This one was nearly empty.
One of the booths to her left harbored a morose-looking younger couple, and there were only two people sitting at the counter. She saw the Pharmacy sign hung against a sleek wood-paneled wall in the back, the word CLOSED hung on a rope triangle above a boarded-up window. Behind the counter stood a very tall man, his face white as egg yolk beneath a paper hat. He had a tiny bowtie at his neck and an apron around his bony hips. He held what looked like an ice cream scooper in one hand while the other rested on the counter in front of a teenage boy with ginger hair and freckles.
Both turned to look when Jimmy and Ellie entered, the bells strung to the heavy glass door stung the air, ringing their arrival.
“Here, sit down, Ellie,” Jimmy said, and she did, right next to the teenage boy with freckles. “This here’s Fred,” he said, indicating the man behind the counter, “and Fred will get you whatever you want, won’t you, Fred?”
“Sure I will,” Fred said, nodding to Ellie and smiling through his putty face. “Always happy to welcome a new family to the neighborhood. How are you enjoying Sabbath so far, young lady?”
“It’s fine,” she said, trying to smile but feeling weak and out of sorts. “Just fine.”
Fred smacked his hand lightly on the counter. “You look a little pale. Has Jimmy not been feeding you?”
She gave a wan smile. “He’s been showing me the sites.” She shifted her eyes to the right, saw the boy with freckles staring at her intently, and looked back to Fred. “I admit, I’m a little undernourished,” she said, trying to sound light about it so as not to hurt Jimmy’s feelings.
“I have just the thing,” Fred said. “House special, and it’s on me.”
Someone clicked on a jukebox she must have missed when they entered and a crooning voice floated through the room. Fred turned away, grabbed a large metal cup, and began to pump white syrup into it from a steel sprocket.
She swiveled her seat to look behind her. The couple in the booth were watching her, and she noticed they were drinking what appeared to be vanilla milkshakes.
Feeling queasy, she turned back to watch Fred do his work.
He dolloped in a scoop of ice cream from a freezer before moving the metal cup beneath the spout of a massive keg which sprang directly from the wall. She watched as he turned the nozzle and carbonated water flooded in. He turned off the water and jammed the cup under a mixer, let it roar for a minute, then poured the thick wet shake into a tall ridged glass.
“Jimmy...” she said.
Fred dropped a long spoon into the glass then put the drink on the counter in front of her; a square red napkin nestled beneath, catching the perspiration.
Ellie looked down into the white, frothy shake. Bubbles rose and popped along its surface, and when the smell of it hit her she thought – she knew – it smelled like the lake. She thought the bubbles looked like eyes.
“What kind is it?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
Fred, both hands on the counter, smiled as best he could, a crooked thing that cut into his face, making his eyes shift unnaturally. “That’s a hometown special, young lady. Cream and syrup that’s made right here in town, and water straight from Sabbath Lake itself. Carbonated, of course.” He gave her a grotesque wink. “That’s what makes it tickle.”
She looked around for... she didn’t know what. For help? For guidance? All eyes were on her, and the jukebox had switched songs and was playing “Rag Mop”. She tilted her head to Jimmy, spoke quietly to avoid a scene.
“Jimmy,” she said under her breath, her eyes no higher than his strong chin. “I just want to go home.”
“We will, angel,” he said, “but first have something for the road. I’m telling you, Fred here is the best soda jerk in the county.”
She looked back at Fred, his smile now gone.
“That’s a hometown special,” he repeated, as if surprised she didn’t understand. “Once you drink that, you’ll want nothing else. That there’s a big cold glass of coming home.”
She looked down at the shake, saw something the width of a spaghetti noodle slither along the surface then dip down into the rich contents of the glass and disappear. She put a hand to her mouth, turned and cried out despite herself, “I’d like to go home now!”
Jimmy put a hand on her shoulder, squeezed it lightly. “Yeah, sure, Ellie, no problem,” he said flatly. “You must not be feeling well.”
“No, I guess I’m not,” she said. Relief flooded through her and she started to rise.
Jimmy slid his hand from her shoulder to her neck at the same instant Fred pulled her drink back toward his side of the counter. Jimmy’s hand reached into her blond bob of hair and gripped it with a fierce tightness. She started to scream when he jumped to his feet, still clutching the back of her head, and slammed her face onto the hard countertop.
Ellie felt her nose crunch. White light exploded in her head.
Jimmy tugged her head back, then rammed it down onto the rock-solid countertop once more, harder this time than the last. Her mouth and chin took the brunt of it and her thoughts became blurred steam, drifting away from her like dead memories.
He pulled her head off the counter, cursing. Her eyes rolled wildly and her nose was bent. Blood covered her mouth and her chin and the countertop where her trembling hands spasmed. Jimmy wrenched her hair back with a hard twist so that she found herself looking at the ceiling. A slow-turning fan faced her, the blades spinning rhythmically to the song from the jukebox. She groaned and was surprised to find herself gagging on a dislodged tooth.
“Give it here,” she heard Jimmy say, and she wondered why no one was helping her. Wondered why they were all just sitting there, watching. As the shock abated, the realization of her great danger flooded into her and she began to squirm, to wrestle from his grasp.
Strong hands grabbed her wrists, held them tight. The freckled boy, she thought.
Her hair was yanked back even harder. She winced and cried out. A calloused hand gripped her jaw and squeezed painfully until she opened wide.
She felt the cold, frothy shake being poured into her mouth, coating her tongue, pushing against the back of her throat. Reflexively, she gagged, hacked it out, then, almost convulsively, began to swallow. The taste was chalky and sweet and mixed with the tang of her own blood. The flavors exploded in her mouth, numbed her senses, and swam down into her.
The hand on her head released her hair and she was allowed a breath. The fingers on her jaw lightened. She stared up at the fan – dared not look away – as she felt the rush of the drink settle inside her stomach, begin to spread through her.
A tickle at the back of her brain almost made her smile.
“More,” she said, and Jimmy, holding her head gently now, supportively, emptied the rest of the shake into her mouth.
She gulped it down.
Doorways in her mind burst open and her consciousness folded outward like the petals of a black flower as big and ethereal as the universe itself, as a thousand universes. In her mind’s eye she soared among ancient ruins buried beneath a façade of rusted metal, inhabited by winged guardians and sleeping gods. She flew past and dove deep, deep into the lake, past the white god that slept there, slid along the edge of the great bubble, then passed beyond.
I am the gateway.
