The Space between Atoms 44

 Terah looked around hungrily for Caileigh.  Instead a massive gust of wind blew a tree down across the abandoned road with a cannon-like thud.  Quick calculation revealed they would’ve been smashed had they kept walking.

“My god—how did you know?” Terah asked.  “Did she warn you?”

“Who?  Caileigh?  No.  He did.”

Heart still clattering like a xylophone, Terah peered ahead and saw no one.  “Who?”

“Wednesday.”

That didn’t help Terah’s heart.  “Wednesday?  But how?”

Tentatively, Lindsey led him forward.  The maple with its still naked branches, covered the entire road and they had to negotiate a way through the tangle.  Terah followed his young leader.

“He followed me from the asylum,” she said simply.

“But ghosts haunt places, I thought.”  Suddenly he felt ill-equipped.  Not having paid much mind to ghosts, nymphs, and other superstitious things, he’d never read the serious books on the topic.  They weren’t published by university presses.

“Often they do,” Lindsey said.  “But there are other kinds of beings besides ghosts.”

“Like?”

“Entities that have never been human.  Wood nymphs are one example.”

“Wednesday’s a nymph?”

“Demons are another.”

Terah stopped on the muddy path.  The air held that promising chill that arouses the hope of spring.  Under a cloudless blue sky in the sunshine of rationalism, the thought of demons felt completely out of place, like a condom in a church.  “Demons?”

“We’ve got a long way to go, Cal, don’t stop now.”  He began to walk again.  “You don’t believe in the supernatural, but I often wonder if believin’ is seein’.  What if we’re raised bein’ taught not to see?  Kids have invisible friends, right?  They tell their parents they see angels, ghosts, and things.  Parents tell them there’s no such thing.  Years of bein’ told this and socialization—older kids have already learned to conform—make you unable to see them any more.  Ya unlearn to see.  Ya don’t believe it, ya  don’t see it.”

“That’s hardly reasonable.”

“Why not?  In cultures where kids aren’t taught to ignore such things, adults still see spirits.  Europeans colonized them and told them guns and diseases were real, not what their own sense told them.  That cocky confidence just din’t allow for any objection.”

The clear sky took on a haunted cast.  Terah allowed his feelings for Lindsey to give her strange outlook an edge.  That edge slid under his religious upbringing.  “You really believe that?”

“I’ve seen things I was told all my life couldn’t exist.  Seen and experienced them.  I’m rational, and I knew if I’d admit what I know happened to me, I’d end up in a place like Honest Oahusha.  I know what happened to me.  I saw it.  Felt it.  Heard it.  Smelt it.  It was just as real as you are.”  She poked him to make the point.  “I know we’re walkin’ down an abandoned road, headin’ to a town to filch some supplies.  And you know we’re walkin’ out of a town called Dickinsheet where a bunch of guys live because they believe a nymph led ‘em there.”

“So you believe we unlearn seeing supernatural beings?”

“Think of science.  How do we know anything?  By observin’.  We know that we shut out most of what we’re seein’ and any given time.  Right now yer eyes are seeing the path, me, trees, the sky.  And millions of blades of brown grass.  You payin’ attention to each of those leaves of grass?”

“No, but I can see them.”

“Because nobody ever challenged ‘em.  Don’t ya think if you were raised bein’ taught there was no such thing as, say bears, you’d never see one?  When you did encounter one you wouldn’t see it.”

“I have trouble believing that.”

“I knew a guy in high school who didn’t know girls had breasts.  Don’t smirk!  He was raised religious, and taught himself never to look at women.  By the time he graduated he’d learned to look away so effectively he didn’t even know girls had ‘em.  His observation was off ‘cause of his belief.”

They walked on in silence for a while.  The wind occasionally gusted, shoving them roughly from behind.  It felt rude.

“So you see Wednesday all the time?”

“No.  I knew I wasn’t alone after movin’ into my place at Dickinsheet.  The guys there respect the rules and I spent my nights alone, but not alone.  Course, I din’t see him every night, but I wasn’t here but a few days before I knew I’d been followed.”

“Did you ever see the wood nymph?”  Terah couldn’t believe he was asking such a question.

“Caileigh?  No.  She only shows herself to men.  I get the feelin’ she didn’t like me bein’ in Dickinsheet.  Wednesday, though, din’t want that tree to fall on me.”

“I’ve read about demon lovers, but I never believed they really existed.  I’ve tried to stay anchored in reality.”

“Reality?  Whadda you know about reality?  Any of us?  Back in school they told us we were meat machines.  Everything, they said, could be reduced to science, to numbers.  They couldn’t admit to ghosts and shit, since they din’t fit their blessed system.  One day our computer science guy said we were all just computers.  Artificial intelligence, he said, replicates our thought.  He pointed to the projected version of his computer screen.  ‘This,’ he said, ‘is reality.’

“I raised my hand.  ‘What about pixels?’ I asked.

“‘What about ‘em?’”

“‘They’re square, right?’”

“‘They have to be, to work in a binary system.’”

“‘But atoms are round.  Drops of water are round.  Biological creatures are curved, not square.’  Some of the kids had started to laugh, but I was dead serious.  ‘You’re saying we’re a square system, but the elements a nature are round.’”

“‘They’re both only models.’”

“‘But life’s not a model is it?  An’ what about the spaces between atoms?  They’re tiny, but they’re there.  What are they made of, these spaces between atoms?’”  I got detention for that.  I wasn’t bein’ a smart ass.  I was lookin’ for answers.  That was my junior year.  Before the incident.’”

She fell silent.  Terah didn’t know what to say.  That didn’t prevent him from speaking.

“What incident?”

“I prefer to look at the spaces between atoms.  That’s where we’ll find answers.”

Terah knew she wouldn’t tell him about the incident.  Not yet.  “I need to think of another funeral service for when we get back.”

“We’re not goin’ back,” Lindsey said.  Punctuating her comment, a tremendous gust of wind blew a chill down Terah’s collar.  “We’re followin’ the demon.”  Lindsey wasn’t sure if demons could read thoughts, but she knew better than to speak her real plans aloud.