Awake Read online

  As he looked through the multitude, he saw a flash of a familiar hue of red and panned the binoculars back to where he thought he saw it, trying to find what it was.

  He found it. It was the demon, looking back at him through its own pair of binoculars. The binoculars obscured its face, but Lee could see the blood-red skin of its arms and the horns jutting out of the top of its head. It was unmistakable.

  21

  “Fuck!” Lee said, jumping back at the sight of the demon. Forgetting he was holding on to them, he dropped the binoculars, and they fell to the ground with a loud crack that made him certain they’d broken. Ivy gave a squeak of surprise, and Ben gasped almost theatrically.

  “Aw, what the hell man!” Ben said as he bent down to pick them up. Sure enough, the casing was chipped and one of the lenses was cracked down the middle.

  “Shit, sorry man, I… don’t know what happened,” Lee said.

  Whatever look Lee had on his face must have been a strange one, because Ben raised an eyebrow, then gave him a sympathetic look. “It’s fine buddy, don’t worry about it. Easy come easy go.”

  Lee felt sick. He was sure that the demon was still watching him through its binoculars. How has it found me? I’ve been free of it for so many days, why couldn’t it have stayed away?

  “Are you okay? You’ve got that pale look to you again,” Ivy said. She put her arm around him.

  “I don’t know,” he said, scanning the crowd for the demon, but it was useless without the binoculars. The people on the other side of the stadium looked like a swarm of insects.

  He realized that maybe if he moved quickly he could lose it again, surely in New York City it would have some trouble finding him. “Let’s get out of here,” Lee said.

  “Okay,” she said, grabbing her purse and coat, unsurprised, as if she had already known what he was going to say. She probably had.

  “We’re going to head out early… to beat the rush when the game gets out,” Lee said to Ben and Stella.

  “What? At least stay until the seventh inning stretch!” Ben said. Stella agreed, saying “Yeah, I thought we were having a good time.”

  “I’m just not feeling well enough. You guys stay, but we’re going,” Lee said. He stood up and put his coat on.

  “Alright, see you back at the hotel buddy,” Ben said.

  “Yeah, see you there.”

  They made it out of the stadium much quicker than they’d gotten in, with everyone inside watching the game. Lee flagged down the first cab he saw and it stopped. They got on.

  “I’m so sorry you’re feeling sick again,” Ivy said as they rode to the hotel, lightly rubbing his back the way she often did now.

  “Yeah, my head is pounding,” Lee said.

  “Maybe you have a fever. You’re sweating.” She put a hand on his forehead. “Oh wow, you’re ice cold!” She pulled her hand away. “Well, at least that means you don’t have a fever.”

  He wondered if he should tell her about everything, about seeing the demon again, and just how bad the visions were. She didn’t know all of it still, and that made him feel awful. He felt like he was lying to her by exclusion. He’d ruined every relationship he’d ever had before by not sharing his life with them, preferring instead to confess his deeds in his books. Maybe it had been because he knew deep down that they weren’t right for him, but he knew it was still wrong.

  He was determined not to do that with Ivy, he wanted her to know the entirety of who he was. After all, she might be the last person to really have the opportunity.

  “I think something is chasing me,” he said, his vocal cords almost working under their own will.

  “What’s that?”

  Lee looked towards the driver to see if he was listening in, but he didn’t seem to be paying any attention. “There’s been something following me, ever since I left Seattle. I lost it for a while, but it found me. It was at the game, I saw it.”

  Ivy looked at him sympathetically. “Could you be a little more specific?”

  “There’s a thing, a thing that’s been following me, the same thing from back at Mt. Rushmore,” he said, relieved to get it off his chest.

  He detailed each time he’d seen the demon, telling her almost everything. The only thing he kept from her was the visions he had without the demon in them, the ones where he would see another world. He didn’t even know how to begin explaining them.

  When he was finished, she held his hand and tuned her head to look him in the eyes, having been looking at the ground thoughtfully. “You just have to accept that you’re sick and that this is going to happen as you don’t get enough sleep. I’m sure it’s frightening, but you just have to keep telling yourself that it’s not real.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He was slightly irritated at her for not taking his visions seriously. How can I expect her to believe them, though, when I don’t believe them myself?

  When they got back to the hotel and into their room, they made love. Lee thought she was trying to use her feminine charms to comfort him. He didn’t mind, and if that was her goal it worked. Afterwards Lee took his pills and they watched late night talk shows until Ivy fell asleep during the first fifteen minutes of the Super Late Show.

  The pills didn’t work that night. After lying in bed for five maddening hours, he got out of bed and tried to do some writing. His brain frazzled, he couldn’t write more than a few bad sentences. He gave up on that as well and pulled out his book, which to his relief he was just barely able to manage to read. It was slow going, and he had to go back repeatedly when his attention would drift, but at least it was something. He did that for the remainder of the night.

  “Oh jeez, did you get any sleep at all?” Ivy asked Lee, snapping him out of a daydream he’d been having, staring at the blank television while trying to read in bed.

  Lee looked at the clock beside the bed and realized it was nine in the morning. Last he remembered it had been seven. He’d been staring at the blank television screen for almost two hours. “No, I didn’t manage to get any.”

  “Gosh honey, that’s terrible. At least we don’t have any plans today. Let’s take another day off and you try to get some rest, okay?” she said, looking more worried than he’d seen her before. He realized he must look terrible. He certainly felt terrible.

  “That sounds good to me, I was just about to try to sleep again,” he said.

  “I’ll call Stella and Ben and tell them to figure out their own plans for today. I’m sure they’d like to go out on their own, and Ben can go to that pizza place he loves so much again.” Lee realized that he hadn’t heard Ben and Stella come in. He wasn’t sure if they’d managed to be quiet or if he’d spaced that out too.

  Lee chuckled. “Hey, I love that place too.”

  “It was good, but you guys are overrating it,” Ivy said. She got out her phone, called Stella and told her they were taking another day off.

  “They sounded cool with it,” Ivy said when she hung up. “Stella actually sounded drunk still. They’ll probably be sleeping for half the day again,” she said. Lee looked down at the comforter enviously. He didn’t want to guess how much he’d be willing to pay to sleep half a day.

  “I’ll order us room service for breakfast, what do you want?” Ivy asked.

  “Uh, I guess an omelet. Denver if they have it,” Lee said, having a hard time focusing on anything.

  “They do have it,” she said, looking at the menu. “Anything else?”

  “Get me an orange juice too,” Lee said.

  Ivy put in Lee’s order and ordered a cheese omelet and a glass of milk for herself. “Thanks hon, I really love you,” he said when she finished.

  “I love you too, sweetie,” she said.

  They watched the news and waited for the food, though Lee mostly stared at the screen just as blankly as he had done when it was off.

  Before long there was a knock on the door. Suddenly afraid that the hotel worker bringing the food would be the demon, Lee sat on the
side of the bed, out of sight of the door, while Ivy retrieved their breakfasts.

  After they finished eating, Lee took his prescriptions again and, finally feeling like he might be able to get a little bit of sleep, lay down next to Ivy while she one of the books from his bag.

  As Lee lay trying to sleep, Ivy looked down at him and wondered again if she should have told him what she thought she’d seen back at Mount Rushmore. No, she thought, that wouldn’t have helped him at all. If anything it would have made it worse.

  But she was still convinced she’d seen it. When it had happened initially, she almost hadn’t given it a second thought, despite how odd it was. It was only later, when she kept dreaming about that day, that it started to come back to her and started to make her wonder if something was going on with her as well as Lee.

  She thought back to that day. Lee explaining to her fearfully what he thought he’d seen. To comfort him, she’d gone into the building at Mount Rushmore to check on the man that Lee had thought had somehow transformed into a monster, as if out of his books.

  She’d found the man almost immediately, Lee’s description of the clothes matching the man exactly. To her relief, he was just another tourist wandering around and taking in the sights.

  Except…when she started to turn to go away, she thought she saw a flash of red. She looked back at the man and for one split second she didn’t see the greasy tourist: she saw some sort of creature, something exactly like what Lee said he saw. Then, just as quickly, it was back to a man and he was looking at her quizzically, a ghost of a sneer on his face.

  She’d turned away and walked off, nearly running into Stella and Ben. They asked her what was going on, and without thinking about it she told them that Lee was almost ready to go, telling them where he was waiting.

  “Okay, we’ll be out in a minute, I just want to check out that exhibit over there,” Ben said, pointing to the other side of the room.

  Ivy said that was fine, and walked out of the building and back to Lee. By the time she got to him she’d almost completely forgotten about what she’d saw, not thinking about it again until she started to see the creature again in her dreams.

  She’d thought so many times about telling him, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good for anyone. It was just my brain getting carried away and making me see what he said, she told herself whenever she’d thought about it. Nothing would be helped by telling Lee about it. So she told herself, anyway.

  Lee wasn’t sure if he managed to pass out during the four hours he’d been lying with his eyes closed, searching for oblivion, but if he had, it had only been for a moment. He had to settle for what rest he could get from relaxing with his eyes closed and thinking to himself.

  He found he was oddly at peace in his thoughts as he lay. He felt so calm that he could start to imagine that his visions really were hallucinations. That Ivy was right about what was happening. Lying in a warm bed, in a skyscraper in the middle of New York, it seemed almost silly that he had ever taken the visions seriously. Even his impending death seemed somehow manageable.

  He was perhaps more proud about being able to think calmly and rationally about his impending death than about his visions. After all—he’d been thinking about the visions almost endlessly since he’d first seen the demon riding the bus with him—death however, he’d given death very little thought, beyond those few initial days of moping and self-pity immediately after his diagnosis. Since then, he’d barely thought about it, and had avoided the subject whenever anyone brought it up.

  He no longer feared death. He’d seen far more terrifying things than death, and those had come from his own hallucinating mind. What was death but an ending, a closure? If any of the world’s religions were right, he’d go on in some kind of other world, probably a good one. He considered himself a good person, though he supposed the jury was still out, and if there was nothing after death, he wouldn’t exactly be in a position to worry about it.

  His symptoms were progressing much faster than all the literature said they would, it wouldn’t be long. He’d read everything he could find on the internet after his diagnosis and knew that he’d gone through several of the stages in only a few weeks. Each stage normally took from one to several months in most documented cases. It seemed as though his disease was something special.

  The only thing he was worried about after he was gone was Ivy and Ben. He wanted to make sure that they were taken care of. He’d already promised Ben another thirty grand, but he intended to leave him much more than that—half of his estate. He would leave the other half to Ivy. Though he didn’t hate Stella, Ben could take care of her from his cut if they stayed together. Lee knew she’d be fine.

  He thought about going to a lawyer, but then remembered a web site that a friend of his, back in Seattle, had recommended to him for straightforward paperwork like wills, and resolved to use that instead. He figured the website would be quicker, and his time had a premium.

  Ivy got up and went to the bathroom, so Lee took the opportunity to stop pretending to sleep. He retrieved his laptop from its bag, put it on the room’s small table and opened it up. He heard Ivy turn the shower on and he was thankful he’d have some time alone.

  His first guess at the website’s name was off, so he did a Google search for legal websites and found it on the first hit. The website was straightforward enough, and after typing in some personal information and his credit card info, he had an account.

  It was quick work, and he had everything set up before Ivy got out of the shower. The only hitch was that he didn’t have a printer, so he put the documents onto the USB drive that he carried on his keychain. He figured it wouldn’t be hard to find a print shop for the documents somewhere, he’d seen several near the hotel on their walks. He’d also have to get it notarized, but there was probably somewhere for that within a two or three block radius: in New York everything was close.

  Finished, he went to a news site and tried to read some stories. He still couldn’t focus very well, but he managed to browse through a few articles.

  When Ivy came out from the shower, she looked surprised to see Lee up and about. “Hey honey, how was your nap?” she said.

  “Alright. I think I managed to get a little bit of sleep.”

  “That’s good, are you hungry again?” she said, sitting next to him on the bed and rummaging around in her bag for clothes. “I know I am.”

  “Sure, but I don’t really feel up to walking very far.”

  “How about the tavern downstairs again?”

  “That sounds good, I liked the place. They’re really the same place the room service comes from? The food is so different.”

  “Oh yeah, I was wrong about that. I thought so, but when I was looking at the room service menus last time I saw it’s actually made by the hotel kitchen. Does that matter?”

  “Not really, just curious,” he said.

  While Ivy dressed Lee went into the bathroom to make himself as presentable as possible. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair, then after realizing that his favored stubble was starting to become a full beard, shaved.

  There was nothing he could do about his pale skin or the deep, dark circles under his eyes though. He thought he looked like a junkie who was just starting to get desperate for his next fix.

  As decent looking as he was going to get, he exited the bathroom to find Ivy in a sun dress, as radiant as always. “You ready to head down?” she asked, batting her eyes and smiling. She knew how good she looked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  22

  They shared the elevator ride down with an older couple. That wouldn’t have been bad in itself, but the woman’s perfume was overwhelming. It was like she’d bathed in it. There was also an underlying smell to it, a scent that reminded Lee of when he’d found his first dog underneath his porch. The creature had apparently crawled there to die after being struck by a car. The smell had been an awful, a sickeningly sweet stench. It took all he had
to keep from retching in the elevator.

  When the elevator stopped on the fifteenth floor to pick up more passengers, he gave Ivy a look, and she gave a slight nod. Without a word they got off and waited for another elevator to take them down to the lobby. Thankfully the next one to come by didn’t contain any passengers with offensive odors.

  The tavern was much busier than the last time they’d been in. They were told by the hostess that it would be a ten to fifteen minute wait. “That’s fine,” Lee said, and he and Ivy went to sit with the other people in the waiting area.

  “There must be something going on today. It’s so busy,” Ivy said.

  “Yeah it is,” Lee agreed, his sleep-deprived brain not able to give much thought to the matter.

  He was in a daze for most of the wait. The hostess came over in what seemed like no time at all, and said “If you guys want to come with me, I can seat you now.” Though Lee heard her, his brain didn’t put two-and-two together and he sat staring blankly at her until Ivy tugged on his hand and snapped him to. Shaking his head to try and wake himself up, he got up and followed Ivy and the hostess back to their table.

  They ordered drinks and the waitress went to get them. “What are you going to get?” Ivy asked as she read the menu.

  “I’m thinking the roasted salmon. I heard fish was brain food, and I could sure use the help.”

  “Oh stop it, you’re fine.” She gave him a light pat on the hand, as if in reproach. “The salmon actually sounds really good. I think I’ll get that too. I was leaning towards the ravioli until you mentioned it.”

  The waitress came back with their drinks and they ordered their food. After the waitress left again, Lee scanned around the restaurant for the demon. He didn’t see anything unusual. He was safe, for now.

  “Are you looking around for Ben or something?” Ivy said.