"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!"
– Alice in Wonderland
To Old Town.
Kyle, having skipped the lunch social scene, contemplating in the boiler room, found it easy to sneak away from everyone. Mrs. Bewnik, the school nurse, declared four of his ribs lightly bruised after Mr. Spizer delivered Kyle to her icy hands. No broken bones, but it was enough: go home and rest—the final verdict.
The fact he was playing hookey from that diagnosis meant little to Kyle. He left school, sure; a coin like that was impossible not to spend. But go home to rest? If everything wasn't ethereal—a ragged schism in sanity and common fortune—he'd still find sleep impossible. This was a dream, the worst kind: for reality meekly withdrew in its presence.
Oh, but Kyle was tired. One reason he decided to leave for the day, was that sitting still for any amount of time meant nodding off, or daydreaming of nonsense overlayed convincingly atop his thoughts, full of flagellating creatures and mottled columns of decayed heads rolling deflated eyes, mouthing silent screams. Hundreds of these columns circled a coliseum, built of bone, bound with molten flesh, patrolled by gibbering nightmares that twisted and spun into a thousand different terrifying shapes simultaneously, each beyond description, all beyond his capacity.
He refused to see these things again, regardless of his abused body's need to rest; he could stay awake in the cold, away from home and boring classes that droned and lulled him dangerously. And so he sat on the outskirts of Lincoln Way, atop a hollow log several feet thick, shivering in the stinging wind and relishing every waking moment. He surveyed the moving shadows behind brightly lit windows, watched untethered shutters bang against unyielding brick, wobbling weakly in rebound on too-old hinges.
He could feel it decay, the school with its rural budget and extreme weather. How long before the oldest shutters derailed completely from their hinges? How many windows would shatter in inclement storms before custodians scrambled to repair them? Too many, he guessed. Would Tammond Dale blister and crack, erode and crumble until providence demanded another relocation? Maybe another new name...
And that wasn't the town's only Achilles' heel, as Kyle could almost taste the swirling miasma of Gods and Goddesses, Demons and Terrors wrestling for control of this bleak wasteland of man. He was an outsider, but for how much longer? He knew he still had a long way to go, secrets to jot down in his journal to be read every day until something made sense. When will it be too late?
He slid off the log, leaving an obvious scraping print in the disturbed snow. He patted his jeans liberally, dislodging any lingering powder that clung despite the wind's slipstreaming fury. And it was harsh. Had Kyle an emergency weather radio, he'd know the winds were forty miles per hour sustained, with gusts past sixty. In the city, buildings deflecting the wind like impossibly sturdy and tall trees, channeling yet slaughtering its incessant ferocity. In this thirsty basin surrounded by mountains and cliffs, the wind became a recursively fueled spiral, something shy of a tornado. Kyle normally laughed at zero degrees, but this was new and bitter, thirty degrees colder than the thermometer claimed, and he was unprepared.
But it was time to go. The sun crashed into the distant horizon, pouring its sustaining warmth into an infinitely distant furnace that warmed the sky, which glowed a tempered red of luscious fruit and silky grapes just starting to ferment in the heat. That heartbreaking azure sky was his cue: go now before the day is done.
He sighed and nodded his head listlessly in the direction of Old Town. Even if this was likely the last chance he'd have to see the place, no matter what his Journal claimed, he'd have it done. Time to go.