In the Presence of the Lost
by Harrison Kim
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Leon walked over, ran his finger along the wheel spokes, which made a tinging sound. He seemed to recall going a long distance on a bicycle once. The seat stood black and narrow, set at the perfect height. Leon sat down. He took a ride around the front of the hotel. His legs felt like they wanted to keep pedalling, but he stopped and laid the bike against the wall.
“I’m ready to move. But why would you help me?”
Elzear said only this: “There are only two ways to leave here. One, you go back on the bus to where you came, to the place of night and snow. The other, you ride my bicycle down the valley.”
“How will I return it?”
“It’s been around a number of worlds,” Elzear said. “It will make its way here again.” He reached out and gripped Leon’s wrist, then let it go. Fingertip imprints remained on Leon’s skin, from dust and the marks of a blue pen. Elzear smiled. “There are many men who have lost their wives.”
As they talked, the bus rolled out from behind the back of the motel. Karl sat at the wheel, his window open, face thin with pink blood vessel lines standing out from his sunken cheeks.
“I’ve received another summons, Elzear,” he said. “I’m going back up into the wilderness.”
“Leon, listen,” Karl spoke to Leon, his voice low and hoarse. “We see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, that’s the nature of this world.” Leon touched the side of the bus, warmed by the rays of the sun. Karl waved his bony arm from the driver’s window as the bus rolled down the tree fringed road.
Leon watched it go. “If I ride to the end of the valley, will I find her?”
“Something’s waiting for you down there,” Elzear told him.
Leon sat on the bicycle again, he nodded to the old man with the quill pen. “I can’t sleep here,” he said. “I appreciate your help.”
“I do my part,” said Elzear.
* * *
Leon rode along under the big cottonwoods, dodging the whirling seeds, watching the high flowing river, its current full of tumbling sticks and branches. As he rode, he thought that he knew a river like this, a long time ago. He wondered: “How old is this place?” and then asked himself: “How old am I?” because when he looked down, he could not even imagine his shape or form, except for his hands. He knew the rest of him must be there, but it felt as if his lower body disappeared, his limbs numb though his mind kept moving, the bicycle always beneath, as if that became his body.
Ahead, the mountain range narrowed, he travelled along under massive red cliffs, and he thought each jagged edge resembled a face. Were they faces of people he used to know, or was that thought all in his mind? The only faces he remembered now were those of Karl and Elzear, the man of night and his brother, the man of day.
He studied the sky again, a few puffy clouds up there, some with white whorls in them like fingertips, Leon stopped for a moment and ran his hands over his own skin. He was surprised to notice his left palm and the back of both his hands full of lines and scars, the knuckles all indentations and veins rising over top, barely kept down under the skin. Yes, he was older than he ever thought.
He looked up at the cliffs and kept moving. The road narrowed here, between the trees and the river.
“You are inside Samantha’s world.” He remembered Karl’s voice, from the bus.
And could this Samantha be his wife? The one who created his whole existence, became his whole meaning? Leon reached back into his mind and tried to remember the time before he woke up in the snowy woods and heard her voice. He recalled nothing but knew he couldn’t live without hearing that voice again. Here he was now, still riding, pumping a rhythm, the road proceeding straight, with tall, thorny bushes rather than trees at the sides, as the mountains drew closer, and the river roared narrow and deep.
He coasted towards a small opening in the mountain ahead of him. The wheels spun him closer and closer, and then the rock seemed to part just enough to allow him through the gap, and when he’d made it through, the opening closed.
On the other side of that break in the rock he perceived a grey and white expanse, a mist far below. “This is my purpose,” he thought. “This is where I am going. Through the river roar, and now down to the sea.”
The bicycle sped up, as the hill steepened.
He kept his hands tight to the handlebars as, in the distance, the vista widened, the road flattened out and led towards a boat, a large ferry loading cars. There were many windows on this ferry and, as he coasted closer, he saw vague forms behind the glass. He perceived shadows in cars, too, which passed him as he pedalled at the side of the road, shapes indicating hats and coats, though he couldn’t detect any faces. He imagined they would be like those jagged profiles on the outcroppings of the cliffs he remembered from before the opening between the rocks.
The nearer he came to the boat, the fewer the cars. By the time he reached the loading dock, he was the only one moving, under the empty blue sky far above, behind him more high mountains with jagged peaks like the teeth of a saw.
Could he travel elsewhere, must he go onto this boat? It seemed all roads converged at the dock. Leon looked down to see his legs once again, thin limbs in blue pants, the shoes below vague and fuzzy. The bicycle took him towards the maw of the boat, as the loading dock opened. The thick yellow ropes holding the boat to the shore stretched tight, and behind those ropes the sea stretched right and left clear and silver.
He pedalled up the ramp, took a last look at the light of the sun falling on the water, and coasted into the black hole facing him. Darkness began as he entered, darkness filling one passage that led up and around a shadowy corner, the other passage going down.
* * *
Leon stopped to decide yet, before he could choose, he already found himself on the downslope, the light behind him disappearing. The bicycle moved between the dark walls and a ceiling that appeared to shrink as the floor kept tilting up under him.
Leon kept his head down, found the pedals hard to turn as the tunnel evened out. He breathed heavily, and stopped to test the ground, felt his feet sink in what felt like loose sand, or ashes. Another fork in the way split the passage, both routes leading up. Leon felt ahead with his hands, chose the left route, and dismounted to push his bicycle through the deepening loose material beneath him.
The walls exuded a kind of green light. Leon touched the glowing edges with his fingers, then his full hand. He could see the green glow right through the flesh. Was that heat? Leon pushed both his hands against the wall, and felt more pressure coming in. Then, the pressure vanished, as if it had never been, and the green glow turned to white. Leon pushed his way further, sinking in the sandy substance, up to his ankles. He set the bicycle against one wall and tramped on.
This must go somewhere, he thought.
His surroundings narrowed around him as he climbed, and a cold wind rushed out of the darkness ahead. For a moment, he thought of going back, to Elzear and the valley of the sun, but it would all be uphill and, when he glanced behind him, the tunnel had become too narrow to navigate standing up. It was as if the whole passage had taken on life and changed, like everything else in this Universe. He seemed to be walking through hollow bones.
What would be on the other side of those bones? It could be a garden, Leon thought. Or a bottomless pit. He remembered he’d thought he was riding onto a ferry boat. That was its shape that led him in, but now he was stuck in this endless tunnel.
He had no other choice but to go on, stumbling and sinking in the soft sand, crooking his neck to find his way without falling. The ceiling of the tunnel became so low he could not stand. He stooped over, lay down, shoved the piles of sandy material farther apart on either side, and crawled, trying to keep his body going.
There must be something more than this, he thought. More than always moving.
As he used his fingers to grab and pull himself along, the material under him dispersed further. He pushed his body through it, as if he were swimming, moving his arms and legs faster. He shivered as if he plunged through freezing water. As the material around him diffused and scattered, each grain of it took on a speck of silver light, thousands of grains shining like pearls.
And, yes, he swam faster now, pushing these grains of light aside, moving within a darkness filled and alive with the silver sand points, and the more he pushed the less resistance, and the further apart the grain specks. The harder he shoved, the faster they dispersed. In the distance, he saw the specks burst with a white fire as they transformed into stars.
Leon dropped into the huge space below him, and let his limbs spread out. There was no more resistance left, no need for it now. He’d broken free of the dark passages and the struggle through them. He floated through the vastness of an immense Universe, cascaded with thousands, millions of luminous light points. He lay suspended in silver vastness as the light points dropped all around him. They landed on his face and body. He regarded his legs, frozen and unmoving in the floating brightness, his chest covered with a sheen of starlight.
He turned his head. Beside him, within this starry Universe, floated the body of a black-haired woman, her face a mask under the growing whiteness of falling, building snow, and though her blue lips did not move he heard her speak: “I am here.” Immediately, he knew her as Samantha, his wife, just from hearing that voice again.
He wondered where she had gone, on her own travels, before returning to this place. That didn’t matter, what mattered was the knowledge and feeling that he was no longer alone.
“I cannot be without you,” he whispered, turning his head to where she lay beside him, under the blizzard-blurred evergreens, and he knew that if another bus did come, he would not take it. There was no reason to go anywhere, he was at home in this place of drifting white. There was no more ability or reason to move, as he lay with Samantha, secure in a forest space within the scent of fir. They would stay there always, together in this niche within their Universe, once lost and apart but now together again, beside each other in the everlasting dark, under falling snow.
Leon opened his eyes. He lay in a bed, a white blanket atop him. “My wife is dead,” he cried out loud.
The pale walls of his cold bedroom rose around him. He called a name, “Samantha, Samantha” over and over, as the sun shone bright and merciless through his open window.
Copyright © 2024 by Harrison Kim
