eyes to snow falling on his face. His body shivered, he pulled his parka around him. He must stand, or he’d freeze out here in the darkness.
“Where are you?” Leon called. “I cannot be without you,” although he did not understand why he said this.
No answer, only a silence closing in. Leon pushed himself to rise, his hands numb upon the snowy ground, and stared up into the flakes, so many dropping, barely any space between them. He looked down, up to his knees in whiteness. Trees, their branches laden and low, stretched into the night ahead of him.
A light rose from beyond the slope ahead, misted by the flurries, then it split into two; and with this, the sound of wheels crunching. The shape of a bus rose up through gaps in the forest, a steel body winding its way through the deep white. Leon held up his arms and yelled. The bus came closer, huge, “The Valley” in lit black letters on its front.
In the headlights, the blizzard slanted sideways, though Leon felt no wind, only an opening up as the bus stopped and its doors unfastened, the driver’s pale and wrinkled face framed in yellow haze, as he said, “We’re heading up over the pass,” his yellow knuckles on the wheel, “You are lucky. This is my last stop.”
Leon climbed on, into the smoky haze, and fell into the seat beside the driver.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Within your world,” said the driver. “Call me Karl.” His jaws lay sunken, skin folds hung below them. The bus moved silently forth, as his voice sounded hoarse and low.
Leon looked around the inside, full of a soft, tobacco smelling mist, he made out a few forms here and there. Out the back, he could see the flakes falling. He tried to detect the path of the tires, indented white between the firs. All stayed hushed, the bus engine made no noise. Leon stared towards the front window. The high beams penetrated as far into the darkness as his vision could see, then the light vanished among the trees. The bus moved silently along this narrow, unplowed route.
“I don’t remember anything” Leon said. “Except my wife’s voice.”
“Just remember who you are,” said Karl.
Leon thought of the plaintive tone, calling: “I am here.”
“Maybe she’s still back in the trees!” he said, but he had seen nothing around him, except snow.
Karl leaned forward, peering into the night. “There was a story, long ago, about a woman who devoted her whole life to another. Samantha, they called her. We are inside her Universe and yours, above your garden, behind your stormy mountains. We share this place, under her spirit and connection.” He turned towards Leon and kept steering the wheel. “You miss her, though I am saying she is with us now.”
“Her name was Samantha?” Leon asked. How could this happen, that the one he held so dearly in his heart be unrecalled? And what was all this talk about a garden? This was a blizzard, a frozen winter scene.
“You are travelling by yourself now,’ said Karl. “But she is here, all around us.”
Leon stared out into the night at the giant falling flakes. The bus kept winding its way up the mountain.
“I don’t understand,” he said, but he felt a loss in his heart.
Karl smiled, a long smile half-hidden by the haze, as he turned back to the wheel. “Almost at the pass.”
He swerved the wheel. The vehicle burst through a high snowbank, and whiteness flew up and over the front window. Mist obscured everything for a moment, and Karl took his foot off the brake, “It’s a difficult road to believe in,” he said. “So let’s let it slide.”
Leon considered leaping out. He could kick open the door and fly, but then what? His arms felt hemmed in, his legs tightened against the seat as the bus dipped again through several feet of snow. Chunks of white churned and slid up and over the windows.
Leon yelled at Karl “Which direction are we going?”
Karl hunched over, his long arms clutched the steering column, dark veined hands taut, blue eyes watching as the land fell away ahead. The trunks of trees showed black and spare, the vehicle zig-zagged, avoiding them all, though Karl barely turned the wheel. To Leon, everything moved in slow motion.
“It’s not possible,” Leon said. “How can we miss those trees?”
“Most everything is space,” Karl said. “This bus is mostly space, threading through another space within a storm.” He raised a long, bony arm. “Your mind is with your wife, is it not?”
“Yes,” Leon said. “Though I have lost the details, my heart says she meant the world to me.” Why he said this he wasn’t sure, yet he understood that this was so; there was a truth somewhere, and this thought alone felt real, as the bus lunged once more around a narrow bend.
“It’s the speed that matters,” Karl stated. “And we are always on time.”
He turned the bus along the edge of another slope and crested that, as the front end burst out upon a vista, slopes of firs and pines stretching into the long distance, with a green valley below. A steep road fell ahead of them. As they switch backed down, the snow stopped falling, and the sun shone over the mountains ranging the other side of the valley.
The vehicle rolled over bumps and potholes, towards a village at the edge of a winding river. Leon noticed a few buildings growing clearer as the haze inside the bus vanished like the snow, and the slow-motion ride sped up to normal. Light streamed in the front window. Leon inspected the bus seats around him. Piles of blankets lay everywhere. I thought those were the passengers, he mused, but there’s only Karl and I.
Leon pressed his face to the window, looking for other people. The bus coasted along beside fields of corn and alfalfa. He watched seed pods flying off giant cottonwoods standing on both sides of the road, brown pods spinning like tiny windmills, many hitting the roof and sides of the bus, like pounding raindrops. A few buildings lay ahead: a green and blue hotel and some unpainted houses, the ancient sign outside the hotel read: “Rooms Available.”
“We stop here,” said Karl. “This place takes care of us, between our travels.”
“But where do I go?” Leon asked.
Karl pulled up to the hotel. “You can stay there,” he said.
He handed over a piece of paper, which read: “A free pass for the traveller.” Leon looked at the sky. The sun had stayed in the same place since the bus crested the mountain pass.
“In this valley, night never comes,” said Karl. “Light is the only thing that falls here.”
Leon nodded. He moved by himself, he knew, in this bright place. Alone, whether on a bus, in a hotel, in the forest, in the dark or in the light. His wife had disappeared, somewhere in this world, or beyond it, and left him lost.
He stared up into the sky, blue and curving over the mountaintops on this perpetual day and detected the faint zig-zag lines of the road. What a distance, so high and steep! He felt enclosed, inside the day’s brilliance, with the massive forest walls on either side.
He remembered how everything in the valley seemed so small when the bus roared out of the storm at the top of the pass. He had become one of those small things. He remembered the call of his wife’s voice, how faint when it sounded “I am here!” Maybe nothing was as large, and nothing as little as it seemed. Everything would unfold to its proper size. He would see what the hotel offered.
“Just take a key.” Karl pointed to a set on the wall.
“Is there anyone else here?” Leon asked.
Karl nodded. “There are many, just as when we were on the bus, though they did not need to be seen, as you did not need to perceive all the snowfall on the hills. These passing forms mingle and move now, parallel to us, in their own spaces and worlds.”
“I can’t see anybody,” said Leon.
Karl told him, “As I said, there is more space than you know, between things.”
“So, my wife could be here somewhere,” Leon said.
“You heard her voice.” Karl replied. “Do you feel her warmth?” He stared up at the sun.
“I only feel cold,” Leon said.
He opened the door to his tiny room, a bed in one corner and a cracked window out to the mountains. He lay down on the bed, tried to close his eyes. Sunlight filled the window, flying cottonwood seeds hit the glass with a click and a pop. Leon studied the back of his hotel pass. It read: “We exist side by side, you and I.”
His heartbeat quickened. He raised himself up, stopped to look out the window once more, rolled his shoulders, stretched his arms and legs against the hotel walls. There was no way he could stay and, after reading the hotel pass, he could not sleep.
* * *
Leon stepped down the stairs, past paintings of fir trees. The needles seemed to push out of the pictures. He stopped and inhaled the scent of pine, then walked out into the lobby, where an old man holding a long quill pen sat in a black chair and stated: “So you decided to go?”
The man’s hatchet shaped head, resonant voice and crinkled knuckles resembled Karl’s.
“Do you know the bus driver?” Leon asked.
The man nodded: “Oh, yes, he’s my brother, the man of night, always bringing in new passengers.” He took Leon’s hotel pass in his blue veined hand, held it up to the light. “My name’s Elzear,” he said. “I pulled my own coffin around the world, sleeping in its darkness when I tired, until one day I woke up here in this place of eternal light.”
Leon stared at Elzear’s face, all huge eyebrows and grimace. He glanced out the window and the mountains seemed to lean away, giving a wider space. He followed the edge of one peak. It resembled the shape of a face; it could be Elzear’s face, or his own.
“Why did you choose to live like that?”
“It was my immortality,” Elzear said. “Every night I slept in my coffin, and every morning I awakened and began a new day. The moving itself kept me alive. Now, this beautiful valley is my crypt. I wouldn’t want to open my eyes anywhere else. Where did you rise today?”
“I woke up lying in the snow,” Leon told him. “And I heard my wife’s voice telling me over and over, “I am here.”
“That’s a frozen sound,” Elzear traced his fingers along the top of the hotel counter, which was covered in dust. “You were lucky. The bus came for you.” He held his fingertips up to the window, which was also covered in dust. “We walk through each other’s worlds.” He turned his hands around and held them up in front of Leon’s face. “You must keep moving.”
Leon stared at the whorls of Elzear’s fingers, so many intricate folds and twists made clear by the fine yellow dirt that coloured them. “Will you help me find my wife?” he asked.
“I can’t do that, but I will give you something.” The old man took Leon outside, where a blue and white bicycle stood against a wall. “I will give you my bike to ride the road beside the river,” the old man said. “Your purpose will be to reach the end of that road.”
Copyright © 2024 by Harrison Kim
