Chapter Fifty

By Chris Fulmer

Brian slowly stretched as he woke up. The night had seemed to go by rather quickly--maybe even a little too quickly--but it was daytime again already.

He slipped out of bed and looked over to the chair were he'd left his clothes, but they weren't there. Puzzled, he looked around the McCallisters' attic for them, but couldn't quite find them. "Somebody must have borrowed them for some reason or another," he theorized, "Oh well, it couldn't have been for anything harmful."

He trotted downstairs. "Hey, have any of you guys seen....?" he started to ask out loud, but trailed off as the only sound that greeted him was silence. He glanced up and down the halls. No one was in sight.

"Hello?" he called out, "Andy? Allison? Kevin? You guys still here?" There was no response. Mildly concerned, he stuck his head in the bedrooms. They'd apparently already gone home, for there was nothing of his friends' items around anymore. Indeed, as he made his way downstairs and looked around the ground floor, it now looked like nobody had even been in the house for days. Even the dirty dishes that he'd distinctly seen Kevin place near the sink before they'd all gone up to bed weren't there anymore, and Brian sincerely doubted that anyone would have come down in the middle of the night just to have cleaned them. "Well, he figured, "They probably all went home already. I might as well do the same."

He went to the vestibule to get his coat, only to find it too was missing. He frowned deeply; who would be cheap enough to steal his clothes? He stuck his head out the door, half expecting to see them all out front, but the McCallisters' yard--and indeed the entire stretch of Lincoln Boulevard that was visible before him--was deserted. Surprisingly, though, it didn't seem cold out to Brian. He would have expected there to be a severe chill in the air after a blizzard, but he couldn't feel any coldness at all.

Shrugging, he trudged his way through the deep snowdrifts toward the sidewalk. He could just go home and get some new clothes until he could figure out who took his. He whistled a slow version of "Blue Christmas" as he turned up Chestnut.

Something in the back of his mind was nagging away at him. Everything looked normal around him, but somehow for whatever reason, Shermer seemed rather--for lack of a better word--melancholy. There seemed to be a pervasive sadness hanging around all the deserted houses, and there was just something in the cloud-thick air that made Brian ever so uncomfortable, as if something was deeply wrong that he was unaware of.... It was as he passed the corner of Locust that he glimpsed familiar faces.

"Andy, Allison," he called over to them. They'd been walking together in the direction of the center of town and turned slowly as he ran up to them.

"Where'd you guys go?" he asked them, "I looked all through the house and....."

"Who the hell are you?" Andrew asked him. This took Brian completely by surprise. "What do you mean who the hell am I?" he asked them, "We've known each other well for the last nine months, you know that."

"What are you talking about?" Allison inquired. There was something almost dangerous in their stares that had Brian nervous. "Oh come on, how could you guys forget, we were in that detention together in March..." he started.

"You were never in that detention," Andrew cut him off, "I've never seen you before in my life."

Now Brian was definitely concerned. "Is this some kind of a joke, Andy?" he asked out right, "Did Bender put you up.....?"

"Let's go," Allison took Andrew by the hand, "He's obviously demented."

"So tell me something I don't know," Andrew said as they walked away, leaving Brian stunned behind them. He couldn't quite grasp what had just happened. Had he done something while he'd been asleep that had angered them?

He pondered this over and over again as he entered the heart of Shermer. Like the residential areas, it seemed sadder than usual for some reason. Brian could tell that the streets hadn't been plowed all night, which was surprising because in the past the borough had been very punctual whenever snow fell.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey kid, you got a beer?" came the slurred speech of a bum. Brian recoiled when he realized who it was.

"Mr. Jacobson!?" he gasped at the sight of the teacher, who looked like a wreck, "What are you doing like that? This can't be for a project, is it?"

"Give me five bucks, I need a drink," Mr. Jacobson continued, looking as if one more drink would kill him.

"But you don't drink!" Brian protested, "The school board would never allow it! Or your wife!"

"I divorced her five years ago after I quit teaching," Mr. Jacobson told him, "She wanted to keep wasting her time with the kids, never realizing that teaching's just a waste of time, and I decided to help her stay addicted to it, by removing myself from...."

"But you love teaching!" Brian couldn't believe what he was hearing, "It's the most important thing in your life! You'd never quit it! Or get divorced!"

"Oh sure it's important--if you've got somebody to share it with," Mr. Jacobson lamented, "And in twenty-six years, not one kid ever wanted to rise up and share it with me. Now if you'll excuse me, I need a drink, since you won't help me."

He staggered off. Brian felt like he needed a drink as well--something that would wake him up from whatever was going on. He made a beeline for the diner across the street. Again, the sense he got when he came inside was one of depression. Everyone sat hunched over the counters and in their booths, looking miserable. Including someone Brian recognized.

"Aaron," he said, darting over to a longtime friend, who slowly slurped a Coke, looking miserable. Aaron gave him a sour look. "What do you want?" he asked curtly.

"Tell me what's going on, why is everything all topsy-turvy?" Brian asked. Aaron gave him a hard looking over. "Who are you?" was his reply.

"Oh come on, it's me, Brian, we've known each other since third grade! I helped you win the Multiplication Marathon that year, and you...."

"I finished next to last in that, for your information, and furthermore, I've never seen you before in my life!" Aaron snapped at him. Brian was now even more confused as to what had happened to the world he'd known so well only a few hours before. "But--But we'd study together before every major test!" he protested, "You know that! You got straight As in sixth grade because of it!"

"I failed sixth grade twice, wise guy!" Aaron growled, "So get your facts straight!"

"Okay, okay, you failed it twice!" Brian didn't know quite what else to say.

The diner doors opened behind them. Another familiar figure stumbled up to them. "Cocaine, boys?" asked the last person Brian expected to see selling drugs. He was so shocked that he couldn't even get a word out. "I get the message," she grumbled and walked out when he didn't say anything. It took him a few minutes to recompose himself. "Aaron, how the hell did Lori get her hands on cocaine!?" he asked him, "She'd never take drugs!"

"Are you trying to make some kind of bad joke?" Aaron snorted, "She's been selling since eighth grade when she got addicted to them."

"But how does she stay valedictorian? She'd never been able to keep her grades up!"

"Valedictorian? Pal, if you think SHE'D ever even come close to the top of the class, you've got your head screwed on backwards," this time Aaron broke into laughter.

"But she went straight to the top of the class when she moved to Shermer in second grade!" Brian practically screamed in his face, "She beat me out for every major academic award from then till now! I've told you I don't know how many times over the years how jealous I am of her for being so good, so much better than I am!"

"Wouldn't she wish," Aaron chuckled, "Bud, she was over her head in drugs long before Mr. Vernon kicked her out in ninth grade. She just sat there in class with no inspiration and slowly sank out of sight until even coming to class for her was a miracle. Are you all right upstairs?"

Brian didn't answer. Everything was too overwhelming. He rushed for the bathroom and locked the door behind himself.

"Okay Johnson, get a grip on yourself," he told himself in the calmest voice he could muster, "This is all just some weird dream. When you wake up, everything will be....YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!" he happened to glance at the mirror on the far wall, and where his reflection should have been, there was absolutely nothing. Brian looked as deep into the mirror as he could, but couldn't see himself at all. He backed away into the door.

"Oh God, what's going on here!?" he cried out to no one in particular,

"It's like I'm in a.....a......dead zone!"

There was a pounding on the door. "Hey kid, are you done in there, I've got to go bad!" yelled a man. Brian rushed out of the bathroom and the diner. He knew he had to get home. Maybe his parents knew what was happening.

He rushed across Shermer like the wind, not caring that he was often going right up the middle of the street, where now the snow plows where starting to do their jobs. Once or twice, he almost collided with one, only to find the next minute that it had already passed him, as if it had gone right through him. Soon he'd reached the familiar confines of his front porch.

He rang the bell several times. His father gruffly answered the repeated ringing. "What is it!?" he growled.

"Dad something's gone wrong in this town," Brian spat out like there was no tomorrow, "Nobody knows who I am! You have to help me! And please don't say you don't know me!"

But his father looked puzzled by everything that had just been said. "I'd like to help you, kid, but I really don't know you," he said.

"Oh come on Dad, I know you're mad at me for blowing the competition two nights ago, and you should be, but please, tell me what's going on!" Brian screamed in frustration, "I'm your son, damn it!"

A look that was a cross between disbelief and sadness came over Mr. Johnson's face. "I don't have a son," he said softly, "You must have the wrong address." And with that he closed the door.

"No please, Dad, open up!!" Brian pounded on the door relentlessly, but there was no response. He became aware, however, that he could hear the conversation inside remarkably well. "So who was it, Ralph?" he heard his mother asking.

"Some kid who said he was our son," Brian could sense a great deal of sadness in his father's voice now, "I told him he had the wrong home."

There was a very deep sigh before he continued, "I'm not sure I ever told you this, Mercedes, but I'd have given anything to have a son. Someone who'd carry on the tradition you and I set. Mary's great, but a son would have made us a more complete family, I think."

"Funny you bring that up, Ralph, but I've been thinking that a lot myself," Mrs. Johnson said, sounding sad as well, "And so's Mary, apparently. I heard her on the phone with one of her friends the other day, and she was saying how much she wishes she'd have a brother."

"Well, we can't argue with fate," Mr. Johnson said in resignation, "What it deals out to us we get, and I guess a son just wasn't in the cards for us.

It might be for the best, though, since I guess I'd probably be all over him about keeping the grades high. Lord knows I am with Mary as it is......"

Brian had heard enough. He lurched down the front steps in a stupor.

"They wanted me more than anything!?" he said out loud to nobody in particular, "Why didn't they tell me? Could they tell me?" As for Mary, he was even more shocked; normally she treated him like dirt, and all along she would have wanted him more than anything?

"What the hell is all this supposed to mean?" he thought out loud as he staggered up the street. It was then that he realized his last words before he'd gone to bed last night, about how he'd thought things would be better if he'd never been born. "Has that come true?" he thought, "Have I really not been born?"

He could think of only one more place to turn to. He took off running again. Along the way, Chandra's words from the previous day started ringing in his ears very loudly: "EVERY LIFE AFFECTS THE OTHERS IT TOUCHES, AND I CAN TELL YOU RIGHT NOW THAT YOU'VE TOUCHED A LOT OF PEOPLE'S LIVES POSITIVELY." He tried to shut it out, but it kept ringing louder and louder. Before he knew it, he'd reached the house he wanted. He banged on the door until it opened. "All right Mrs. Martelli, just hear me out before you say anything," he said very quickly to the woman who answered it, "I'm Brian, I'm Matt's best friend, and I really need to talk to him right now, so please get him and tell him who I am if he says he doesn't know me!"

He expected a sharp rebuke to this, as had been the case so far before, but instead Mrs. Martelli grew rather sad instead. "You can't," she said softly, "You're a little too late."

"I'll wait for him," Brian told her, "The way things are going, I'm going to have all the time in the world!"

"You're not his best friend," she said between tears, "Matt never had any friends."

"What do you mean 'had?'" Brian didn't like the sound of this at all.

"Son," Mrs. Martelli said very quietly, "Matt shot himself at age 12."

"WHAT!!!!????" Brian felt like he'd been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer, "That's not true! I know it's not true!!"

"Skyview Cemetery, section 3, row 21 if you don't believe me," Mrs. Martelli told him, and closed the door.

"But I was in class with him just yesterday!!!" Brian cried out to no response again. Without even knowing it, he took off running as fast as he could, not even caring about traffic anymore, until he reached the cemetery.

Knowing the row by heart, as it was where his grandfather had been buried two years ago, he located it immediately, and was horrified to see in a spot that he'd known to have been vacant just a few days ago a tombstone engraved MARTELLI. "No!!" he shouted, wiping away the snow like a madman, "It can't be! It just can't be!!" But the tombstone glared back at him the cold fact that Matt had indeed only lived to be twelve. All of Brian's emotions erupted outward. He collapsed over the tombstone weeping hard.

Until he heard.....

"I think this spot should do the trick, Mr. Mayor," came the voice of the town undertaker. Brian looked up to see him leading Mayor Oaks toward another tombstone that he knew hadn't been there before. The mayor, who looked beyond emotion, nodded blankly. "I suppose you're going to pay for the upkeep of it, since your wife made clear to me on the phone that she has no intention of....." the undertaker went on. Mayor Oaks nodded silently, looking like he'd completely break down into tears at any second. "I'll pay whatever I have to to make it as good as possible," he said quietly, surveying the grounds around the tombstone, "It'll be good and peaceful," he continued, "She always liked the peaceful."

"I'm sorry to hear that the funeral will be cheap," the undertaker said, consulting some notes, "But since you said earlier that she didn't have any friends, I guess you and your sons are all I'll have to cover the expenses for."

Immediately Brian's stomach took another horrible lurch. He didn't like what he was hearing at all. He rushed over to the two men. "Mr. Mayor, what happened!?" he demanded the town's leader. Mayor Oaks merely burst into tears and walked back a few feet, unable to even bring himself to say it.

"Hit and run on Elm, very sad," the undertaker said dryly. Brian didn't want to look at the tombstone, for he could have guessed easily by now what it said. But there was no way he could stop his eyes from making the turn down to the marble red epitaph inscribed OAKS and, in large print below the name of already deceased Oaks family members, the cold words BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER CHANDRA ALEXANDRA. "Oh Mother of God, NO!!!!!!!!!" he shrieked in a voice that threatened to crack the sky and lost all control. He rushed the undertaker. "She's not dead!!" he bellowed in the man's face, "She's not dead!! She came to my house to stop me from killing myself two days ago, she slept over that night, we're....we were supposed to be...sleeping over the McCallisters.....she wasn't hit by a car!!"

"Read the paper if you're so smart," the undertaker tossed a copy at him.

Brian read the front page and nearly fainted at the headline GIRL, 18, KILLED BY DRUNK DRIVER. "But this isn't true!" he continued, "You have to believe me, it's not!!!!"

"I got worried around three thirty when she hadn't come home," Mayor Oaks said, clearly in a far away galaxy, "I told Victoria we should look into it. She said not to worry. Then the call came from the chief. From what we learned from the school, she walked out of class after she was picked on for the umpteenth time. I think she just wanted to run away from it all, to start her life over again where she'd find people who'd be friends with her. Well, at least in heaven, she'll find friends everywhere she looks...."

"SHE DIDN'T RUN AWAY!!!!!" Brian shrieked at him, "SHE WENT TO MY PLACE! SHE WANTED TO SAVE MY LIFE! SHE.....!!!!" And then the realization swept over him. "She went because she saw me in pain in Mr. Russell office," he said out loud, "But I've never been born, so I wasn't there for her to take sympathy on." It was all too much for him. He collapsed in a sobbing heap over the tombstone. "Oh Chandra I'm sorry!!!" he cried, "You were right all along! I did have a wonderful life! Tell me what to do to change this! You deserve to live more than....!!"

And then, without warning, a cold pale arm shot up out of the grave and took him by the throat. Brian gasped for breath as the rest of Chandra rose out of the ground, fire burning in her eyes. "YOU KILLED ME!!!" she yelled in his face, "BECAUSE YOU WEREN'T THERE TO SAVE ME!!!"

"I'M SORRY CHANDRA!!!" Brian screamed in terror, "I DIDN''T MEAN IT! I'M SORRY! I'M SO SORRY!!!" He glanced up at Mayor Oaks and the undertaker for assistance, but they were no longer there. He let out one last terrible cry for help.......

And with that, the cemetery started dissolving and growing darker. The image of the demonic Chandra faded into Allison, who was shaking him hard.

"Brian, wake up!" she was shouting at him.

Brian glanced up at her, surprised to her somebody actually say his name.

"Allison?" he asked, confused now, "You know me?"

"Well of course I KNOW you," Allison said, looking like he'd just asked the dumbest question in the world, "You've woken up the whole house with all that screaming. That must have been a nightmare for the ages."

"Nightmare?" Brian glanced around. He recognized the attic. And it hit him full: it HAD only been a dream. "YES!!!" he shouted with the first real joy he'd felt in a long time, "IT WAS ONLY A NIGHTMARE!!!"

"Well, yes," Allison was giving him a strange look now, "Are you sure you didn't have too much to eat earlier, Brian?"

But Brian barely heard her. He was down the stairs in a flash. There was something he needed to check on first, just to make sure. A fast trip down to the first floor--where he saw with relief his coat was still hanging where he'd put it when they'd first come in--led him to the den, where Chandra was lying in the recliner looking very concerned. "Are you all right?" asked him when he came in, "It sounded like you were having a seizure up there!"

"I saw what you were saying, Chandra," Brian told her breathlessly, "You were right about everything; my life does mean a lot to a lot of people. I saw what it would have been like without me, and it made George Bailey's world look great without him. It was horrible."

"Life may be tough to swallow sometimes, but it's always worth living," Chandra said with a knowing smile.

"Yeah, I know that now," Brian said. He looked her in the eyes carefully.

"I saw more," he said, finding it very hard to go back to that horrible last vision he'd seen before he'd woken up, "In that world without me, you died yesterday."

"I DIED!?"

"You ran away from school and I guess home after you I and--except I wasn't there--talked with Mr. Russell yesterday morning and were hit by a drunk driver," he told her, "Your father said you felt lost and alone in the world and you were looking for friends, and that....."

"Well you were there, and I did find a friend," she said, rising to her feet and looking happier than a human could possibly be, "All my life I've been wanting to find someone who would see me at face value, and when you stood up for me earlier tonight, I knew I'd found that someone. Nobody's ever stood up for me before, you know." And then, without warning, she rushed him and threw her arms around him. "Thank you," she told him, tears of joy running down her cheeks.

"Hey, it was nothing," Brian couldn't think of anything else to say at the moment, "It was the least I could do for all the kindness and patience you showed me when I would have hanged myself without a second thought."

"It's more than anyone else has done," she told him, "Anybody else would have shoved me off if I'd tried to help them."

"Well the next time anybody else has a problem in there lives, I'll make sure they listen to you, because I'll tell you one thing, Chandra Alexandra Oaks, you ARE a miracle," Brian said, the tears of joy flowing in his own eyes as well.

"So are you, Brian Ralph Johnson," she told him. As they embraced harder, she looked skyward and whispered, "Thank you for showing him, Lord."

Behind them, everyone else was watching the scene unfold, and the emotions ran the full gauntlet. "Well, I'd say everything turned out fine in the end," Kevin said with a knowing smile.

"That's the sweetest thing I ever heard two people say to each other," Kayla said, trying hard to hold back her own emotions.

"Ah, give me a break," Bender snorted, "I've heard people in bad scenes in bad love films that go better than this! She's just putting the moves on Johnson, and he's going to pay for it when she gets through with him!"

"Does somebody want to meet Mr. Tickles?" Kevin warned him, "I will do it!"

"You do and I sue!" Bender countered.

"Well, I may not care for her," Claire offered, "But I'm glad Brian found his inner peace, even if it was from her. She may not deserve it, but he does."

Kevin shot her a strange glance. He glanced at the grandfather clock nearby. Just before four a.m. "One thing is, with all this, I don't know how we're going to get back to sleep now," he commented.