Monster Chapter Two

See the minutes, how they run —Henry VI, Part 3, Act 2, Scene 5

The symbols.

Nick had long ago cracked the code. A binary system, ones and zeroes, floating above the head of every person he met.

They’d appeared after the accident.

His mind had erased the most frightening parts.

He was sixteen, driving between Cache Valley and Ogden. He’d borrowed the car from his mother so he could buy some Christmas gifts. Something fun for Jane and Beth. Something Mom would do more than smile at and then never use. The sun was bright and low in the southern sky. The thermometer on Mom’s Honda Odyssey read minus eight. Tiny bits of ice hovered and spun like confetti in the bitter blue sky.

Across the valley, the roads had been dry and clear—the only reason Mom had let him go in the first place. But once in the canyon, wind blew dry snow over the asphalt. Hot tires from cars driving through the canyon first melted, then packed the snow into invisible black sheets of ice. Nick slowed down. The semi behind him didn’t.

The truck pulled into the passing lane and barreled past on Nick’s left. He saw a decal on the side of the trailer—a skunk holding a flag with the words Sweet Simon. The skunk disappeared in a flash of swirling gray snow.

And then the semi’s backend veered first to the right, then left. The rig cut in front of him, spinning out of control until it was perpendicular to Nick’s car. Nick slammed the brake and felt the pedal pulse and stutter as the tires sought traction on the icy road. Snow showered against his windshield, and then the truck’s trailer filled his entire view.

Gray, then red, then black.

Nick struggled out of darkness six days later to find himself propped up in a hospital bed surrounded by the scent of disinfectant and the din of daytime television. His ribs hurt, and his left arm was in a cast. His memory was a spongy haze. Touching his forehead, he found bandages and stubble where his hair used to be.

The nurse whooped with delight when he saw Nick’s open eyes. He buzzed for the doctor, then had the nurses’ station call Nick’s mom.

“It’s December 29th, buddy,” the nurse said. “The doc says at least once a day you’re lucky to be alive.”

Nick could only stare at the space directly over the man’s head. At something roughly six inches above his scalp and a little to the right.

A rift. Nick couldn’t think of a better word. A rip, as if reality itself could be parted like a curtain to reveal another world.

No. That wasn’t quite right. Not another world. A space behind the world. Behind this world.

He saw symbols and chains of symbols through that rift, twisting and weaving across the broad expanse. They were white in color, runic, and fractal. Some symbols were near the rift, close enough to be seen clearly. They hung in the space like a vertical marquee. More symbols floated farther away. Some formed strands that spun out like contrails behind an airplane. Other threads folded in on themselves and formed clumps, swirling and intertwining until it looked like a hundred thousand cobwebs spinning through the void.

Beauty and motion and chaos.

Nick closed and opened his eyes. He rubbed his face, then shook his head, accepting the accompanying jolt of pain.

“Hey, hey,” the nurse stepped forward and touched Nick’s shoulder. “None of that. You gotta take care of that head of yours. It’s been through a lot.”

The symbols above the nurse remained, floating in the rift.

The doctor came. Welcomed him back to the real world. Explained what happened in the wreck. The truck had lost control, and Nick had T-boned into the side, his car sliding under the trailer. Nick’s head ended up pinned between the crumpled roof of his car and the base of his headrest. The seat belt and airbag saved his life, along with a surgeon from Salt Lake who cut into his skull on three separate occasions. Twice to relieve pressure and once to “straighten things out.”

Nick listened, trying to process the doctor’s words. His gaze kept creeping to the space above the doctor’s head.

The doctor had symbols, too. A rift, just like the nurse.

Later, Mom burst into the room. She hugged him, and he held on to her like he hadn’t in a long, long time. He found himself sobbing, and she kissed him. Quick kisses wet with tears. She stepped back, but he couldn’t let her go. He held her hand tight as if letting go would send him falling back into darkness.

Above Mom’s head—symbols. Nick passed his hand above her head and through the rift during the second hug. He felt nothing.

Nick made a decision then, one that he would question a hundred times in the coming years.  

He said nothing of the symbols.

Mom would worry, and she already looked stretched thin. The doctor would question and maybe run tests or even keep him longer than needed. He would become the boy who had a mental condition.  

Perhaps the symbols would disappear as his body healed. If not, he could share his secret later. Face the questions then. But for now, he would keep the symbols a secret.

The doctor left to finish his rounds. After a wave of talking, hugging, and cry-laughing, Mom said goodbye and left for home, promising to bring his sisters to visit first thing in the morning.

Nick found himself all alone with a headache that bounced and raged in his skull.

The nurse returned later with dinner. Nick read the name printed on his badge.

“Lee,” Nick said. “Is it Lee?”

“Hey, nicely done,” Lee said, setting a tray of food on a rolling table next to the bed. “A brain injury can’t be too bad if you can still read, right?”

Nick smiled. He liked the short nurse already. “Would you mind keeping the door open when you leave? I’m feeling a little . . . claustrophobic.”

Lee looked over at the door. “You sure? That’s Alice out there. She can’t stop talking about her ex-husband. I’ll bet you that cup of Jell-O you’ll be begging me to close that door in another thirty minutes.”

Nick grinned. “I’m the one with the head injury. Isn’t the customer always right?”

“The customer is always right,” Lee said, “but you’re not a customer. “You’re a patient, and the patient never knows what the hell is going on. That’s a fact.”

Lee propped open the door when he left.

Nick watched Alice at her desk, talking to another person wearing scrubs. Neither of them paid any attention to him, and he studied the space above Alice’s head.

He was far enough away that many of the symbols in the rift were little more than a fine mist, but he could make out the symbols close to the opening. They formed a prominent block of pearl-colored shapes: three columns, eleven rows, and two symbols.

ФФД

ДДД

ДФФ

ДДД

ФДД

ФДД

ДФФ

ДДД

ДДФ

ДДД

ДДД

Like bits of code.

The symbols weren’t static; rather, they shifted and changed in a steady rhythm. The motion was oddly satisfying. His eyes grew heavy and drifted shut. In the red darkness behind his eyelids, ghosts of the symbols continued to dance and shimmer until sleep overtook him.

Recovery over the next few days was slow. Progress came in stumbles. Two days after he awoke, an infection knocked him back down. His dreams turned fevered and ferocious. Dark nights and drenched sheets. Bright days spent shivering and squinting.

On two separate occasions, he thought he sensed someone in his hospital room. He tried to open his eyes, but they were too heavy. Instead, he dreamed of a girl with dark eyes and violet hair. She sat perched on the chair next to his bed, and with her feet tucked under her, she reminded Nick of a crow, watching him in silence.

He emerged on the other side of the infection with another week he couldn’t remember. New Year’s Day was behind him. Missed, just like Christmas.

Through the long hospital stay, his body began to heal. His strength crept back, bit by bit. He started physical therapy on the third floor of the hospital in February, which was both frustrating and painful. He hadn’t lost functionality from the accident, but his muscles had atrophied. His reactions were slow and clumsy. He fought against despair.

Physical therapy only took up a small portion of the day. He slept and ate, and to keep from slipping into a dark sadness, he picked and poked at the puzzle of the symbols.

His mind returned repeatedly to the three columns at the front of each rift. Every person had the same symbols, but the order was different. He sensed a pattern and a meaning but couldn’t uncover it.

One night after dinner, watching Alice through the doorway, he remembered Uncle John, who had taught Nick to count in binary when Nick was in fifth grade.

His uncle was goofy and always had a smile on his face. “You can only count to ten on your fingers?” Uncle John asked, feigning a look of surprise. “I can count to over a thousand with my fingers.” He wiggled his fingers at Nick, and Nick had called him a liar to his face. You could do that with Uncle John, and he’d only grin and poke you in the ribs. But true to his word, Uncle John unfolded the math in a way that his eleven-year-old mind could understand. He’d learned about the magic of binary digits, and he’d never forgotten.

“Your thumb is one,” Uncle John said. “This pointer finger is two. The middle finger is four, and your ring finger is eight. See the pattern? Each finger doubles.”

He held up two fingers like a V for “victory.” “This represents six,” Uncle John said. “Four plus two is six.” He stuck out his pinky and thumb in the “hang loose” symbol. “And this is seventeen. Sixteen plus one.” He held up all ten fingers. “And if you hold them all up, it’s one thousand and twenty-three.”

Staring at Alice’s symbols in the hospital, the puzzle began to unfold. Three columns. Eleven rows. Each place was a number. Nick watched the figures shift and change in regular cadence above Alice’s head. The symbols toward the top shifted quickly, and the symbols toward the bottom seemed static. The bottom two rows were entirely made up of the Д symbol. If that symbol represented zero, then the symbols were a kind of timer—a timer that was counting down. Eventually, all the symbols would be Д. All of them zero.

Each tick—each symbol shift—took slightly longer than a second. Nick’s eyes danced between the clock on the wall and Alice’s rift. Eight ticks every ten seconds. Forty-eight ticks in a minute.

Nick got up, steadying himself with the rail on his bed. He found a pen in the drawer next to a phonebook. He tore out a page and climbed back into bed. He looked back to Alice and copied the symbols above her head. He did the math in the margins of the page. It took him almost fifteen minutes.

After finishing the calculations, he stared at the symbols still dancing above Alice’s head out in the hall.

In roughly twenty-three years, two-hundred and seventeen days, eight hours, and some change, those symbols—that timer—would reach zero.

Like bits of code.

Over the next two days, he took note of people coming in and out of his room. He examined, converted, and calculated the symbols. Minutes and hours and days and years.

An idea came to him—slowly, at first—but it grew and evolved until it became a single question. A question, Nick realized, might be answered right here in the hospital.

That night, he waited until the hospital grew quiet. Getting out of bed, he tied his hospital gown tightly around his backside so it was covered. He told the nurse on duty he couldn’t sleep and wanted to walk for a bit.

He stepped carefully down the halls and followed the signs to the hospital nursery.