Andrew Klavan - The truth of the matter

“Ma…,” I whispered.

“Ssh,” the woman whispered back. “Just rest.”

I sank back into dreams and memory.

I came into a strange and shadowed place. It was some kind of garden maze, but instead of hedges there were corridors formed by high trellises. The trellises were covered in twisting branches that sprouted thorns, like rosebushes with all their flowers gone. I moved through patches of bright light into patches of deep darkness. Somewhere not far away, I could hear voices murmuring:

“The court is now back in session. Judge William Taggart presiding.”

“The bailiff will bring in the jury.”

It was my trial. In this dream-memory, it was going on at the same time I was wandering in this strange, barren garden maze.

I turned a corner and stepped into a dark square. I had reached the center of the maze. I thought there was a statue here, the figure of a man. But as I stood and looked at it, the statue let out a sigh. It was no statue at all. It was an actual man, waiting for me in the depths of the maze’s shadows. I couldn’t see his face. I could only make out his figure.

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” came the voices murmuring in the distance.

“We have, Your Honor. We find the defendant, Charlie West, guilty of murder in the second degree.”

There was a loud cry that seemed to go into my heart like a knife.

“Charlie! No!”

It was my mother, her voice rising above the general murmur of the crowd’s reaction. Her cry broke off into painful sobbing that went on and on beneath the pound, pound, pound of the judge’s gavel.

“This court will come to order!”

The noises of the courtroom faded slowly. My mother’s sobbing was the last sound to disappear. Then it was silent here at the center of the dark maze. I stood in that silence with the eerie figure in the shadows.

After another moment, the figure spoke to me: “Hello, Charlie.”

I don’t know why, but his voice sent a chill through me. I peered at him, trying to make out his face, but I couldn’t. Everything felt strange and uncanny to me. I knew I was in a dream, but I knew it was partly real too, partly a memory of something that had really happened to me.

“You understand what’s going to happen now, right?” the dark figure said.

I nodded. I shivered. I knew. “I’m going to prison.”

“That’s right. Not for long, though. The Homelanders have already arranged for your escape. And we’ve already arranged for you to get away with it.”

I nodded. My heart was beating hard.

“Frightened?” the man asked me.

I shrugged. I guess I was frightened a little. And sad too-sad about my mom and all the pain I was putting her through. But there was something else as well. I was excited. I was ready for the mission to begin, ready for the fight to begin, ready to do what I had been called to do.

“I’ll be all right,” I told the shadowy man.

The man’s voice grew grim. “You’re going into a dangerous world, Charlie. A world full of twisted people with twisted philosophies. They will try to use you to commit any atrocity they can. And if, for even a second, they suspect you’re not completely on their side, they will kill you without a second thought.”

I put my hands in my pockets, lifting my shoulders around my ears. “I know all that. I’m ready.”

I could feel the man smile in the darkness. “I’m sure you are. You’re a special guy, Charlie. That’s why we came to you in the first place.” He stepped toward me. Again, I strained against the shadows, trying to see him. I could just make out the outline of his features. “And now, before they take you away, there’s one last thing I have to tell you. A technician is going to come to you in your cell. He’s going to install a device inside your mouth. The device can be activated by a sound code, which he’ll teach you. When the device is activated, it will release a chemical for you to swallow…”

I stared at him. “What do you mean? Like a suicide pill? In case I get captured and tortured or something?”

“It is in case you get captured and tortured. And it is a pill of sorts. But it won’t kill you. We knew you wouldn’t use something like that.”

“That’s right. I don’t do suicide.”

“Fair enough. But what this pill will do is wipe out your memory. That way, no matter what happens, you won’t be able to reveal anything about us, the people who sent you, the organization we represent.”

I shook my head, trying to understand. “If I activate this device and swallow this stuff, I’ll lose my memory? I won’t know who I am?”

“No, no, it shouldn’t affect your long-term memory. You’ll still know who you are. You’ll remember most of your life. We’re not sure, in fact, just how much of your memory will be erased. The drug is still experimental. But we figure about a year or two of your past will disappear. The point is: you won’t remember being sent on this mission or who sent you.”

I just stood there in the shadows, thinking about it. A year or two of my life, gone. All the stuff that had happened to me. Beth… “Will the memories be erased forever?” I asked.

He gave a small, sad laugh. “To be honest, Charlie, if you find yourself in a situation where you need to use this thing, it’s not likely you’ll live much longer, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean.”

“But, just as a point of information? If you do get caught and you do get tortured and you do swallow this chemical and then, somehow, against all odds, you manage to survive and find your way back to us… Well, in that very unlikely series of events, we have an experimental antidote to this drug as well. I would say there’s a good chance, under those unlikely circumstances, that you’ll be able to restore most of the memory that was lost.”

I thought about it some more. Then I nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s roll.”

Then there was one of those sudden shifts in scenery that you get in dreams. I was no longer in the thorny maze. I was back in the courtroom. The bailiffs had my hands pinned behind my back. They were just closing the cuffs around my wrists. I was calling out to my crying mother.

“It’s gonna be all right, Mom. Don’t be afraid. Everything is going to be all right, I swear. Never be afraid.”

The judge’s gavel was pound-pound-pounding on the bench.

“The court will come to order!” he said loudly.

I cast a last look back at the people in the gallery-at my mom, at my dad with his arms around her, his face grief-stricken; at Beth, trying so hard to keep from crying as she showed me an encouraging smile; at my friends, Josh and Rick and Miler, tapping their chests with their fists to let me know they were still with me in their hearts-everything seemed to fall away beneath that steady pound, pound, pound of the judge’s gavel…

Which now became another pounding, a different sort of pounding, somewhere nearby.

My eyes snapped open. I was awake. My gaze roamed over the white ceiling above me. Something was different. I was more clearheaded. I was covered in cold sweat.

My fever had broken.

I licked my dry lips. I turned my head on the pillow to look around. I was in a small bedroom. I was lying on a single bed against one wall. A woman-the same woman who had caught me after I’d broken into her house-was seated on a wooden chair by my bedside. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans now. She looked tired. She smiled at me. I tried to smile back.

The pounding…

Even though I was awake, the pounding from my dream continued. I realized now: It was not the judge’s gavel. It was someone knocking on the door in a nearby room.

The woman gave a sigh and pushed out of her chair to her feet. Instinctively, I reached for her.