He seems to be lying on a concrete path that runs through the front yard of a house, stretching from the sidewalk to a front door behind him.
The house is not his own.
And there’s more wrong than just that.
He breathes for a moment, heavily, almost panting, his mind groggy, his vision slowly becoming a little clearer. He feels himself shaking from the chill and pulls his arms around himself, sensing a dampness covering his –
Not his clothes.
He looks down at them, his physical reaction slower than the thought that ordered it. He squints again, trying to see them clearly. They don’t seem to really be clothes at all, just strips of white cloth that barely fit the name trousers or shirt, stuck closely around him more like bandages than things to wear. And all along one side, they’re wet with –
He stops.
They’re not wet with seawater, not with the soaking, briny cold of the ocean he was just –
(drowning in)
And only half of him is wet anyway. The other half, the half that was against the ground, is cool, but quite dry.
He looks around, more confused than ever. Because he can only be wet with dew. The sun is low in the sky, and it seems as if it must be morning. Underneath him, he can even make out a dry outline of where he was lying.
As if he had lain there all night.
But that can’t be. He remembers the brutal, winter coldness of the water, the dark freezing gray of the sky overhead that would never have let him survive a night out in it –
But that isn’t this sky. He lifts his face to it. This sky isn’t even winter. The chill is merely the chill of morning, of possibly a warm day to come, of possibly a summer day. Nothing at all like the bitter wind of the beach. Nothing at all like when he –
When he died.
He takes another moment to breathe, to just do that, if he can. There is only quiet around him, only the sounds he himself is making.
He turns slowly to look at the house again. It resolves itself more and more as his eyes get used to the light, used – it almost seems – to seeing again.
And then, through the fog and confusion, he feels a soft tremor in his blanketed mind.
A brush, a hint, a featherweight of –
Of –
Is it familiarity?
2
He tries to rise, and the feeling vanishes. Rising is difficult, surprisingly so, and he fails. He feels terrifyingly weak, his muscles resisting even the simple command to stand. Just the effort to sit fully upright leaves him winded, and he has to stop for a moment, panting again.
He reaches out to grab a sturdy-looking plant by the side of the path to try to rise once more –
And pulls his hand back immediately when short spikes prick his fingers.
It’s not a regular plant at all. It’s a weed, grown staggeringly tall. The flower beds that line the path to the door of the house have all grown extraordinarily wild, much higher than the low stone dividing walls on either side. The shrubberies among them look like they’re almost living creatures reaching out to him, poised to do him harm if he moves too close. Other weeds, enormous weeds, three, four, even six feet high, have blazed through every inch of dirt and every possible crack in the pavement, one of them crushed underneath him where he lay.
He tries again to rise, finally making it up, though he sways dangerously for a moment. His head is overweighted with grogginess and he’s still shivering. The white bandages around him are in no way warm, nor are they even – he notices with alarm – covering him properly as clothing. His legs and torso are wrapped tightly, his arms, too, and most of the width of his back. Bafflingly, though, the entire area from his belly button to the middle of his thighs is na**d to the world, front and back, his most private parts unthinkably out in the morning sun. He frantically tries to pull down the too-scanty fabric to cover himself, but it sticks tightly to his skin.
He covers himself with his hand and looks around to see if anyone has seen him.
But there is no one. No one at all.
Is this a dream? he thinks, the words coming to him slowly, thickly, as if from a great distance. The last dream before death?
Every yard is as overgrown as this one. Some that had lawns are now sprouting fields of grass shoulder-high. The pavement in the road is cracked, too, with more weeds almost obscenely tall growing right out of the middle, a few approaching the status of trees.
There are cars parked along the road, but they’re covered in thick layers of dust and dirt, blinding every window. And nearly every one has sunk under four deflated tires.
Nothing is moving. There are no cars coming down the road, and from the look of the weeds, no car has driven down here in an impossibly long time. The road to his left carries on until it meets a much wider street, one that looks like it should be a busy, bustling main road. There are no cars driving there either, and he can see a gigantic hole has opened up across it, forty or fifty feet wide. Out of which a whole glade of weeds seems to be growing.
He listens. He can’t hear a single motor anywhere. Not on this street or the next. He waits for a long moment. Then a long moment more. He looks down the other end of the road on his right, and through the gap between two apartment buildings, he can see some raised train tracks and feels himself listening for the trains that might run on them.
But there are no trains.
And no people.
If it’s the morning that it seems to be, people should be coming out of their houses, getting in their cars, driving to work. Or if not, then walking their dogs, delivering the mail, heading off to school.
The streets should be full. Front doors should be opening and closing.
But there is no one. No cars, no trains, no people.
And this street, now that he can see more of it as his eyes and mind begin to clear a little more, even the geography of it looks strange. These houses are crammed together, all stuck in a line, with no garages or big front yards and only the narrowest of alleys between every fourth or fifth house. Nothing like his own street back home. In fact, this doesn’t look like an American street at all. It looks almost –
It looks almost English.
The word clangs around his head. It feels important, like it’s desperately trying to latch on to something, but his mind is so foggy, so shocked and confused, it only heightens his anxiety.
It’s a word that’s wrong. That’s very wrong.
He wavers a little and has to catch his balance on one of the sturdier-looking bushes. He feels a strong urge to go inside, to find something to cover himself with, and this house, this house –
He frowns at it.
What is it about this house?