Sheryl had no idea what had happened. Dale and Bruce had been arguing, and she had looked down momentarily at Kerren because their hands, clasped together almost since her wife had regained consciousness, were trembling. By the time Sheryl looked up again, everyone had changed places and Glenda had been stabbed, Dale slowly lowering her to the floor. No one had even thought to scream.
Despite everyone's best efforts, Bruce had run up the stairs, trailing blood of his own. Dale had then thrown a chair through the front window and carried Glenda out into the white/dark night. That left the remaining four of them, herself, Kerren, Manoj and Kelly, standing there, wondering what to do next. For a long moment, they just listened to the sound of Bruce stumbling up somewhere down the upper corridor. It wasn't until later that they realized that none of them had noted which way he had run: back down the half-ruined wing where his room used to be -- and the last place the horned thing had been seen -- or the opposite way. It would have been a valuable piece of information to have, to know whether the author was running toward his nemesis, or away from it.
At that moment, however, the group's own well-being was the most important thing. Kelly broke the silence, by saying, "Do you guys think we can use this couch to get Kerren out of here?" She spoke insistently but quietly, but who or what she was afraid of being overheard by, none of them could tell.
"I think so," Manoj said, visually appraising it. "But where would we take it to?"
Sheryl spoke, nodding to the broken window. "After them. Wasn't Dale talking about snowmobiles in a shed or something?"
"Right... but how will we get Kerren on one?" Kelly asked.
Kerren, in a voice whispery and barely audible above the new volume of the blowing wind, "I think I can get up."
Kelly smiled at her, wistful. "Oh honey, I don't think you can. You've got multiple fractures in both legs. You're going to have to let us carry you for a while."
"But we can't stay in here, not with *him* running around!" Sheryl let go of Kerren's hands long enough to thrust an accusing finger up the blood-spattered stairway.
Manoj was over by the side of the couch, looking behind it and pressing his hands against it, trying to gauge its weight without actually jostling it. "That's true, but once we're outside, we're committed to leaving. We don't even know if that's possible yet."
Sheryl's rational mind rebelled against this thought. She had seen the horned thing, of course, but accepting that she couldn't get away from this place was a step too far for her. "If it's a choice between staying in here with that thing or going with Dale and Glenda, then we're going!"
Manoj continued to check the couch, nodding at Sheryl's shout of protest, as if it were just more information to add to everything else that was going on. "I'm not sure if we can move this. It's old and pretty solid. Can we give it a try?" He looked to them expectantly. Sheryl's heart melted a little when she saw how quickly Kelly leaped to help. She also noticed that there was a streak of blood down the front of Kelly's bathrobe, but it was so light and spotty that it couldn't have been hers.
Sheryl got to her feet, shaking the minor pins and needles from her legs, which she had gotten from kneeling for so long in the cold. She moved to the end closest to Kerren's feet, mostly because she wanted to be able to watch Kerren as they attempted the move. Kelly stood right next to her, with Manoj taking the end closer to Kerren's head. He would also have the disadvantage of walking backward.
"Ready, baby?" Sheryl asked Kerren, and was answered by a terse nod. Her wife's hands clutched the back of the sofa and the edge of the cushion for purchase.
"On three," Manoj said, and Kelly's feet spread apart in a professional stance. "One, two, three."
They all lifted at once, and the sofa began to rise. It rocked a little, stabilized. "Now, let's take a few steps toward the window," Manoj said. "Slowly."
The couch, bobbing as if it were floating on a pond, began to move toward the window. Manoj craned his head back over of his shoulder, then turned back to the women at the other end of the sofa. "Wait, wait," he said, and moved to set his end down. Kelly and Sheryl followed suit. They had only traveled three or four feet farther along the wall. Kerren looked from one of them to the other, bewildered.
"It's not going to work," Manoj said, surveying the entire scene and not speaking to anyone in particular. "I can't back up over that windowsill. Even if we were able to clear the broken glass from it, it's still too high and too wide for us to lift the couch. Plus, Kelly and I still don't have proper shoes."
Sheryl had totally forgotten about that. Manoj was still wearing his flimsy hotel slippers; Kelly had left hers behind entirely. Kelly spoke up quickly. "I don't care about that, Noj. It can't be that far to the shed Dale's heading for."
"And after that?" Manoj asked. "How long are we going to have to be out there?"
Kelly thought for a moment, then growled in frustration. "Well, we can't stay here, so how are we going to get Kerren out?"
Sheryl looked down at her wife lying there, injured, nearly mute and immobile. She thought back over the events of the night, and was surprised to find that she had hardly done anything to help her. Ever since Sheryl had slit open the sheets that she had been trapped in -- and she hadn't even been the one that finally set her free from that situation -- she had only followed along, as Bruce carried Kerren down the stairs, Dale as he escorted her back to look for clothes, everyone else as they discussed what to do next...
Kerren was lying across the couch, looking to her for help, and Sheryl realized that their places had somehow reversed. She had always been the one chasing Kerren, trying to keep her near. Now, she could see in Kerren's eyes the same please don't leave me here that had gone around with the whole time she knew Kerren was seeing someone else.
Until now, Sheryl had always thought that if she ever saw that expression on Kerren's face, she would enjoy it. Of course, he didn't wish for it, but if Kerren could just know a little bit of that helplessness that Sheryl had felt for so long, at least then they might have some kind of mutual understanding. But now she was really seeing it, Sheryl found she didn't like it at all. Kerren needed a hero, and all Sheryl felt was guilt that she wasn't rising to the occasion.
So she would do it. No more following behind the bold, wringing her hands and looking for a "right time" to step in. This was her chance to prove herself. "Hold on," she said, and then ran to the piles of clothes she had tossed over the banister. She thought about bending over to sort through them, but then decided to kick them about, spreading out the various piles until she found the things she was looking for.
Manoj and Kelly could have been standing behind her, watching her leap around like a kid playing in a pile of raked leaves, for all she cared. Seconds were important. They had no idea what Bruce was doing upstairs, and he could decide to come back down at any time. The only plus was that he was now unarmed. This made her think of Glenda, and made her work even faster.
She found the boots first. They were ones she had purposely bought for the trip, overlarge to make sure she had room for multiple pairs of socks inside. She grabbed them and threw them back in Manoj's direction. She went back for more, grabbing articles as she saw them, for the first time seeing them as purely functional items, instead of wondering how she would look inside them, or whether they lived up to her current sense of fashion.
Every time she found something useful, she tossed 1them back toward the small group. By the time she figured she was done, she thought she should have enough accumulated fabric to cover everyone adequately. It was strangely thrilling, taking such strong action to get her wife to a safer, warmer place, even if it was only the first of what would be many steps.
When she turned back, her blood pounding in her ears and an inexplicable smile on her face, she found herself looking at three immobile pairs of eyes. She waved her hands at the debris field of clothing she had just hurled at them. "Get dressed!" she said. "We're running out of time!" She didn't know exactly what aspect of their situation she was referring to, but it felt good to say.
After trading a glance with each other, Kelly and Manoj moved forward, scooping up pieces of clothing and trying to figure out how they were going to wear them. It was easier for Kelly, but for a man to try to put on women's ski clothing was going to be tricky. Also, there was the fact -- and Sheryl had noticed this long before now -- that the two of them were naked under their robes. In order to get dressed, they had to take those robes off entirely. Kelly didn't seem embarrassed at all, fully exposing herself before stepping into some of the ski pants. Sheryl made a pointed effort to avert her eyes.
Manoj, ironically, took his selections and moved behind the broken front desk before disrobing to put anything on. It made Sheryl smirk, noting that he was doing this in a room that contained no one but his current girlfriend and pair of married lesbians. When he stepped back out again, looking uncomfortably stuffed into clothes that Sheryl had chosen in hopeful preparation for this weekend -- (perhaps literally) another world ago and away -- she couldn't help but snicker.
He had put on purple snow pants, a thermal undershirt that was being stretched within an inch of its life, and a diamond-pattern jacket that could only be pulled tightly enough to cover just past his elbows and wouldn't entirely close over his chest. Manoj, aware of his ridiculous look and turning into the skid, pivoted and shot out his hip like a model. "What do you think?" he asked.
All three women, despite everything else that had happened to them that night, began to laugh. They didn't stop until Sheryl and Karen were clutching their sides, and Kerren had put her hands over her face in an effort to hold her aching body still.
-9.2-
It was up here, somewhere. Bruce hadn't hesitated as he hit the top of the main staircase, and turned left, heading back toward the ruined hallway where his room had once stood. It was a long, dark expanse between him and the end of the hall, but he didn't care. If he kept moving, he thought, he could outrun it. The only thing that was following him right now was the excruciating, fiery pain in his lower back. He could tell that no nerves or important muscles had been severed, but the cut felt so deep that he imagined some more intangible part of himself had been severed, perhaps a tail he'd never known he had.
As he took time to think about it, hurtling over familiarly uneven parts of the hallway, he considered that maybe he should be heading the other way, if he really were trying to avoid the thing that had followed him into this world (or, perhaps, they had chased each into a world completely alien to them both). So was he the pursuer, or the pursued? He didn't know, but he was incapable of just staying still and waiting for it. He had to *move*.
On a deep level, he knew what the thing was. He had created it, after all. Or, to be more specific, Theda had. It had been she who had given him the idea, wasn't it? That had been back in the heady days of productivity, when he woke from every night's slumber with a head so full of ideas that he sometimes took until lunch just to set them all down on paper. He had felt invincible back then, and why not? He was a writer, with enough stories to chase down until the end of time. He would live forever, he thought in those near-druglike fugue states, simply because he had too many things to write.
But it had all dried up, eventually. Not enough of the ideas Theda gave him during the nights survived the light of day. It was discouraging, yes, but after a while he began to see the results of the diminishing payoffs he saw. There was a power lurking behind the stories he wrote, and even as Theda began to withdraw from him, they continued. The strongest one had been the night after the movie premiere...
It was the first time one of his books had been translated into film, and perhaps if it hadn't been such a success he might not have realized how a story can take on -- it was such a cliché to say, though -- a life of its own. But somehow, that first foray into the visual medium clicked. It was a feeling he had noticed in the theater, sitting in the back and watching the audience become rapt with the experience.
He couldn't say whether what resonated with them was the story itself, the way it had been directed, or the way the screenwriter had deeply understood Bruce's source material, quoting lengthy dialogue from the book with a skillful sense of when it would best suit the cinematic vision. It could have been all these things combined that wove such a potent spell. Regardless of the reason, when the lights came up, and the standing ovation was over, there was an energy in the room that Bruce had never felt before. As much as he wanted to write it off as usual communal experience, it seemed to extend farther than that.
The feeling continued at the afterparty. Just as Bruce had convinced himself that what he was experiencing was the heady mix of pride and ego that any author would feel after seeing his ideas so richly and faithfully imagined, the film's editor pulled him aside. "This *never* happens!" she said excitedly.
"What doesn't?" Bruce asked, back in those days entirely innocent of the bizarre machinations of Hollywood.
"Listen to them!" she said, throwing her hand -- which held her martini, spilling half of it over onto the floor -- in an expansive gesture that encompassed the entire room.
Bruce tried to parse out what was special about all the conversation swirling around them. "I don't know," he finally said, shrugging. "They're just talking about the movie, aren't they?"
The editor beamed at him. "That's the thing!" she gushed. "They're talking about the movie!" She moved in closer to him, so much so that he could smell all of the drinks she'd already imbibed that evening. She was an industry veteran, nearly twenty years his senior, but she was now so close that Bruce tangentially wondered how hard it would be to finish this evening in her bed. "This never happens!"
Bruce mentally shook his head, trying to understand. "What doesn't happen?"
"Listen," she said, leaning even closer and speaking so loudly that there was no way should could have meant to be conspiratorial, "I've come to dozens of these things before. And it took me about three of them to realize that they're never actually about the movie everyone's just seen. It's all about the schmoozing and the boozing and playing the angles to get their next job. It's the one thing that everyone here actually has in common... now that This Thing is done, everyone already has to be thinking about the Next Thing. The last thing on their minds is the movie they just walked out of. But listen!"
She fell quiet again, and this time Bruce could pick up bits of the conversation around them. Here, someone was extolling the film's performances; there, he fell into a diatribe the director's exquisite use of angles; wasn't the dialogue just so snappy; no, not just snappy but *whip-smart*; the onscreen world just felt so inhabitable; was it too out of line to talk Oscars so early in the year?
She was right. They were both right, he would come to find out; such after-party topics of conversation were totally outside the norm, and he did go home with her that night. He actually lay awake a long time in her middle-aged insomniac's apartment after she had fallen asleep, thinking about it all. He should have been able to sleep peacefully, content with all his jobs well done, if it hadn't been for one incident, which came while they were outside the afterparty's restaurant, caught together on a silent street between pockets of debauchery.
She had downed three more drinks by this point, but was holding her own and not taking "maybe I should go" for an answer. They had been standing at the curb, waiting for the valet. She had been sloppily flipping through a dozen manners of social media, trying to glean what the buzz from the screening was. Bruce, who never thought of the phone in his pocket although he was never without one, had stepped a little away from her because she was also puffing on a cigarette. The prospect of tasting smoke for the remainder of the evening didn't particularly enthrall him, and so he had moved a little away to prepare himself.
Out of the sonic rumble of the party, he could appreciate the Californian night. It must have rained at some point while they had been inside; the asphalt of the road had that just-wetted gleam that it only has in the movies, reflecting the street lights as colored bars extending away into the starless night. A sound slightly behind him caught his attention, and when he turned to find its source, was pleasantly surprised.
Victor Richardson, one of the movie's stars, was standing a little ways down a side alley, turned his way. The strangest part was that Victor was dressed as his character from the movie, down to the futuristically-piped trenchcoat and trilby. Bruce was a little shocked; had the stars from the film made an in-costume appearance during that party, and he had missed it?
Victor looked out of the alley, right at Bruce. The actor had apparently taken the time to grow the three days of perpetual beard stubble that his character maintained in the film, too. Bruce was about to say something to him, when Victor gave his character's traditional gesture of running three fingers along the brim of his hat and turned, his trenchcoat flying out in a convenient gust of wind as he disappeared down the alley, which looked like one of the dressed sets from the movie too, down to the sprays of steam that hissed out of random places along its length.
Bruce stood there, puzzled. He turned to look back at the film editor, saw she was still hunching over her phone, her face bottom-lit by its cadaverous glow. He turned back for one more glimpse of Victor's disappearing back, but the alley was empty. Now that he thought about it, it didn't look much like an alley set anymore, either. And the pavement had dried.
"I didn't know the actors were going to be here," he said to her.
Without looking up, she laughed a little. "What's that? The actors aren't here tonight."
"I just saw--" Bruce started, but she interrupted him by holding up her phone.
"See?" she said, using her thumb to scroll along a long list of congratulatory posts from various members of the cast (including Victor), all hashtagged to denote the con they were all currently attending, over six hundred miles away.
Bruce frowned. Taking a moment to tally up how many drinks he had downed that evening, he decided that it was just the right amount to allow him to both hallucinate a little, and to not question his judgment when spending the impending night with the editor.
Now, running down a hall that reminded him a little of that temporarily transmogrified alley, he remembered that was the first time he had gotten a glimpse of what combined human consciousness could do, and wondered if this night was more of the same.
But it if was, why had it happened here, at the Deertail Lodge, with these particular people?
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