Sarah Eugene Lieber coughed. Her face was red; a vein pulsed at her receding hairline.

Robert stirred, reached out for his mother. Watching her, he began to cry. Tears gathered in his eyes, and his face, thick with baby fat, squeezed the tears out.

Sarah's fit pa.s.sed, and she touched her child's arm, stroked it gently. "It's okay, honey. Mommy's gonna be alright," she told him, then she held her palms up. Sores still covered them, red and inflamed, and she cried out.

Robert burst into tears again, his eyes following her as she left the bed.

She checked herself out in the bathroom mirror. Her face was still ripe with blisters, her neck bulged with lymph nodes, hard as rocks, and the nodes below and above her collar bones were enlarged and red. She'd done all they'd asked, had kneeled in their circle and received their hands, their prayers, had gone off her chemotherapy, had been rea.s.sured for weeks that the earth would restore her, .

"And not a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing!" she screamed, then began to cry at the pain it caused in her throat. She tore off her gown to stand naked before her mirror. She was no longer thin, but gaunt. Even the smell of food made her nauseous; she hadn't taken more than a few bites of an apple or a banana in weeks. She turned back toward her son, who had sat up and was staring at her, eyes wide, blinking slowly.

She fled the bathroom, went down the hall, looked around her cluttered living room. "Jimmy?" she called out, but the clock read after ten in the morning: Jimmy was at work, and wouldn't be back until late; he couldn't stand her decomposition, and her newfound faith in her past made him angry. Jimmy had grown up Catholic, and although he hadn't set a foot inside a church since their marriage, he still believed, if rather vaguely, in the tenets and basic dogma of his boyhood church.

Sarah fell to her knees, rifled through a laundry basket overflowing with dirty clothes. She tossed garments out until coming upon a dress. She stood, stepped into it, and padded back to the bedroom to grab Robert.

They called it Earth Cathedral. A sandstone construct in the mission style, the cathedral had been raised by Ca.s.sadaga's founding fathers, men and women who'd fled the Puritanical hysteria of the north, and had been built to the exacting dimensions of an aging Wiccan priest. Stucco textured the two-storied exterior while the gemstone, piercing in the sun, and the tripart.i.te statuary niche centered the parapet. b.u.t.tresses topped with capped urn finials, arched window, and an attic-piercing wound around the building in perfect symmetry.

Sarah parked in the gra.s.s field adjacent to the cathedral.

"Are you okay, Mommy?" asked Robert, his large brown eyes nervously watching her.

She wiped her eyes with the sides of her hands, looked down at her son. "Don't move, okay? I'll be back in a minute."

Robert nodded, stuck his thumb in his mouth, watched mildly as his mother slammed the car door and stalked off, leaving him alone. He turned, smacked his palms on the closed car windows, and noticed for the first time how hot it was, even in November, closed up in a car. And how quiet.

10.

Sarah heard the booming voice of Montague Greer. She hesitated outside the door, listening closely, then pushed the doors open and strode in, her palms sliding, pressing down the hem of her dress.

The interior was plain, notably unchurch-like. No sanctuary separated believer from priest. The walls bore no paintings, no graffiti of belief, and the pews were wooden and without padding. Once the pews ended, there was only a high-backed red chair; behind the chair, strangely, a large wooden cross hung by three wires.

She strode down the center aisle. The small congregation turned, watching. Few people made it to the midday service.

Seated in the red chair, Greer watched her, his ancient face expressionless. Then she was standing before him, shaking, and he fixed his eyes on her stomach, where he'd laid his hands the day before.

She took the dress by the shoulders, put her head through its low neck, let the garment slide off her, pool at her feet.

The people didn't gasp; they were silent. Greer breathed in deeply, lifted his eyes.

"Please," she hissed. "Please open the door."

"Sarah," said Greer.

Sarah, standing naked before him, straightened, looked down at her dress. "Please," she repeated.

"What's wrong with death, Sarah?"

"What's wrong with-"

"Yes, death. Stopping. We all must." At this his eyes clouded over. "Why are you special?"

She backed up. "Please," she asked again. "I don't want to miss him grow up. Please. Please send me."

11.

Robert didn't have to be locked in the car long to notice the heat. Sweat beaded on his brow, ran down his cheeks, gathered in his hair. (As soon as Robert saw himself in the car, he began to tremble. Montague watched him carefully as this edged toward convulsion. The memory and image began to merge, the long-suffered dream no dream at all, but only a hazy, long-ago reality.) How long had she been gone? He felt dull. Thoughts moved over him like slow wakes.

Robert climbed over the gearshift and sat on his knees in his mother's seat. His heart sped up as he reached for the steering wheel. She'd never told him not to, exactly, but he understood the tacit prohibition. He glanced around cautiously, but seeing only the sun he turned away, remembering his mother's admonition against staring into it.

Robert looked out the window at what she'd called a church. It looked like no church he'd ever seen.

(Here, his shaking slowed down, as did what he was witnessing. He knew what was coming, though he couldn't think of it. The trance had captured his mind, rendered him only a viewer, incapable of thought. The church was there, crisper than in his dreams, a stark white clay reflecting the sun, and then his mother walked out of the church, slowly; it was as if he were watching film, and this film was missing several clips, as what he saw moved disjointedly, like bad stop-motion animation.) And then the light appeared behind her. Wrapped it tendrils around her. Engulfed her.

Robert watched himself, the boy, staring at his vanishing mother with mouth agape, eyes wide.

Robert's eyes clicked open. He was pale. "s.h.i.t," he mumbled.

Monty, stroking his chin thoughtfully, said, "You were under less than a minute when you went into convulsions."

Robert stared at him. Sweat streaked his cheeks.

"The memory hit before I regressed you, and you screamed your mother's name. It took me fifteen minutes to get hold of you."

"I-I remember . . . all of it. But I wasn't even five."

"The mind is a warehouse. Every memory is stored, but as a person ages it becomes more and more difficult to access all the files."

"Did I -"

"Yes, you described the memory as you reclaimed it. It was much as I remember it."

"My father told me she burst into some kind of church, and that-"

Monty nodded. "He didn't think you'd come looking for me, or he imagined I had died long ago. He couldn't accept your mother disappearing in this town. Not here."

"You should have heard him." Robert looked up. The last frame of the memory suddenly hit him. "Where is she?" His mind raced, but the other man only smiled. "She's not dead, is she?"

"She should be."

"Where is she?"

"Your mother should have died years ago, but instead has upset the balance of things. So now it's you who are sick. I made a mistake when I sent her."

"Sent her where?"

"I am tired of this," said Monty. "You'll understand the door if I open it."

In one smooth motion he stood, tossed off his garment. He was nude. Fat and muscle moved, like worms, beneath his loose skin. He raised his arms with a grunt, opened his hands. They nearly touched the crossbeams.

Suddenly, Robert was very afraid. Fear had been near for so long he was surprised he noticed, but this was more. This was terror.

Monty lifted his legs one at a time, stomped them on the floorboards like a sumo wrestler. It was like thunder. He closed his hands, smashed them onto his thighs, timing the blows to his stomps. After a time of this he paused, reared back, his mouth wide. A deep, hollow sound came from him. Then he brought his entire body down, and both his fists smashed into the floorboards.

Robert stood, reached out, screamed for him to stop, but his voice was swallowed by the echoing sound of the blows.

Then he saw it.

It was in the middle of the room and obscured half of Monty's body. Robert reached out and the room wavered, shimmered like the surface of a disturbed pond. As he neared the hole in the center of the room, he c.o.c.ked his head like a fascinated dog, but didn't notice that it had grown quiet. Everything was utterly silent.

Deep within the black was a color. It wasn't quite purple, and wasn't red, but was as indefinite as fog, and he tried to make it out, but the color dispersed, floating against the black like a cloud.

Suddenly, a sensation Robert had never before felt gripped him: All his life since that day outside Earth Cathedral had been leading up to this. Every moment had been nothing but a preparation for this. He supposed most men had this feeling only once, perhaps twice, in their life: President's and dictator's, philosophers and scientists.

He stepped forward.

His foot slipped, and he looked down, saw a beach and screamed, his eyes wide and disbelieving. Stepping back, he dropped to his knees, clutched long stalks of gra.s.s. Yellow gra.s.s. A heavy, ominous thunder walked across the sky. He flinched, looked up, and the heavens were vast and starless and engorged. Cloud formations drifted, very close. They were gray and black, though off in the distance a slash of purple c.u.mulous rippled with lightning. He glanced over his shoulder. A crimson haze hung motionless. "Where-" but he knew.

I've dreamt this, he remembered, and thought back to when his mother had vanished, how her eyes had been glazed over, as if she had been seeing past the world, and how she'd disappeared before him. Perhaps she hadn't disappeared at all, he thought. Perhaps she came here.

Slowly, he took to his feet, turned around. He was on the edge of a cliff. Too many steps in one direction and he would fall hundreds of feet, land on a beach. Behind him, foliage met the sky. He stepped to the edge. Rocks surrounded the base of the mountain; some lay near the water.

Water that did not move.

He stared, studying it, kept thinking his eyes were tricking him. His eyes roamed the ocean to the horizon line, but none of it moved with the rhythms of tides. It pooled at the sh.o.r.e. Feet inland, the sand showed none of the signs of erosion. It was dry, the color of bone.

Just then he heard something and jumped back. In the sky above the ocean a tail slipped into a cloud. He made out the ripple of wings. Then something screeched and he spun, his arms defensively before his face, but saw nothing.

He remained in a defensive posture for a time, then he slowly straightened, took a couple of steps, searching the brush for signs of movement. As he neared the edge of the forest, he considered reaching up, touching the curving arm of a branch, then thought, What if none of this exists? What if you never came up from the hypnosis?

This made sense. It more than made sense, in fact, but if it were true wouldn't this very thought awaken him?

He felt like screaming, like tearing through the forest, but he couldn't bring himself to believe the thought that made sense. When the memory of his mother had hit him, it had been real, but he hadn't been behind the little boy's eyes. He'd been a voyeur, a fly on the psychic wall.

What if you're dead?

And that clinched it. Doesn't matter. If I am, I am. But I can smell this place, I can see this place, I can feel it beneath my feet, and these are the criteria human's use to define what is real.

"Boy, some door," he said, taking a deep breath and looking around, wondering if all he saw his mother had seen as well. If Monty had indeed opened the same door, and she had crossed over, was she still here? Could he find her?

Robert entered the forest.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Death of the Past, Birth of the Future

1.

It was nearly midnight and Robert hadn't returned.

Mary was pacing the living room, biting her fingernails, eying the phone. Finally, she lifted it, dialed her number and waited for one of her parents to pick up. Instead, Grady did. "Where's Mom and Dad?" she asked.

"They went out," said Grady. "Why? What's up?"

"The guy hasn't come back yet."

"Has he called?"

"I wouldn't be calling you if he had."

Grady hesitated. For a moment, all Mary heard was the hum of her breathing, which sounded somehow like thinking. "What are you going to do?" asked her friend, when finally she spoke.

"And here I was calling you for ideas."

"What if he's been in an accident?"

Mary turned that one over, along with the possibility that his sickness, whatever it was, had bested him. Should she call local hospitals? With that, Mary was off to the races: anything was possible. "Maybe I'll stay here tonight. No sense waking Jenn."

"Jenn? That the girl?"

"She's upstairs sleeping." Mary absently stared through the banister, suddenly getting the feeling the little girl was sitting at the top of the stairs. But Jenn wasn't there. "Yeah," she continued. "Just tell Mom and Dad I'm sleeping here, and that I'll give them a call in the morning. Unless he gets back before then."

Mary said goodbye, hung up, then sat on the couch in the den and flipped on the television. Conan O'Brien was on. His red hair flopped as he told a joke about Enron. But nothing seemed funny tonight. In time, her eyes shut. O'Brien's whine drifted in and out of her mind.

She dreamed.