Page 23 of What is Found
He heard Matvey stir as the silence grew. The way ahead was still a ghostly white maelstrom, and he thought, somewhat inanely, of an old show about these guys who’d fallen into a time vortex and kept getting yanked from one crisis to the next.Time Tunnel,that was the show’s name.
Isthatwhat he was doing?Hadbeen doing for thelast two years? Looping back on himself? Endlessly revisiting the disasters of his past?
“Stan was driving me to my new home, where I was going to live next. He’d picked this little town about a half mile from Lake Superior. Just outside of the town, there was this big dip in the road and, when you looked into it, there was nothing but fog on account of the air above being warmer than the air below. Anyway, Stan just drove us on down into that fogbank. All of a sudden, Matvey, it was just like this: fog everywhere and a tunnel of snow and I had this weird feeling for about ten seconds that everything had been a dream. That it wasn’t July anymore and I hadn’t messed up, hadn’t ever needed to become Danny Hopkins, hadn’t ever left Texas. But then we came out on the other side,” he said, asthisfog suddenly pulled apart and the way ahead cleared. “And then,boom, we were back in July. I remember thinking that I’d left who I’d been in that fog and come out the other end a whole new me: new name, new town. New guardian.”
Matvey said nothing.
“Bet you’re wondering about that,” he continued. “About Stan and why Kansas, where I was Danny Hopkins—and when that didn’t work out, going to Wisconsin.”
Where he was reborn as John Worthy: a name that neither his parents nor his Uncle Dare, a man he missed so much his heart hurt, would recognize.
“Thing is,” he said, because Matvey wouldn’tunderstand a word, “Stan was assigned to me after I shot someone.” He cleared his throat. “After I killed him before he could kill me.”
And that was the moment John Worthy remembered something else about the day that the new boy with a made-up life broke a bully’s hand.
CHAPTER 4
Five minutesbefore Danny Hopkins nearly twisted a bully’s thumb clean off, he had been reading a novel. The novel was, in fact, the verysamebook which, twenty years later, a Russian named Ustinov would single out as a personal favorite:Desperation.
The plot is relatively straight-forward. A bunch of travelers, which include a family of four, are taken prisoner by a policeman from the tiny town of Desperation, a blip on the map of Nevada that also just happens to be home to a gold mining company. The policeman, whose name is Collie, has been taken over by a demon, Tak. Tak can control animals and make people kill each other or go berserk. Tak’s onlyrealproblem is that his evil issointense,somonstrous, whatever body he inhabits wears out fast. Still, he is pretty powerful, and in the end, the novel’s plot really boils down to a classic morality tale: not just the difference between right and wrong, butbetween greed and self-sacrifice. Between the allure of supreme evil and the demands of supreme good.
In John’s opinion, the book remained an underrated masterpiece. He’d read it a couple two, three, maybe five times. Even listened to the audiobook on several occasions—the original, with the author narrating. He still loved it because the book’s central theme—the struggle between contradictory but very human inclinations—was one to which he could relate. The book was about warring gods and sacrifice: about the needs of the many being far more important than the needs of the few or oneself. Even though the boy in the novel was chosen and prayed and had prophetic dreams and held to the belief thathisgod was more powerful than Tak…the kid wasn’t given any kind of reward, unless you counted getting to live while most everyone else died.
And wasn’t that a kicker? Here, the boy did all the right things, held fast to his belief, andstilllost his whole family. At the end, all he had left were his faith and a best friend he was told to make his brother.
Why Ustinov chosethatbook, what signal he was trying to send…John hadn’t been sure. Now, though, as he guided the bukhana through that storm, he realized two things. No, three.
One: Ustinov knew that John was a fake. A fraud. A legend. Ustinov had to know what John had done when his name had been Danny Hopkins. There was no other explanation. Otherwise, why pickthatbook?
Two: The town of Desperation was, in essence, done in by a mining operation that, in its quest for gold, inadvertently opened a portal to Tak’s world. Ustinov said that the Taliban were mining for gold’s twenty-first century equivalent, lithium. Was there a subtle message there? Had Ustinov been hinting at a location? Given the climax of the novel, which happened deep in that gold mine, was Ustinov insinuating that there was a show-down still to come?
There was yet a third reason, though, which clinched it. Convinced him that Ustinov didindeedknow who John really was and what he had done. It was all in the name: that boy inDesperation, the kid in the story who lost so much even though he was on the side of the angels.
That boy’s name was David. Which had also beenhisname.
Once upon a time and long, long ago.
REST STOP
NOVEMBER 2023
CHAPTER 1
The road dead-endedin a scalloped expanse he thought must be a parking lot. Craning right and then left, he spotted no other roads, no paths. There was, however, a set of stairs zigzagging up the mountainside. Twisting his head to get a better view, he leaned over the steering wheel and squinted toward to the mountain’s summit. Through a thick curtain of blowing snow, he could just make out the hard corner of a building set upon the summit. The distance had to be at least a hundred feet, possibly more.
My God.He sagged back in the driver’s seat. No way he’d manage Davila on those stairs.Can’t have come all this way for nothing. There’s got to be another way up.
“Chawn.” A tentative tap on his right arm, and when he looked that way, Matvey jabbed both zip-tied fists to the right of the steps. “Chawn,khodit,” theboy said, making walking motions with his fingers like in the old Yellow Pages commercials.
Peering left through the windshield, he spotted what the boy had seen: a slight indentation marking a path. That was good news for them; he didn’t much like the idea of clambering up a set of rickety stairs with or without Davila. The path didn’t seem to be too steep either, which was also good. Keeping their footing in snow and ice would be tough enough as it was. But what about Davila?
“Seriously,” he said to the kid. “Walk up a mountain with Davila on my back.”
“Khodit,” the boy said, again. “Khodit,Chawn.”
Walk, John.“Uh-huh.” He unbuckled his shoulder harness. “From your mouth to God’s ears, kid.”
CHAPTER 2