Words came from a long distance, words spoken by female voices.
"You say he just fell over on the street and was mumbling a bunch of nonsense words? How strange."
"We've not found anything physically wrong. Does he have a history of mental illness?"
The voices cleared, becoming identifiable as two separate women.
"I don't know. I haven't seen him since High School. I only recognized him because I looked him up to come visit."
"He's awake." That voice was different from the other two. The room failed to form completely as he opened his eyes to search for its origin. A nurse that stood nearby didn't seem to have heard it, but another woman nodded to herself.
"Or, I should say, half-_awake_."
The second woman's fingers flicked out of sight of the nurse, as if motioning for the someone to be quiet. The nurse looked down, saw the patient was awake.
"Hello. This young lady says you went to High School with her."
There was something familiar about the woman, it was true, but he couldn't place it.. "I don't know. What happened?"
"A blinding flash of the obvious, I'd say."
"Who said that?" He could almost see him- it? The words had come from a blurry image, very bright, like an over-exposed photograph, that rested near the second woman.
The nurse bustled in reply. "I'm Nurse Leavenly. You fell over in the street out there, but there's nothing wrong with you that we can tell. If you'd like, this young lady is here to take you home."
The world solidified as he focused, and the bright thing just faded out, as if it hadn't really been there. "Sure.. Yeah. I need to get home, I think." /Where is my home, anyway?/
The 'young lady' nodded. "I'll give you a lift home. Your clothes are on the chair over there; we'll be out in the hall."
"Oh, yes," clucked the nurse. "But I must be on my way. I have many more people to see before I'm done with my rounds." The voices faded behind the door as it closed.
The young man got up and began to get dressed. The feeling that something was watching him crept around his neck. He found his wallet in his pants. His name- Mark Harren. That was a start.
/And what did that voice mean when it said I was half-Awake? What was so important about- wait a minute. What voice? There was nothing there to say it. Must have been from some dream or something. Maybe I'm just going crazy. After all, I can't remember anything, anyway. Maybe I'm an escaped mental patient. Or something./
For some reason, Mark found these thoughts more comforting than that some bright figure can talk in an inhuman voice that he and some strange lady heard but not an ordinary nurse. At least the room was solidly real, with the antiseptic but stable white walls and a small table under a window that showed normal life going on outside.
He pulled on his shirt and buttoned it on the way out. Mark didn't know why he trusted that young woman, but he did. She just seemed familiar, somehow.
"So.. remind me your name again?" he asked.
She smiled back at him as if greeting an old friend. "Still bad with names, eh? It's Marie."
Mark made a noise of affirmation. He still didn't really recognize her, but something prompted him to go along with it.
"C'mon. I've already cleared it. All they need is your signature that you feel alright and we can get going."
Mark didn't quite feel all right, but he nodded and signed it anyway. They dropped it off by the nurse and walked out of the hospital. Maria led the way down the sidewalk, towards the residential section of town.
"Woah. Aren't we taking a car?"
She shook her head. "You need more time than that, kid. C'mon. You've got a lot to learn realfast and I'm not the best of teachers."
Irritation dug at Mark at the 'kid' comment. She couldn't be any younger than he was. He jogged to catch up with her. "What do you mean?"
She gave him a critical look. "There's a part of you that knows. Unfortunately, I don't think your version that knows is as vocal as mine."
Pressure bore down on his head, a migraine that seemed to push from the back forward. "What are you talking about?"
She stopped. Mark looked about and realized that the two of them were on a private corner in a silent neighborhood. Birds chirped quietly and a dog drowsed inside the yard across the street, while large trees hung over them, a shelter from the busy world. They were tucked away in the shade of the leaves, by an iron fence laden with morning glories. "Look." The young lady took out a blunt knife and walked over to the fence. "Watch this." She took a deep breath, muttered a few words, and slashed at the fence with the knife.
That dull knife cut through the iron bars like water. It didn't even seem to touch the metal. Instead a blue line had flashed along the cutting edge.
"That's.. impossible."
She put away the knife and smiled. "Yeah. It is. But I still did it."
The pressure bore down again. Slowly, the bright figure from earlier faded into sight beside Marie, as if the pressure brought on such a vision. A few raindrops spattered down.
"How- what the hell is going on?"
She laughed a little weakly. "It was tough for me, too. I didn't want to believe it because it was too good to be true. You just don't want to believe. I can cut through metal with a knife that couldn't carve cream cheese. The sooner you accept that, the easier it gets."
"But.." it just wasn't possible. "What it this? Some kind of acid trip?"
She laughed again. "If it were, I think it'd be easier. Let's just say the laws of reality can be violated just like laws against theft can." The figure by her side seemed to nod.
"And what is that?"
She humphed. "You know, you're one of the very few people besides me who can see him at all. Have you seen the movie Harvey? With the giant rabbit?"
Mark nodded. He had, one night on cable. He didn't remember why, but he did have fuzzy memories of it.
"Well, he was real after all, wasn't he?"
He nodded. Harvey had been. "But that was just a movie." Was this girl one of those weirdos who couldn't tell the difference between movies and reality?
Mark looked at the figure, who clarified as he doubted himself. Was he one of those weirdos?
The figure was fascinating. As the details grew clearer, Mark's interest increased, and even more came into focus. He was dressed in a jaguar's skin, lined with brilliant, scaly feathers that sparkled when the sun hit them. He wore a mask of a snarling cat face, and his own face and body was painted. A thick grey layer of eraser-grade rubber covered his feet, and he wore a cloth twisted around his hips rather than normal clothes. Big pieces of jade pooled in the mask, especially the eyes.
"Don't you know it's not polite to stare?"
The voice was jarring. The figure's lips moved to it, so it had to be his. It was clearer, almost normal. Almost too normal. He talked almost the way she did.
Mark glared at Marie. "How are you doing this?"
She shrugged. "He's been there, making his smart-ass comments the whole time. You just didn't see him."
"Right," the strange man said, as audible now as anyone else.
"So why can I see him now?"
She grinned. "You've finally accepted the fact that he exists, despite the obvious anachronisms and your own good sense."
That wasn't reassuring. "What do you mean?"
She grinned again. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy," she quoted. "You see as much of the weird stuff as you want to see."
Mark groaned. "Great. So I get quoted at by some strange woman I don't even know and insulted by a guy in a cat skin. What next?"
She shrugged. "I told you I'm not a good teacher. I'm a writer. But there's no going back once you start to see these things. Something in you's just not going to let you forget and walk away."
"Why me?"
She shrugged again. "I don't know. Maybe you're a nail."
"Huh?" he asked intelligently.
Marie's gaze turned serious. "There's an old saying, and it goes like this: For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe, the horse was lost. For want of the horse, the rider was lost. For want of the rider, the message was lost. For want of the message, the battle was lost. For want of the battle, the war was lost. For want of the war, the kingdom was lost. All for the want of a horseshoe nail."
"Oh." The thought that he might be so important made Mark weak in the knees. "I don't know. I can't remember anything."
She toyed with her bottom lip with her teeth. "I think you're out of my league. Let's get moving. I think you need to see a friend of mine."
He followed. What could he do? It was all so confusing, and this blasted headache refused to go away. The world blurred, like it was being soaked and starting to run. There was a sense of something out there, just out of reach. It was bright, but monstrous. Foreign. Like all those war movies where all the bad guys speak German and are more frightening because you don't know what's going on. Mark cowered before its presence, and a darkness sprang over him.
- - - - - -
"He just fell over on the street. And nothing's wrong with him? Alright. We'll take care of it from here on out. Oh, and was anyone with him?" Once again, the voices came faintly. The unavoidable moment of deja vu helped bring Mark a little closer to the sounds.
"No, sir. Though one of the drivers said he thought it looked more like somebody had dragged him behind that bush than him just falling there. And there was a box of mints just a few feet away."
"Thank you. We'll handle it."
"Thank goodness. Do you think someone else was there?"
"I'm not at liberty to say, but we've been tracking some suspicious occurrences and this may be related." The crisp, official quality of the voice sounded ominous. Mark hoped they weren't tracking him. He wondered where Marie had went. He hoped she was okay.
The world moved before his eyes, and he saw her, hiding in the crowd across the street. Marie was frowning at somebody next to her, and an empty space in the moving crowd was occupied by the faint hint of her bright friend. "They've got him. Five minutes to go for help and they've already taken him away. What are we going to do?"
The new guy next to her turned and leaned up against a wooden fence post. He shook his head. "We've got to get him back soon or they'll make him one of them. Or kill him." The matter of fact way he said that seemed to go with the general rough air he had. He looked like a survivalist or a drifter, with a rough build and similar clothes.
Marie nodded and glanced at the empty spot with the faint glow. "Yeah. He's got to make his own choices." She took out a silver pen and a small notebook. "What's the plan?"
"We've got to do it normally, for now, or they'll see us," opined the man. "Wait until they start to take him off to one of the labs or something."
She nodded, but looked a little unsure. "Right. Think you might use a normal name, this time?"
The drifter looked offended. "What, you think Bleeding Stag stands out too much?" He winked.
Marie grinned and took out an Altoids tin, sticking one in her mouth, then grew serious again. "This is going to be tough to do without hurting anyone." She glanced at the empty space and Mark noticed the brightness was gone. "And he's left again. Oh, well. All he does is comment, anyway."
"Bleeding Stag" nodded. "Think the black hats'll be expecting us?"
She shrugged. "I've never seen them unprepared. But I stay away from them as much as possible." She chewed her lip. "I suppose I'm ready for it."
Mark knew he shouldn't be able to see this, to hear this. He was lying in a hospital bed across the street. He wondered if the conversation was specifically about him, and, if it did, who the black hats were. He faintly remembered hearing that phrase before in a movie context. Government agents who went around covering things up. If they were talking about him, he might be in a lot of trouble.
Mark opened his eyes. The scene outside was replaced by the hospital room around him, so similar to what he saw just a short time earlier, today. He got up and roamed around, suddenly restless to leave. There was one thing that stopped him from just walking out, however. When he looked out the window of his door, he saw the backs and sides of two monolithic men with reflective sunglasses. It finished the mostly forgotten phrase the people outside had used. "Black hats and mirror shades."
Like anyone who watches the Sci-Fi channel, Mark had developed a healthy distrust of government agents, a half-remembered suspicion. He really wanted to leave, now, but there was no way out that door. He dressed hastily and the pressure in his mind returned. It was insistent, matching his hurried concern, and the air itself seemed to press on him. He couldn't get out now, but he had to leave. How could he leave?
Reality bent around him. The sun unrose and the shadows reasserted themselves. Even the lights in his room were flicked off as time raced backwards. Time reasserted itself just as a nurse came in, flicking on the lights and carrying some linens from a cart. The nurse saw Mark and frowned.
"It's after visiting hours. I'm going to have to ask you to leave, or I'll call security."
With a slightly relieved smile, Mark reassured her that he had no intention of staying there and made his exit. No one stopped him. Nobody knew to. However, his watch refused to work or even be reset to the time on the clock in the lobby.
Mark was confused, and didn't remember how to get home, but he did find the park and a bench to sit on. A bank outside the park said it was yesterday. Mark was exhausted, without being quite sure why, and an unsettling oddity seemed to follow him, like a wake. As soon as he was comfortably seated, he discovered that he was asleep.
- - - - - -
The young man dreamt. He stood on a huge chessboard where the squares were marked by grass and trees in a peasant's tunic. It reminded him of Through the Looking Glass. He found himself wondering if there was some knight out there in the woods with a helmet shaped like a sugar loaf.
"You're supposed to be the white knight."
The voice was impatient, annoyed. Its quality was like Marie's jaguar man's, but the tone was more familiar. In fact, it sounded something like his own. However, look as he might, Mark couldn't see its source.
"You'll never get there if you don't get going."
"Going where?" Mark felt the heaviness of its impatience, like a foot tapping down on the landscape around him, intangible, yet present with a weight beyond measuring. It was like the pressure on his mind, earlier. As if whatever it was that spoke to him was pushing him along.
"What do you want?" The question seemed irrelevant, but Mark couldn't argue with the voice.
"Um..." The board stretched out before him. Why this image? "I wish I could remember who I am."
"Then get out there and find it. And hurry up."
He rushed out, feeling as if there was a strong wind at his back. The paths unwound in such familiar patterns that his feet moved along them with ease and a lightness he had not known since he awoke this morning. Things unraveled and showed themselves to him.
- - - - - -
Mark awoke again to evening and long shadows. No one had bothered him, and he wondered why. Then he saw a familiar figure, muttering to thin air with an annoyed expression. Now he could place her; a novelist whose odd concepts didn't really net her a strong readership, but her fans were devoted. Her fantasy had cheerful overtones of an unsettling, wild nature, and the silver pen in her hand seemed appropriate. A second figure stood watch several trees over, the rough wanderer from earlier. Mark didn't know whether to feel grateful or indignant at their watchfulness.
"You didn't go to High School with me," he accused Marie lightly.
She turned around and smiled. "Yeah, well. Had to have an excuse. You know how lucky you are the Men in Black haven't found you again yet? Though it -is- pretty hard to trace someone who's jumped time."
Mark ohed softly. "Is that what happened? So... Why can't I see your friend, now? And what is he, anyway?"
A smirk settled on her face for a brief moment. "You could see him, now, if you really wanted to, but I suspect that your buddy is letting you do it on your own from here on out instead of making you see him. They do that. As for what they are, to use Jungian jargon, they are fragments of the universal unconsciousness that are identified with specific people. This allows these specific people to use their power. Or, as the Greeks would say, they represent the divine spark within all of us. Mine shows up a lot because I'm good at accepting the absurd and not good at taking initiative." She shrugged. "That allows him a way of pushing me along that I can be comfortable with. Unfortunately, it also makes him more noticeable to others like you and me."
It did make a strange sort of sense, but it took a few moments for Mark to catch up. "I guess so. Look, I'm a white knight. Er, figuratively speaking. And there's something important that I remembered. I used to work at a company with a government grant. There's some experiment going on where they're stealing hicks and not putting them back. Make sense to you?"
Marie let out a long sigh. "I wish these sorts of problems would stop showing up." She gave the emptiness occupied by her invisible companion a weak smile. "Yeah, yeah, it's part of being aware of reality, I know." She faced Mark again. "Yeah, it makes sense. Might even be the same folks who were trying to whisk you away, if it's government backed. They're like us; aware of how reality can be changed. The difference, I suppose, is that they want it to stay still or go just their way and no one else's."
"Sounds like a tough life."
She smiled wryly. "It gets more exciting all the time. I don't really like excitement, actually, but we tend to get stuck with it. However, if you're a white knight, figuratively speaking, then I'll bet you'll be in the thick of any fighting that'll come up around here. I know a few others. Here's my phone number." She handed Mark a slip of paper. "Give me a call and I'll fill you in."
They exchanged goodbyes and Mark set out for home, now that he remembered where it was. He decided that before he went into combat among people who can warp reality, he'd like to take a shower.
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