Prologue
“He’s off his damn meds again, that’s what the problem is for chrissakes!”
Jack could hear the self-righteous whine in his sister’s voice as she launched into her typical rant about how all the doctors in the world were responsible for her unhappiness.
“You’d think after all this time you people would have figured out that he just can’t be left on his own. And, don’t even think about suggesting he come stay with me, I have enough problems. I have a job to go to everyday.”
Jack rolled his eyes, he could just imagine the expression on Monica’s face; her lower lip protruding ever so slightly in what she thought was an attractive pout, her blue eyes filling with crocodile tears as her long fingers twisted a damp Kleenex.
From the relative calm of his emergency room cot, protected from the world by a blue and green plaid curtain, Jack pictured the face of the unlucky resident who had made the rookie mistake of asking Monica what the problem was. By the time Monica had dissolved into calculated tears, she was alternating between berating the young doctor and his entire profession for being totally inept and blowing her wet nose into the ragged Kleenex.
Jack leaned back into the pillow the nurse had placed behind his head and closed his eyes. Monica meant well, he knew that. And he had given her quite a run for her money this time. In fact, he had even scared himself. Usually, he could slip away and get back before anyone even noticed he was gone. But, this time had been different. His landlord must have come by for the rent money and found him…well, the way he got when he was gone…only worse.
Judging from the IV fluids they were pumping into him, Jack assumed he had been dehydrated, probably starving to death, too. He remembered getting a heavy dose of Haldol when he first regained consciousness and thought he was still in the Mire fighting for his life. That had been hours ago…how many? Time was different here, but not so different that he didn’t realize what might have happened in the Mire in his absence.
Jack tried to remain calm. The more agitated he got, the more crap they would load him up with. It was bad enough about the Haldol, but he knew the regimen of mood stabilizers and antidepressants they would force on him if he had to stay in the hospital for any length of time would all but seal the fate of the others he had left behind. He had to get back to the Mire!
The most important thing right now, and the only thing he had any control over, was remaining as calm and as sane appearing as possible. Monica would raise hell, but he could convince this tired emergency room doctor that he was a problem to be put off for another day.
The first time Jack ever heard about the Mire was when he was seven years old and Abra told him a bedtime story about the dark and dangerous place where men who dared to enter were enslaved and tortured for all eternity by the Miren. These creatures were not the warm and fuzzy forest animals most seven year olds want to fall asleep dreaming about, but rather, they were hulking slavering beasts with foul smelling fur and yellow eyes rimmed in blood red. With her vivid story, Abra succeeded in both keeping Jack away from the Mire and giving him fitful nightmares for years to come.
Jack enjoyed being with Abra more than anyone else because she loved him with no conditions. She had seemed much older when she had cared for him when he was a boy and had helped him to overcome his initial fear of being in Pendulum. Now he was almost thirty-five and she seemed somehow younger than he was.
Jack thought about Monica and the price tag of guilt and penance she put on her love. Everything Monica did was calculated to net her the best possible return. Abra was different, but then, so was everything and everybody in Pendulum, including Jack himself.
Jack could not recall the exact moment he realized that he did not belong here, but he knew he had been quite young, almost incapable of formulating the thought. He had been what his mother and older sister described as a “difficult child,” but in truth, he had been the best child he could be, under the circumstances.
When he was four and a half years old, his mother brought him to the pediatrician and spent an hour detailing the oddities of his behavior to poor old Dr. Cross. The man was in his seventies, and had presided over thousands of infancies, childhoods and adolescences, but he had never been presented with the type of symptoms Jack’s mother was describing.
Looking up from the chart on his lap to peer over the top of his reading glasses at Jack’s mother, Annette, Dr. Cross had asked, “Are you saying that he loses consciousness?”
“Not exactly…” Annette said. “It’s like he is there one minute, and then the next…” She made a “poof” sound and snapped her hands open in front of her face. Dr. Cross started back in his chair a bit, startled at her response.
“He doesn’t actually disappear, does he Mrs. Grenier?” The doctor’s words had taken on a decidedly different tone as he addressed Jack’s mother. She recognized it at once. It was the same condescending talking-to-a-crazy-lady tone that she had endured each time she brought Jack to the ER.
“You know what, Dr. Cross? Forget it. I made a mistake in coming here for this. You can’t possibly understand… you are never there when it happens.” Annette Grenier then gathered up her son and her purse and pushed past the doctor and out of the examining room. Dr. Cross followed her to the front door of his office and handed her a prescription, patting her shoulder with sympathy… the prescription was for anti-anxiety medication… for her. Jack’s mother tossed the small blue square of paper with Dr. Cross’s chicken scratch on it in the trash receptacle on the sidewalk before she got into her car.
After that, Jack’s mother stopped bringing him to the ER when he went “poof.” In her defense, Jack thought, she, at least, never tried to have him institutionalized, which was what Monica wanted.
Abra always chided Jack to be patient with Monica and his mother. They didn’t have his special talent and so, could never understand. It wasn’t their fault, she told him.
“Your daddy knew, Jack. He was just like you. He lived here most of the time…until he went to the Mire.”
Abra sometimes got depressed when she talked about Jack’s father, so Jack never pushed the topic. Abra was the reason Jack kept coming back to Pendulum…he never wanted her to be sad… ever.
But as a young boy, Jack had wanted and needed to know about his father, and since he couldn’t talk to Abra, and his mother refused to talk about her late husband, Jack had no choice but to turn to Monica.
“He was crazy, just like you.” Monica told him when he was only seven, never taking her eyes off the mirror in front of which she seemed to live. “He said nutso stuff and acted like a retard most of the time, but then sometimes…” Her voice had softened then, and she sat back in her chair and looked at Jack like she had never seen him before. “He could be so… normal… y’know?”
Jack did not know. “Normal” was as foreign to him as selflessness was to Monica. His idea of normal was skipping his meds for weeks at a time so that he could return to Pendulum, the only place he’d ever felt safe or wanted.
Chapter One
Jack was not sure when he first became aware that Pendulum and the world his mother and sister inhabited were not the same place. As a toddler, he would cross back and forth with ease from one reality to the other. No one ever seemed to notice; no one except Abra.
It was as if she anticipated his arrival each time. When he was little and frightened by the intensity of Pendulum, she would be there to greet him when he arrived with warm hugs and soothing words. As he grew more and more comfortable in his strange new world, Abra would be waiting for him with a mischievous twinkle in her eye that signified a grand adventure awaited them. Her imagination was bounded only by Jack’s enthusiasm for her ideas.
Pendulum became an addiction for Jack. The medication that kept him sane and functioning in this world, served only to keep him from entering his magical universe; so he would not take the pills. He suffered the horrible black depressions in exchange for the miracle of mania. When his mind was racing with a thousand disjointed and disturbing thoughts that spilled out of his mouth in an unstoppable rush, when he felt so confined by the limits of this mere mortal world that he thought he might implode, Jack went to Pendulum. In Pendulum, he was limitless. His wild thoughts, improbable and fantastic, became reality in Pendulum and he struggled to stay there forever.
In his hospital bed, Jack closed his eyes and with the colors of the blue and green plaid curtain that separated him from chaos firmly in his mind, he pictured the brilliant blue sky and rolling green meadows that framed the banks of the Cymban River that flowed through the very heart of Pendulum. He imagined himself stepping onto the barge that awaited him there and felt the familiar bounce and sway as the ever-silent bargeman poled his way out into the current.
Jack breathed in the sweet, heavy scents of lilac and wild rose as the barge moved steadily downstream. The meadows soon gave way to thickening forests and Jack pictured the tiny flashes of light that flickered in the dusk as the wood sprites made ready for night.
He was almost there. Jack fought to keep his mind focused on Pendulum and his destination. Willing the effects of the Haldol away, he felt himself slipping into the intense, sensory laden world of Pendulum. He was desperate to return to the Mire and rejoin his companions. They needed him and he would not let them down, not again.
The Cymban meandered in a wide arc west where it narrowed until it seemed Jack could almost touch the opposing shores with his arms outstretched. This was where Abra would be, where she always greeted him, joy and gratitude for his return shining in her amber eyes. This time, however, Jack did not see her. He was stunned and confused. She had never before failed to meet him. Jack felt a sudden panic rise, and the barge jolted, hitting something beneath the water with enough force to send Jack staggering toward the bargeman, arms pin-wheeling for balance. Then he was falling over the edge of the barge, impossibly far, into the chilly depths of the Cymban.
“Mr. Grenier, Jack…Jack, can you hear me?” The doctor’s insistent voice cut through the sound of rushing water that filled Jack’s ears and he opened his eyes to find himself once again in the emergency room at Champlain Hospital.
“No!” Jack wailed before he could control his emotions. Please, he begged himself, hold it together, don’t let them see you this way…relax, damn it!
Jack brought his focus back to the world he so wanted to abandon and looked into the eyes of the resident who seemed eager to speak to him, happy even. Jack guessed that any conversation other than one this unfortunate young doctor had been having with Monica was a welcome relief.
“Well now, there you are.” The doctor said, in a tone Jack knew he must reserve for very young children, befuddled elderly, and the occasional kook that rotated through the ER. “Do you know where you are, Jack?” he asked.
“Hospital,” Jack croaked, surprised at how weak he sounded.
“That’s right, Jack.” The resident nodded his approval at Jack’s cleverness. I don’t know what gave me the first clue, Jack thought, my ass hanging out of a paper johnny, or the tubes running out of my arms.
“Do you know what day it is Jack?”
He did not. He had been in Pendulum for two days before he went to the Mire, and he had spent at least a day and a half there…maybe today was… “Monday?” he said, trying and failing to keep the uncertainty out of his voice.
“Jack, it’s Thursday.” The young doctor said as he leaned over him and shone a penlight into his left eye, one latex thumb pulling up Jack’s lid by the eyelashes. “It is Thursday,” he repeated as he straightened, “and you haven’t had anything to eat or drink for several days it seems. You are dehydrated and weak. Your sister tells me that you are also delusional. Have you been taking your…” The doctor paused to look at Jack’s chart, “Aripiprazole?”
He had not. Jack could not recall the last time he had taken his medication other than the anti-depressant. He purposely took the anti-depressant and omitted the other in order to bring on a manic episode…it was the only sure way he could find into Pendulum.
For many years, before he had been diagnosed, Jack could pass in and out of Pendulum with no more effort than just thinking about it for a while. Then, once he had been loaded up with mood-stabilizers and antidepressants by the doctors his mother had forced him to see, he found it virtually impossible to go there, or to even call up an image of the place in his mind. Those were the lost years, Jack thought. He would never relive them. He had been flat, a blank space, a void.
The snap of latex as the doctor finished his examination and threw away his gloves brought Jack back to his surroundings. “Well Jack,” the young doctor began, “we can do one of three things.”
“Or we can do nothing.” Jack interrupted and looked the other man square in the eye as he spoke. “I want to get the hell out of here. I promise I’ll remember to eat and drink something every day. I have important shit to do…I need to get out of here.” Jack wrestled with his emotions and fought to keep the desperation he felt from being so evident.
“I’m fine, really doctor,” Jack tried again, sounding almost reasonable this time. “My sister worries too much. I promise to eat and take my meds…I know how important it is to my stability to not miss any doses. I just lost track this time is all…honest.” Jack turned the corners of his mouth up and hoped it looked like a reassuring smile and not the grimace it felt like.
“As I was saying,” the young doctor continued, “We can do one of several things, Mr. Grenier, we can keep you here in the ER for awhile, rehydrate you, and then see how you are before we make any further plans, and personally, that’s what I’d like to do. Your sister, however, is putting a great deal of pressure on me to bring in a psych consult and have you transferred to the facility in Carlisle. I must say that she has some valid points…”
Jack stopped listening. He had no desire to hear this doctor, who was probably only one or two years older than he was, recite the Book of Transgressions According to Monica…Damn! He needed to get back to the Mire! Abra would be worried about him by now and Jack did not want her going to the Mire to search for him. She would not be careful if she thought his life was in danger, and he could not, would not, be responsible for any harm befalling her.
Abra believed Jack to be hunting sprites, a pastime she disliked, but did not discourage. He had been doing it for nearly a decade and had gained quite a reputation for cunning and agility, of which he knew Abra was secretly proud.
The sprites were notorious for being able to lead their pursuers into many a dangerous trap, but Jack seemed always to prevail. And unlike other hunters, he never ever killed or tortured his prey. As wily and vicious as sprites could be, Jack always found the ones he caught to be delightfully full of the spark of life and vitality that, to him, was emblematic of Pendulum.
Abra would allow for the mishaps that could occur when hunting sprites; the tricky, tight mazes many hunters became hopelessly lost in, or the paralyzing sting of their touch at dusk. She would calculate a reasonable time for his return, and when that had passed, she would not wait much longer before looking for him.
Jack swallowed his fear and turned his attention back to the doctor. He was surprised to find the young man staring at him in silence. Shit, Jack thought, did I just think any of that stuff about the sprites out loud?
“Jack,” the resident began, running a hand over his bleary eyes and stubbled face, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think you might be better off in a facility, just for awhile.”
Out loud…definitely out loud, Jack thought.
“No, no…I’m fine, really. I just go off sometimes…it comes with the territory. Listen doc,” Jack said, spreading his hands and shrugging his shoulders, “I am a nut case…obviously…but I am no danger to anyone, myself included. I just see the world differently than most people. This little episode this week notwithstanding, I do pretty well for a guy who takes ten pills a day.”
“That’s just it, Jack. Your blood work shows that you have been taking considerably less than ten pills a day.” The doctor was starting to sound exasperated and Jack could not risk him calling in a psych consult.
“Okay, you win. I’ll stay here for as long as you want and then you’ll see…I’m fine.” This small concession on Jack’s part had the effect on the young resident that Jack had hoped it would.
“Good, settled then?” The doctor smiled at Jack and slipped out between the sliver of space between the two ends of the curtain, leaving Jack alone to contemplate his escape back to Pendulum.
