Paul Melko - The Walls of the Universe

The gate was chained shut, but when he got out he saw that it wasn’t locked. The chain was just draped over the two ends of the gates. He pushed it open and drove the car through. He hoped no kids were hanging out drinking beers. He drove past the two prime spots for drinking. No sign of anyone. Then he drove the car to the overlook. The topsoil was gone, and the granite was white in the moonlight. Prime killed the headlights, dropped the car into neutral, and rolled down all the windows. He popped the trunk, then tossed the keys back onto the front seat.

Then he got behind the car and pushed.

At first, the car wouldn’t budge, and he had a moment of panic. What if the car was stuck? Then it shifted and began to gain momentum. The car rolled, faster, faster.

He gave it one last push and it sailed into the abyss.

He ran to the edge.

The car splashed into the water. Bubbles erupted around it. Slowly it sunk. Prime watched the taillights disappear, and then waited until the roiling was smooth, until the car was totally submerged and on its way to the bottom.

The quarry was one hundred meters deep. No one would find that car.

Prime exhaled. They were halfway done. He turned and ran across the white stone. It gave way to green-black lichen, and then he was in the weeds, which smacked him in the thighs.

The road was deserted. He paused, listening. Nothing.

He ran across, pausing at the ditch.

“Casey?” he called.

Had a police officer come by, asked her what she was doing hauling a corpse? Had Ted Carson come back to life and throttled her?

Prime stuffed down a nervous laugh.

He heard the scrape of a shovel on dirt.

He pushed through the row of wild blackberries. There was Casey, digging into the earth of a clearing among a half-dozen trees. The corpse lay beside her, motionless, still dead.

There was another shovel on the ground. Prime picked it up, and he realized that Casey had raided his parents’ barn to get tools. There were two shovels and a pickax.

“Is the car gone?” she asked.

“Gone.”

“Good.”

“Casey,” Prime started.

“What?”

“You’re doing a lot for me.”

She stopped digging and stared at him. “For us.”

“I’m sorry, Casey, that I’ve disappointed you. I’m sorry we had a child without-”

“Shut up, John,” she said.

“Casey,” Prime cried. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“I think we’ve learned things about each other tonight that have pushed the limits,” she said.

“No, I’m not John Rayburn,” he said. “I’m not from… this world.”

She stepped out of the shallow hole she had started. Prime stepped in and picked up where she’d left off.

“What do you mean? You’re some kinda alien? What?” Her voice was shrill.

“No! I’m human. I’m from another Earth, like this but different.”

“What do you mean?”

So Prime told her as he dug Ted Carson’s grave. Prime started from the beginning, when he first met his own John Prime and was tricked into giving up his life. He told her about Oscar and Thomas. He told her about all the times he’d almost died. He told her about his schemes and ideas. He told her how he’d stolen this life from Johnny Farm Boy.

When Prime was done, he was a foot and a half deep. She still stood outside the hole, staring at him, shovel in hand.

“When?” she asked after a moment.

“What?”

“When?” she repeated. “When did you exchange places with my John?”

“A year ago.”

She raised the shovel. “Was it before we…”

“Yes! Goddamn, yes. It was before he even talked to you. It was at the church dinner!”

She exhaled, dropped the shovel. “Then you’re my John. He was never my John.”

“He was here first…”

“He never even talked to me! He never knew me.”

“But-”

“All your ideas-You stole them.” She laughed.

Prime frowned, then laughed too. “Yeah, I’m just a thief.”

She hopped into the hole on the far side of the grave and sunk her spade into the dirt.

“I’m glad you’re you,” she said.

“Casey-”

“Dig.”

They managed to dig a grave one meter deep and one and a half meters long. Casey stripped Carson of his clothes, tossing his wallet on the ground. Prime rolled the body into the grave, feeling a moment’s nausea at the cold skin. Then Casey poured a bucket of lye over the body. Prime’s father had some in the barn, which he used to correct soil pH.

“Fill it in,” she said.

Prime pushed dirt over the top of the corpse with the shovel head. The sound of clods on flesh was nauseating, but he didn’t stop. When they were done, the grave was a ridge of dirt in the clearing.

“We’ll throw some grass seed on it this weekend,” Prime said.

“Your father never comes over here, does he?” Casey asked.

“I don’t think so.”

They stood for a moment; then Prime dragged the tools back to the barn. It was nearly 5:00 A.M. They were dirty, sweaty, and shivering now that the physical effort was over. Prime felt giddy.

“I did it. I got away with it.” He barked a laugh, realized it made him sound maniacal, and stuffed it back down his throat.

Casey took his hand. “Let’s go.”

They started walking into town, keeping to the edge of the road.

“We did it,” she said softly. “We killed a man.”

“We got away with-”

“Shut up, John!” Casey cried. Prime realized she was crying.

“Casey-”

“Shut up! We killed a man. Whether right or wrong. We-both of us-killed a man tonight. We’re murderers, and God will judge us in heaven.”

“There’s a million of him that are still alive,” Prime said.

“What?”

“Across all the universes, Ted Carsons are still alive out there.”

“But this one, right here,” she said, “is dead. You and I took a life.”

“It was just me,” Prime said. “I’d say that in court.”

“It was us ! We’re in this together.”

Prime bristled. “Did you help me so that you could tie me down?”

Casey snarled at him, “Go, if you want! No one is holding you down. Go use your stolen ideas to make a fortune, and keep it all for yourself. I really don’t care.”

They walked in silence.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said after a while.

“It’s been a stressful night,” she said.

“The police will come looking,” he said. “He might have let people know where he was going.”

“It was just talk,” Casey said. “He never showed up at our apartment.”

“What about our dirty clothes and the mud on our shoes?” Prime asked.

“Your father owns a farm, doesn’t he?”

John nodded.

“You scare me,” he said.

“Me too,” she said. “Let’s go home. You have work in a few hours.”

John picked Casey up at eight on Saturday night. In fact, he was there at seven thirty, but he stopped at the Burger Chef not far from her house and sat in his car in the parking lot. He considered being fashionably late, but the stress on his nerves with just showing up on time was bad enough. At five till, he drove over.

Her little brother, Ryan, opened the door.

“Yeah?”

“I’m here to pick up Casey,” John said. Saying it to a little boy was a lot easier than saying it to her parents.

“You’re not Jack.”

“I’m John.”

The boy eyed him, then swung the door open. “I guess you can come in.” He yelled up the stairs, “Casey, your stem is here!”

From upstairs came an answering shout: “Shut up, you little puke.” Then, “Hi, Johnny.” She poked her head around the bannister on the steps leading upstairs.