Winterland Read online

  Winterland

  A Dark Fairy Tale

  By Mike Duran

  www.mikeduran.com

  Cover design by Merrie Destefano.

  Cover image by ©iStockPhoto/gioadventures.

  Copyright © 2011 by Mike Duran

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  A snowflake struck her windshield and dissolved, leaving only a watery, wind-driven, smudge. Had she been in Maine or British Columbia, Eunice Ames would have thought nothing of it. But summer in Southern California was not the place for random snowflakes. So she took her eyes off the road and squinted at the liquid streak evaporating on the glass.

  As she did this, a man bolted from the shadow of the overpass into the path of her late model Audi station wagon. And she hit him.

  His body disappeared under the vehicle and the onyx crystal hanging from the rear-view mirror struck the windshield on impact. The crystal did not shatter. However, in that split second, all that mattered was that Eunice slammed on her brakes.

  Which turned into a skid and the skid turned into a chain reaction.

  The Audi jolted to a stop. Her seatbelt snapped tight and she pitched against the restraint. If the car had airbags, she was sure they’d have deployed. Instead, the vehicle skidded to rest cockeyed in the slow lane.

  A car swept past with its horn blaring. Then another.

  But Eunice’s mind was fixed on the man under her Audi. What was he thinking? Why’d he been running onto the freeway? Was he dead?

  Thump! Da-dmp! Several concussions reverberated behind her.

  Eunice sat with her heart in her throat as the peel of tires and the crunch of metal sounded. A rush hour pileup of epic proportions was now unfolding. Sound and smoke and the blur of motion exploded around her. She gripped the steering wheel, preparing to be catapulted into eternity.

  Yet Eunice Ames remained earthbound.

  In the next lane, shards of rubber exploded and a skin of tire slapped the asphalt. Horns blasted amidst low-level thuds. Someone shrieked. Two lanes over, a passenger car swerved just in time to miss another that had fishtailed to face the opposite direction. As the entire freeway ground to a stop, a bank of gray noxious smoke drifted over Eunice’s car, gliding across the asphalt like fog on a bayou.

  And the crystal twirled wildly over the dash.

  As it did, Eunice could not help but think about its significance. According to her mother, onyx helped one achieve emotional balance and build self-confidence. Mother was up on her onyx and convinced that her daughter required such alternative assistance. Of course, Eunice thought it was all a bunch of hooey and told her mother so. But now with a tumor strangling her mother’s brainstem, Eunice had called a truce and took the crystal begrudgingly, as an olive branch, hanging it on the rear-view mirror as a testament to her concession. Besides, it looked cool. And at the moment, she could use all the emotional balance and cool-points possible.

  Expecting the door to be jammed, Eunice leaned her shoulder into it and pushed. It popped open without resistance. She unbuckled her seatbelt, slung her legs out of the Audi, and sat trembling, unprepared to take the next step. There was no blood on the pavement, but that didn’t quell her fears. He was under her car and probably dead. Or dismembered. Or both.

  Her heartbeat reverberated through her limbs like aftershocks from a SoCal temblor. Drawing the back of her hand across her forehead, she realized her flesh was clammy. Was this the early stages of shock? Or maybe the prelude to unconsciousness. The lights from the twirling crystal only added to her anxiety, so she reached over and snapped it from the mirror.

  Eunice stepped out and stood wobbling with her hand on the open door.

  “Hey!” someone shouted from behind her. “Hey, lady!”

  But she was too woozy to bother looking.

  A whiff of radiator fluid struck her like smelling salts. She cupped her hand over her nose and turned to see the freeway stacked behind her, cars strewn haphazardly, a compressed metallic river of ghost flames and rising exhaust. A baby cried somewhere. A man in dress slacks and a vest paced the tarmac nearby growling into a cell phone, and a stereo rumbled unseen causing windows to reverberate. A single stream of automobiles crept along the fast lane, and with each passing a new face emerged, pasted to the glass, hoping to catch a glimpse of the jerk who’d jacked up drive time.

  Eunice drew a deep breath, stepped away from the station wagon, and bent sideways at the waist to see who was underneath. Yet from where she stood, there was nothing—no blood, no body parts, and no body. Could he have gotten up and ran away? Had the impact sent him flying? Come to think of it, had there even been an impact?

  Eunice glanced into the sky, just to make sure there were no snow clouds.

  “What is it?” A tall, olive-skinned man in business attire hurried from the opposite side of the vehicle. He surveyed her front bumper before squinting skeptically at Eunice. “D’ya hit something?”

  “My mother’s dying,” she blurted.

  “Huh?”

  “Brain cancer. She… ” Eunice swallowed dryly. “I was on my way to Saint Luke’s. They called me. She won’t make it through the night.”

  The man stared at her, then said, “I’m sorry.”

  “And that guy,” Eunice continued. “Didn’t you see him?”

  Now the man was gaping at her.

  Behind the Audi, a white Lexus sat aslant, inches from her hatch. In the drivers’ seat, a dark woman with gaudy sequined sunglasses chomped gum and strummed her nails atop the steering wheel.

  “He came from over there.” Eunice pointed, trying to compose herself. But her hand trembled as if she was going through withdrawals again, so she quickly returned it to her side. “Just ran out. I wasn’t watching—I mean… It happened so fast. I barely had time to stop.”

  She took a step back, trying again to locate the body, but the motion made her dizzy

  “I didn’t see him,” the man confessed, continuing his approach. Then he stopped and studied her. “Listen, are you okay?”

  Eunice reached up and massaged the nape of her neck. “I’m all right,” she said unconvincingly. He glanced at the fist that she had gripped around the crystal and raised one eyebrow. She quickly shoved the smooth, two-inch stone into the front, right pocket of her jeans and looked sheepishly at him. “Really, I am.”

  “Okay,” he drawled. “Then where’s—?”

  “I dunno.” She stooped forward, hoping not to disrupt her now fragile equilibrium, and gazed under her vehicle. “He was right around…”

  The man walked to the front of the Audi, hoisted up his pant legs, and squatted down. Gripping the fender, he leaned over and peered underneath it. Then he rose, shaking his head. Eunice grimaced and prepared for the worst.

  “There’s nothing here.” He put his hands on his hips and looked quizzically at her. “What the hell happened?”

  Behind him, an oblong sun, stained orange-brown by the L.A. smog, stretched wide along the western skyline. Except for rogue cars escaping from the fast lane, the westbound 210 was empty. The vast concrete landscape silhouetted the Lexus man, as did the brume sunset, tra
nsforming him into a cardboard cutout against a movie screen. A drug-induced mirage could not have looked more surreal. Then, as Eunice stood staring at the man, the panorama behind him seemed to flutter—a slow-rolling spatial distortion that swept across her field of vision like a ripple on the surface of a glassy pool.

  Eunice swayed front to back.

  “Lady? Lady, you all right?”

  The man had stepped close enough for her to smell aloe and cologne. He extended his hand and said something else, but his words were now inaudible. In fact, everything was on mute—the cursing, the honking, the idling engines, the whirlybird overhead with its camera trained on the commotion—all drowned out by an unfolding anomaly.

  Eunice stood enthralled, hallucinating maybe, for just beyond this man, space appeared to be moving.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and lightly touched her temples with her fingertips. The stress had finally caught up to her. What with her mother dying, the anxious commutes to and from the hospital, and their perpetually tenuous relationship, Eunice had finally hit the wall.

  Either that or a decade’s worth of narcotics was catching up to her.

  Drawing a deep breath, Eunice opened her eyes and refocused. But despite her stellar demonstration of resolve, the atmosphere behind the Lexus man rippled again.

  Her jaw grew slack and any composure she’d mustered dawdled down her spine and evaporated into spongy knees.

  The man motioned her to sit back down in the car. But she remained mesmerized because just beyond the Audi hung what appeared to be a translucent veil, an atmospheric sheet that swayed like a curtain on a stage in the wake of someone’s passage.

  Her mother often proclaimed that metaphysical phenomenon had its roots in science—a rare concession to rationality on her mother’s part. Multiple dimensions were no longer the exclusive realm of shamans and psychonauts. Now even the geek in the lab coat questioned the nature of reality. Of course, her mother used that argument to reel Eunice in, to keep her off-balance. But at the moment, Eunice was just off-balance enough to risk validating this phenomenon.

  She brushed away the man, unconcerned about appearing rude, and stepped toward the shimmering invisible curtain.

  And that step—whether one of faith or foolishness—made the strange barrier come alive. For the further she walked away from her car, from the Lexus man, from the angry knot of commuters, and into that elusive field, the more it began to snow.

  TWO

  It was a glistening veil, a translucent shroud that undulated as she approached.

  But unlike Alice’s rabbit hole and Narnia’s wardrobe, Eunice’s dimensional curtain opened to a world strangely similar to her own. If a threshold had been crossed, she couldn’t say exactly when or where, only that things had changed. And were changing with every step. For the worse.

  She glanced up into the powdery, snowy diffusion, and then leveled her gaze ahead. The empty freeway still stretched toward the western skyline, but both the freeway and the skyline were growing gray, becoming sepia replicas of themselves, a dreary world of ash and bone. She peered forward as the tarmac yielded to roots and oily scabs. The overpass glistened with a sheer vegetative skin. Her steps slowed, but it was wonder, not fear, that provoked the deliberation. Was she imagining all this? Or was it the flip side of the freeway, some type of parallel plane into Dante’s inferno? If James Cameron was looking for a location for his next Terminator film, Eunice had just discovered it.

  The chatter of the circling helicopter melded with another sound, a discordant moan or beacon in the distance. Instead of a vast swath of empty concrete, the road now lay strewn with indistinct mounds of debris, the dividers choked by weird black brambles. It had stopped snowing, but pockets of dirty melting ice remained. Dark clouds lolled overhead like pirate masts on a languid sea. The highway now spilled into a basin of burnt orange. Crumbling overpasses marked the path of the road, before disappearing into a swamp of distant haze. Smog billowed above this murky plain like massive thunderheads, and a hole opened in the horizon where the sun used to be. Engines of steam churned within this ozone gash, an angry vortex ringed with ash and fire that sent dark columns roiling skyward.

  She always knew L.A. was a hellhole.

  “… don’t know… pale lady… ambulance…”

  Eunice stopped at the sound but did not turn around. A faint glow framed the periphery of her gaze, as if the morning sun shone at her back. By all estimates, she had advanced only several yards from her vehicle. Now she felt leagues away. The snow had turned to soot. It swirled at her feet and the ashen sun belched fiery strands into the skyline. Were she to retrace her steps, Eunice knew she would leave that otherworld and return to the exhaust, the anxiety, and the Lexus man who wanted her to sit down.

  “… ccident… neck… ay… ith…”

  Couldn’t he see she was having an epiphany? No, of course not. He did not know her mother was dying from cancer or that a fiery portal had punctured the world. And she wasn’t about to tell him.

  “… id… ahl… unt... to…”

  She closed her eyes again. Maybe she had hit her head during the accident, died and passed into limbo. Or somewhere worse. Occasionally, people came back from death with a new lease on life. Perhaps this was that. Of course, she’d already made her peace with God. But standing in that bleak, charred otherworld, Eunice wondered if she should reevaluate her spiritual state.

  “She wants you.”

  The voice was not that of the Lexus man. Eunice opened her eyes to see dark clouds fomenting overhead. She had moved in deeper, somehow, without actually moving. A red pall now tainted the landscape and the beacon had become a shrill cry peeling in the distance.

  “She wants you.”

  A figure standing nearby came into focus. She took a step forward and reached toward him. “You're the guy—! Are you alright?”

  “More or less.”

  “But I hit you.”

  “Uh, not exactly.”

  He was a young man, boyish really, with fair features. His head seemed slightly misshapen, sunken on one side and the eyelid there drooped a little, but was bright. The man/boy stood crooked, tilting left like a fixture in a house of gravity.

  “Am I…? Where am I?” she asked. “And what is that?” She motioned to the burning place on the skyline.

  “It’s the end of the road. That’s where she is.”

  “She?”

  “Your mother. Or what’s left of her. Her Coronation is beginning.”

  “My mother?” Eunice squinted at the bent man. “But she’s in a coma.”

  “Her body is. But souls have a way of—how can I put it—migrating. Just look at you.”

  Eunice glanced at her body to make sure it was still there. She brushed off several dirty snowflakes. Then she shook her head in stupefaction. “Okay. I’m gonna need a minute here.”

  “It’s your minute. But, just so you know, the clock’s ticking on this thing.”

  “Now what do you mean by that?”

  He jabbed his thumb toward the broiling crimson skyline. “Why do you think she called you? She’s running out of time.” He paused for a moment. “And you saw me.”

  Eunice gaped at the young man. Part of her wanted to play along with him and see where this was going. But another part of her—the cautious, analytical, suffocatingly boring side—was weighing in with red flags and fire alarms. If she conceded to this surreal reality, she might go mad. Crazy people were crazy precisely because they believed in alternate worlds where the souls of their dying relatives watched. Yet even if running was the rational thing to do, she couldn’t see returning to the hellacious traffic jam she had caused. At least, not just yet.

  “So what is this place?” Eunice asked.

  “This is the way she came—once, a long time ago.” He looked up into the black ocean overhead. “It’s a mess, I know. It’s changed a lot. Always does.” He shrugged dismissively. “Anyway, if you don’t do something, she’ll get stuck here.
Become the Queen.” Then he leveled his gaze upon Eunice. “And, trust me, that’ll be bad.”

  The elasticity returned to her knees and she wavered.

  Chronic meth addicts sometimes experienced amphetamine psychosis. You don’t extract the demons from your veins without a fight. Hallucinations were customary in the battle—or so she’d heard. Mr. Q, in rehab, had heated discussions with a garden gnome he named Julius before, one day, decapitating it with a shovel. The drugs had siphoned his sanity. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Q. was carted off, never to be seen again. Was that her fate, to become a babbling halfwit lost in some dream state on the 210 freeway? And just one week after graduating and returning to the “real world.”

  She closed her eyes again, hoping, praying, for a lifeline. And as she did, the distant wail rose, shrill, swelling ever louder.

  It was a siren beckoning from the other side.

  “You can go if you want.”

  Eunice opened her eyes and looked sideways at the crooked man. Then she turned to see cars—or at least, what were once cars—piled behind her like dunes on a beach, melded together, rolling away into static and white foam. The air between here and there seemed to shimmer with kinetic vibrancy. She remained peering through this atmospheric curtain as the siren approached with its gauzy red lights pulsating, wove its way through the car dunes, and neared the two of them. She shook her head in incomprehension.

  “Don't worry, you can go back,” said the man reassuringly. “It’s not that far away. It never is.”

  The siren grew closer.

  “... spit... get… ff...”

  Eunice shook her head faster, as if trying to rattle something free. “But… my mother. She wants me.”

  “Oh well, that’s the way it goes. Life’s full of consequences. We turn to; we turn away—can't do one and not the other. We jump, we fall. We fall, we come here. I didn’t make the rules, Eunice.”

  She winced as the siren came closer.

  “…er... down lady...”