John Darnielle - Wolf in White Van

“JJ’s dead,” she said. There are so many different kinds of ghosts.

“What—”

“He got into drugs,” she said. “Somebody shot him. That was, like, ten years ago.” I started doing math in my head.

“Nobody really knew him anymore,” she said. She took my hand in hers and gave it a squeeze like she used to do at the hospital. “We just kind of all did whatever after graduation.”

Later, talking to Mom on the phone, I mentioned how Kimmy’d come around to visit. Mom tried not to sound irritated. “What did she want?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Really,” said Mom.

“Just saying hi,” I said. I knew ahead of time that Mom wasn’t going to accept this answer, because she couldn’t understand it, but I tried it out anyway. “She was in the neighborhood,” I offered, hoping to hit the right tone so we wouldn’t get into an argument, but I did not succeed.

“What do you have in this bottom drawer, now, that I can’t open it and tidy it up a little?” Vicky said once. The bottom drawer is locked.

“Nothing I’m ever going to use,” I said.

“You should let me just clean the whole cabinet, honey,” she said.

“There’s really no need,” I said.

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — KANSAS

OREGON — IDAHO — WYOMING — UTAH — KANSAS

OREGON — IDAHO — WYOMING — COLORADO — KANSAS

ARIZONA — UTAH — COLORADO — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — COLORADO — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — OKLAHOMA PANHANDLE ONLY — KANSAS

OREGON — WASHINGTON — NORTHERN IDAHO — MONTANA — NORTH DAKOTA — SOUTH DAKOTA — NEBRASKA — KANSAS

OREGON — WASHINGTON — NORTHERN IDAHO — WYOMING — NEBRASKA — KANSAS

ARIZONA — UTAH — IDAHO — WYOMING — NEBRASKA — IOWA — MISSOURI — KANSAS

NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — KANSAS — MISSOURI — KANSAS

NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — KANSAS — NEBRASKA — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA PANHANDLE ONLY — COLORADO — NEBRASKA — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — TUNNEL UNDER OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — NEW MEXICO — TUNNEL UNDER PANHANDLE — KANSAS

NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — NEBRASKA BORDER TUNNEL — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — LOUISIANA — MISSISSIPPI — ARKANSAS — MISSOURI — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — LOUISIANA — MISSISSIPPI — TENNESSEE — KENTUCKY — MISSOURI — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — LOUISIANA — MISSISSIPPI — TENNESSEE — KENTUCKY — INDIANA — ILLINOIS NO CHICAGO — IOWA — NEBRASKA — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — LOUISIANA — MISSISSIPPI — TENNESSEE — KENTUCKY — INDIANA — ILLINOIS (CHICAGO) — IOWA — NEBRASKA — KANSAS

NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — WYOMING — SOUTH DAKOTA — MINNESOTA — IOWA — NEBRASKA — KANSAS

NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — WYOMING — SOUTH DAKOTA — MINNESOTA — IOWA — MISSOURI — KANSAS

NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — WYOMING — SOUTH DAKOTA — MINNESOTA — IOWA — MISSOURI — ARKANSAS — OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — COLORADO — UTAH — WYOMING — NEBRASKA — KANSAS

OREGON — NEVADA — IDAHO — UTAH — COLORADO — KANSAS

OREGON — IDAHO — NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — KANSAS

OREGON — IDAHO — NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — PANHANDLE TUNNEL — KANSAS

OREGON DEAD END

ARIZONA DEAD END

BAJA CALIFORNIA — ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

BAJA CALIFORNIA — ARIZONA — SONORA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

ARIZONA — SONORA — CHIHUAHUA — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

NEVADA — CALIFORNIA — BAJA CALIFORNIA — ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

ARIZONA — CALIFORNIA — NEVADA — CALIFORNIA RETURN — ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — SONORA — CHIHUAHUA — COAHUILA — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

ARIZONA — NEW MEXICO — TEXAS — COAHUILA — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

BAJA CALIFORNIA — SONORA — CHIHUAHUA — COAHUILA — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA — KANSAS

BAJA CALIFORNIA — SONORA — CHIHUAHUA — COAHUILA — TEXAS — OKLAHOMA DEAD END

BAJA CALIFORNIA — SONORA — CHIHUAHUA — COAHUILA — TEXAS DEAD END

BAJA CALIFORNIA — CALIFORNIA — BAJA RETURN — DEAD END

CALIFORNIA DEAD END

NEVADA — OREGON — WASHINGTON — OREGON — NEVADA — UTAH — COLORADO — KANSAS

NEVADA DEAD END

It’s almost impossible to remember the fury of assembly, that time back home when the house was a way station: when I was unwelcome there and knew it; when I was a dark presence in other people’s nearby lives, a person who made the house harder to live in. But the Trace had come home with me in bits and pieces: on Pomona Valley Hospital letterhead stationery, and in remembered scenes and phrases, fresh and vital. I wanted to make good on it before anything happened, before I got worse. Maybe I wouldn’t get worse: it was hard to predict. Hard to predict was another thing I’d brought home from the hospital, a phrase that had become a secret personal talisman, something I didn’t dwell on but kept nearby. I had headaches, and a pulsating ring that throbbed in my ears. I was still too weak to bear much weight. But I’d had an idle little dream in a small dead space, and the dream was now alive and hungry inside me.

It’s really just simple math, the whole of it. There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die. But it’s very hard to die, because all the turns pointing that way open up onto new ones, and you have to make the wrong choice enough times to really mean it. You have to stay focused. Very few players train their focus on death. The path forward stops here and there as you go, each frame filled out by outlines and figures from the rich depths of my hospital ceiling, shaded by colors I’d reconstituted from the foggy memory of the visions that had preceded the event for sixteen years: all those blurred plains, now melted down into an ideally endless landscape, its key peaks judiciously spread out so as not to use them all up at once. Saving some for last when there was no last. When there was no point in saving, when no one would ever see the very last.

I listened to music to drown out the drone, and I sat in my wheelchair exercising my legs so they’d be able to carry me when I left. I noticed how the blue padding on the seat of the chair retained heat, which made my thighs get sweaty and then clammy as I sat in it all day. I learned to hate it, and to look forward to the slow, hard work of physical therapy. Pain woke me up several times a night, as it would continue to do for over a year and, occasionally, forever, and I taught myself to power through it on the way back to sleep, because getting medication in the middle of the night was too sad and horrible to be worth it. I closed my eyes and pictured the stronghold I’d built as it would really look out there in the physical world, in the unknown Kansan expanse: it was vivid, and beautiful if you managed to get inside it. From without, it was stark, windswept, a silo in the middle of nowhere, nearly nothing in the middle of more nothing.

I filled notebook after notebook after notebook with paragraphs describing it, indicating its parameters, the directions leading to it or away from it, the coordinates of its hidden refuge. I annotated every page with numbers and abbreviations and self-invented legends that were hard to keep track of — which needed, eventually, a smaller notepad of their own — and some ideas that didn’t fit but still seemed cool got ported off to new notebooks, where they grew into their own games, smaller concerns, exclusive worlds for players with specific needs. Little private exorcisms that would eventually find people in need of their hidden formulas. Barbarian Zone. Crosshairs. Wolf Patrol. It was like shrapnel scattering this way and that, who knows where it lands, but I kept my sites trained on Kansas; and I told my parents at dinner one night that I didn’t need the TV in my room anymore, that they should sell it, and Dad said, “Really? Why?” because he knew I’d been watching lots of TV late at night for a while.