Finnegan's Pass

Bill’s plan went something like this.

At the first sign of snowfall, he would slip into the leather embrace of his rusted worktruck and, taking the route over the mountain, fast around curves and cutting through farmfield, he reckoned he’d reach the bridge after closing, when the lot will empty and a sufficient amount of ice will have formed. He’ll go 60 miles on the comeup to the dark forgotten mouth of the bridge, swaying and creaking and starved of company—the best company, the company that weighs tons—and he’ll brake at the last second, and Finnegan will do the rest.

Finnegan’s Pass closes at five-fifteen during the winters, though. And the snow, forecasted for five, started at about eleven.

Such interruptions get the logical mind chugging again. Sitting, waiting. Flipping through channels until the snow gets going. And then, of course, he had to start going as well, leave the warm house and succumb to the bitter cold.

A lot more daunting than Bill expected, to say the least. A lot less cinematic of an affair. The old truck’s wheels can hardly conquer the incline, and for each half mile, on account of the property closure, he then had to wrestle with the flimsy, moaning gates, drag their anchors through iced gravel to clear his way, then drive a little bit forward, hop out, drag them right back.

It takes a good bit of time, actually. And all the while, he is stuck with himself, and with the winter cold through the seams of his father’s old coat seeps the sort of doubt that tends to stop plans like this. Doubt that comes when you’ve stopped crying, the moment passed, and the numb that follows. Logic returns.

Still, he gets back into the belly of his shitty truck. Warm, in here. Pleasant. He flexes his fingers.

Perhaps it was an overreaction, (thinks Bill).

Ahead, at the moment of his awakening, something darts across the snowy path. Close enough to block the blare of headlights that catch steadyfalling snow in a swift, blurring blink. His head snaps up, but too late. The runner has gone.

He leans out. No hoofprints.

It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Nothing matters. The mood returns. It would humiliate him to go back now—the version of himself from earlier, slurping snot and curses, deleting contact names, ripping pages and disposing of phones. He has done the dirty workings of a dead man, and there is only one step left to go.

The tires struggle to catch on slick street.

It is a comfort. He’s only got a little further to go.

The last gate’s doors flap unlocked at him, trying to help his cause, and there is a nauseous familiarity to this, the inability to reach that which is right in front of him, and the sickness starts to take a hold in the helplessness of being trapped.

So Bill cries and rocks as he tends to do when nothing goes right. The action is an accomplice, the momentum, which budges him just far enough forward to grip on stable rocks and catapult forward, kicking up snow and mud behind.

In no time at all, he finds himself at Finnegan’s Mouth.

In his two spotlights, he studies. Tries to place his plan on this stage.

If the ice doesn’t deliver, the rickety material of the bridge will follow through.

Bill’s eyes won’t pull from the center of the black tunnel ahead. He brings the collar of his coat to his nose and huffs until his head starts to swirl. It is most simple to comfort himself when his mind cannot think clearly. Deadman’s logic returns. It will take a long while before anyone thinks to come here, to notice the skidmarks and broken beams. No one really visits Finnegan anymore. He must be so hungry.

The seat belt clatters into the car door, undone.

But his foot won’t go down on the pedal.

Go, go. Go!

The bridge sways. He gathers his nerve in knots. His body won’t participate. He keeps, keeps, keeps pulling at himself, clenching his teeth, pushing his knees against the dashboard, resting his chin on the wheel. From this new vantage point, he can almost see the twisted beams glittering at the canyon’s other side. Go, go. He stares into the void, into the flickering light. He pulls, pulls, pulls at the rope of his confidence. Its anchor only drags lifelessly through the sand.

At the other end of Finnegan’s Pass, there is unsnowlike movement. Bill catches it only because he is invested in the possibility contemplating anything other than himself.

It is a faint figure. Human, bundled. A bowling pin in the very center of the lane. It blocks the beam. It blocks the way.

Bill kicks the door open.

“HEY,” he calls in two staggered voices, “YOU DON’T WANNA BE HERE RIGHT NOW!”

The figure does not heed. Somehow, it barely sways, barely rustles in the growing winds up here at the peak. It stands tall and statued, unbothered by cold and entirely interested in Bill’s happenings.

“I SAID…! I MEAN!!” Bill flaps his arms in the way people scare birds. “GO, GO! WOULD YOU JUST GO, FOR A SECOND? I’VE GOT TO GO!”

It hasn’t moved an inch. It stands so precisely out of view.

“... ALRIGHT!,” he shrugs, big. “STAY! SEE WHAT HAPPENS!”

Settling back in the warmth, he huffs at the obstacle. There is something on the stranger’s small face that reflects back toward the car, obscuring the rest of his features in the glow.

Bill leans forward, forehead against the windshield.

He could swear it were a smile.

If he weren’t so pressed for time, blinded by his impatience, he’d probably even say it looks like Dad. If you squint… Those jeans, you know? That jacket. That smile…

Distortions in the mist, of course.

Bill interlocks his hands on the wheel and pushes. His car’s honk is weak but loud enough to wake the birds and rabbits hiding in their burrows in the welcoming, loosened dirt of abandoned manmade structures. They scatter across the bridge which creaks and sways and shudders beneath their petal-light weight. When they’ve all dispersed, he honks again.

The figure remains.

He squints, deeper. He could swear… Unbuckled, he fumbles for his wallet, for the little memory stowed inside.

Down to the left hand in his pocket. Down to the fade and stain of denim. Standing before him, fuzzed and distant, that is his father in 1982. Posed as he always has been in his pocket, in this yellow photograph that remains the only memory of Dad. His hand raised in a cardboard wave, unshaken. His teeth glittering sharp, clean.

The smile hasn’t dropped or altered.

Stopped in time on Finnegan’s bridge.

He palms the shift lever and wrestles it back to R. Slow, he backs away, the vehicle whining, its lights dividing the forest into bright forward trunks and shadowed lines. He rolls backward until Dad is out of sight, out of the lightbeam, his silhouette present even in the darkness.

Bill puts his nose in his coat collar. He closes his eyes. He has got to think clear.

If ever there was a sign that tonight isn’t the night, that was it.

This decision is a killswitch, somehow. The car makes a noise that it shouldn’t make, then sputters and dies and goes cold right there in his hands.

There isn’t a light for miles.

He leans toward the glass, searching.

From the backseat comes a wet whisper.

Why…

A long hiss, a tire spitting air out of a needle hole.

You would leave it there? Your wildessssst dream?

In the rearview, Bill can make out a trembling, lumpy silhouette. Almost human, almost-haired. The cabin sours, stinks like old eggs and dry rot. His silence must make the creature anxious.

Something slams against the back of the seat. Again, the car rocks back and forth with the sheer force of impatience. And doubt, perhaps. It does not occur to Bill to turn around and behold. He has never been a particularly curious man.

Instead, beneath the thrill of shock that rushes through the sewer systems and tissues and solids all down his body, there is the old friend of excitement.

I am being robbed, (thinks Bill).

A smile occurs to him in the dark.

Behind, his company begins to shake and speak in deep, slurping, agitated whispers—

HEAR ME!, demands the passenger.

Bill looks again to the mirror, activated.

WHY DO YOU NOT ssssssSEEK IT?

The riddle goes unanswered; again, in anger, the cabin rocks back, forth, back, forth, and with each heave, the tires roll them a little closer to the hilled drop from road to dirt, the very last threshold between man and bridge, car and rusty plank, tonne and frozen bolt. The ravine calls to him; its mist curls fingers up and over the edge of its cliff. Water once ran below, but the stream sits stagnant, icy, an unwelcome greeting more like concrete than creekbed.

Bill is seized by the collar.

A gasp comes out of him. Perhaps the wrong kind. There is something so satisfying in this, the slow waking of a numb and depressed body to such exciting emotions. Something wet and thick drips down the nook of his spine and drains through to the seat of his pants. Drool or honey or plasma-goo, it does not matter.

Considering the circumstance, Bill does nothing to save himself from being eaten.

It is a tremendous strike of luck, a validation where once was a question.

Leave it to me, (Bill thinks), to come out here with intention to kill myself and still find my way into a mess like this, everything so far out of my hands.

The snow would have done it. The cold, and empty. Up here, at Finnegan’s, the polar graveyard. But how slow would that death have been? How long would he have had to wait, if this opportunity had not arisen, the burden slipped right out of his hands and put it to motion?

After a few minutes of not dying, Bill starts to think he has misunderstood the situation.

“Hello?,” asks Bill, seized.

HE FILLS YOU, prods the passenger. ssSO MUCH OF HIM AND ssSO LITTLE OF YOU! The fist keeps tightening, wringing slime, stretching cloth, YOU WOULD GO TO HIM! YOU WOULD ssSEEK HIM! YOUR PIECE WILL HE COMPLETE!

Whatever curse was placed on the car is lifted. The motor coughs and roars, startling the vulnerable man, dousing the bridge’s entrance with light. It is permission to continue, to seek, to die.

Dad stands now at the hood. Overexposed with carlight, it is almost impossible to see the part of his head that broke away in the crash. But it’s there, still gushing oil down his throat and into his plaid collar. Left hand in pocket, he is suspended, the other lifted in a motionless wave as he smiles at his son.

On a small animal’s instinct, Bill puts his nose into the collar again. He sniffs the rust of expired blood.

“I am trying to complete myself,” a pitiful voice named Bill replies.

Oooooohh, groans the creature, its body squeaking naked and constant in the back seat. A waste, a waste, a waste, a waste. Fingers clammy with something suspiciously unsweatlike clamp onto either side of his head like two spiders with an intention to stick their pinkies in Bill’s ears. So much wassste of all that ssskin. Uncompleted. Ungrateful. And the ssssmell of you, like powder!

Spit freckles his nape.

DISGUSTING!, cries the creature called Finnegan.

Even with his ears pinkyplugged, the voice is clear as day, ringing inside, slipping into the tubes and tissues of Bill that he had hardly thought to check. Deep in his living matter, something wriggles. It is black dust. It is ambition. It is purpose, blind and inhuman. It stretches to slip into Bill as though he were merely the costume of a broken man.

sssSo sssimple, (sighs the demon as it puts out its fingers and toes, sinking into its new self), to free a perfect ssspecimen from sssuch a wasted life. ssSo much of this body, unused! ssSo much of this belly, available! Yessss! I will take this life, I will put use to this ssskin, I will put use to this voice, I will control each mollycule of man!

Wait, (thinks Bill), … you want it?

Tendrils pause but do not retreat. Its darkness grows heavy with confusion.

This life, I mean, (thinks Bill, eyes beginning to bulge with the glue that demons are transmitted through), this skin, this… you want this?

The shadow in the back slides forward, the backs of its balding goatthighs whining and creaking on the leather.

Yesss…, says the demon. You are already taken.

Oh, (thinks Bill, sitting back in the chair, leaning into the hands of the devil that pry), If you take over…? Then I…? I won’t be here anymore?

The mollycules remain. The ssssoul will expire.

Finnegan’s bridge lurches, grumbles, so close to a meal of rubber and fire. Someone got to it already. A pact is being shared. A stomach is opening, a chapter is closing.

Good, (thinks Bill).

The spirit of him closes its eyes. The black smokeslime hesitates, midpossession, alarmed by a sudden change to the air.

Where good?, asks the intruder on his insides. What possssssible good in death?

The body itself is spasming, unable to speak, but the smile remains. Peaceful and flattered in his luck. What is left of the man becomes euphoria and, at once, two opposite creatures share in the same surprise and calm.

For its first time, the demon is washed in the safe warmth of relief. It is a sweeter, riper flavor. Bill relinquishes at once all that the demon has ever searched for—that which is tangible, that with fingers and toes, that which walks the earth in a tight clasp of atmosphere, of being. He discards it; he reloans it.

It has been so long since Finnegan has seen visitors.

Longer still, there have been no such visitors in such perfect moonlight, such beautiful, blistering, inhumane cold. Its beams wail in the wind. Its loneliness can only bear witness as the car windows fog, its axles shake with the blurring of two impossible opposites which, tonight, in the whistling dark of a blizzard, have found an answer to all that had ever plagued them, all that was ever desired and so far out of reach.

For the first ever time, two burdens have collided to form something useful. Something beautiful. For the first ever time, a demon has found satisfaction.

The brain still flickers. A frantic tapping and buzzing. When its channel is opened, the demon finds that the vessel is speaking. Laying out a map of last words and thoughts and memories and meanings.

Here is the address, (sputters the dying parts of Bill,) and here is the mail code. This key, here, (a limp arm pulls up, two trembling fingers indicate), is for the garage, and this one for storage. This one for the house. This one, for the office.

Warmed by the blood of Bill, a foam of spit and slime pours over its slack bottom lip. The demon stretches in its new Billsuit. It checks its teeth in the mirror, smells its armpits and fingerwebs, and before he goes for good, Bill is kept to bear witness as his face stretches into a proud and thankful smile at the mere sight of himself. For the first ever time.

And, then, the true Bill expires. Tucked cozily into the back pocket of the universe. A new purpose assigned, one of being and knowing and doing and feeling nothing. His Billycules fizzle and disperse into 1,000,000 different things, and if he could think or feel or remember the sensation, perhaps it may have been exactly what he wanted to find at the peak of Finnegan’s Pass, or at the base of Finnegan’s ravine.

Miles and millennia below, a car’s lights click back online, an engine shakes alive, its indicators flashing and beeping. A storm has passed. Time has rebegun; there is a weight to it that intangible bodies are unfamiliar with.

Bill’s eyes roll into place. His heart starts pumping something hot through his empty limbs, address and mailbox and housekey and coffee, black and sour. The new Bill reads his predecessor in slow strides; the body somehow still recalls so much.

Pink fingers twist keys and adjust mirrors, pull levers and buckle belts. It is almost as if the skin understands, with this new driver, that it will be cherished as it should have always been. Protected. Wanted.

The car inches backward, bouncing back down and away from the ledge, and further, through the gates and gates and gates that lead them here until ears start to buzz with the noise of other cars, blaring lights and burning smells. A man has disappeared tonight and the world has not stopped to notice.

Bill dips his nose into his collar and sniffs, dizzy with life.