Hitchers

never seek help.

When Grandpa had first taken control, he’d spoken directly to me, knowing I could hear. Now I felt the urge to reciprocate. I inhaled to speak, feeling vaguely moronic, but pushed on.

“What will it take, Grandpa? What do I have to do to get you out of me?” I paused, as if expecting him to answer, but this wasn’t that sort of conversation. It was more like the conversations NASA used to have with astronauts when they were on the moon—one side talked for a while, then waited half a day for a reply.

“I was wrong, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I shouldn’t have resurrected Toy Shop.” Again I paused, waiting. Maybe that’s all he wanted; maybe he’d leave me alone if I apologized. “Okay?”

Who was I kidding? Grandpa wasn’t going to give up his foothold on a second life without a fight to the death. Shouldn’t I at least try to negotiate, though? Weren’t you always obligated to attempt diplomacy when the alternative was war? I had an uneasy sense that this was already war, and that the worst was yet to come.

CHAPTER 18

I jolted upright in bed, my heart pounding.

Lorena.

If Grandpa was back, and thousands of others as well, couldn’t Lorena be back?

If I could have just five minutes to talk to her. How many times had I thought that? One of those pointless, impossible wishes that fill the dark hours after you lose your life partner. That it might actually be possible made me want to run through the city knocking on every door. I wanted to search for her, now, this instant. Whatever it took, I’d do it to have those five minutes. There must be some way to find her if she was out there.

I got out of bed, went into the living room and paced, thinking. If she was back, she could be anywhere in the city, and she was nothing but a disembodied voice repeating random pieces of her past. Of course assuming everyone with the voice would follow the same path as me, Lorena would eventually be able to contact me. I didn’t want to wait, though. If she was out there I wanted to find her now and be there when she came out.

I wandered into my studio, sat at my drafting table. My heart was racing, keeping me from thinking clearly. Drawing calmed me.

I drew Wolfie clutching a magnifying glass, searching for Lorena. Then I drew Lorena’s face in the upper margin, then Little Joe, peering upward, a bladed hand shading his eyes. Where was she? She was outside the boxes of their little world, just as she had been outside my world until the anthrax attack. But if she was here, she was a needle in a haystack. A speck of dust in a smokestack. I’d have to talk to everyone in the city.

I stopped sketching.

I stared at the page, not seeing it, letting an idea take shape.

If Lorena was out there, she could be inside anyone in Atlanta. How many Atlantans read Toy Shop, or had friends or family who read Toy Shop? What if this person read in my strip some of the words that were bursting unbidden from her or his mouth? If Lorena was out there, there were certain words she must be repeating.

Finn, I jotted in the margin beside my sketch of Lorena, underlining it twice. Snakes. Lightning. Annie. Chile. Toy Shop.

I could have gone on, but I wasn’t sure how I could work even those words into a strip without making it awful. Toy Shop was the only easy one—that would be on the masthead. I pulled out a clean sheet of Bristol board.

#

I winced as I read over the finished strip, reminding myself that I was doing this for Lorena, that if she was out there this was my best chance of finding her. But I hated making a joke out of her death. Before the strip was published I’d have to contact Lorena’s family in Chile and explain why I’d done it, just in case they saw the strip. They’d be mortified, but I thought they’d understand, assuming I could convince them the dead were returning, and she might be one of them…

I put my pencil down. They’d think I was insane. Everyone who read it would be horrified, and if I tried to explain why I’d done it they’d have me committed.

As long as Lorena understood why I’d done it, let the rest of the world think I was crazy.

CHAPTER 19

A thirty-foot-tall Jeff Bridges held a sobbing twenty-eight-foot-tall Rosie Perez, right in my back yard.

When we were deciding what movie to order three days earlier, Mick had lobbied for Planet of the Apes, but in the end I’d won out with Fearless, about a guy who walks away from a fiery plane crash without a scratch, and is profoundly changed.

A year ago it seemed like the most amazing thing to screen movies on the drive-in screen—both awesome and somehow terribly frivolous. Tonight it was a minor diversion, a way to take the edge off the cutting reality of what was happening to us.

In the papers and on TV the feds were maintaining that the voices were part of a new mental illness dubbed Post-Traumatic Stress Vocalization, but stories were running on CNN and FOX about people who swore the vocalizations were the voices of dead friends and relatives.

A story of a missing nine-year-old girl whose body was recovered after twenty-five years was getting a lot of attention. Her mother claimed the daughter’s fourth grade teacher (who died in the anthrax attack) was speaking through her, and told her right where to find the body.

Mick, sweating profusely and blurting incessantly, looked like a man waiting to be led to the electric chair. He had already put a substantial dent in the bottle of Glenlivet he’d brought.

“You okay, Mick?” I asked.

“Mm hm.” He stared at the movie, but I knew he wasn’t seeing it.

I pulled out my laptop and checked my email. Most of the messages were from people I didn’t know—fans of the new Toy Shop. I got more of them every day, lately more than I could possibly answer.

Some of the subject lines were amusing:

Wolfie is my new BFF!

Please kill Little Joe!

Looking for an assistant? I’m your guy.

I came to a message from my Aunt Therese. The subject line was How could you??? I really, really didn’t want to open it, but I knew it would just eat at me until I did.

Is that lousy comic strip all that matters to you? How could you use Lorena’s death as a punchline? What’s happened to you? I hope you enjoy your fame and success, mister big-shot.

I really couldn’t blame her. From the outside it looked like I’d used the circumstances of my wife’s tragic death for comic strip fodder. That would be reprehensible, no question about it.

I considered replying, explaining why I’d run the strip, but it would make me sound insane. If I found Lorena she could call Therese and set the record straight. Of course if Lorena was able to use a phone she could call me. Maybe I would be the only one who would progress that far.

Another message halfway down my email list caught my eye. The subject line was Are you looking for me???

I opened it.

Mr. Darby,