Imagine being digested. Imagine being inside the belly of some beast.
And imagine other people are in there. It doesn't matter, does it? A hundred thousand people. A million people. Ten million people. It doesn't matter. The stomach juices of that beast still sting and smell and eat the flesh away.
Imagine that the air itself is alive with the stomach juices of that beast; imagine that the air is a dark greenish yellow, and imagine that it smells like the men's room at Grand Central Station.
"This is what is," Abner said.
"No," I whispered.
"Sure, Sam. Sure. Look at it, take a long, hard look at it."
"Take a look at what? My God, I don't know what I'm seeing. For God's sake, Abner, tell me what I'm seeing."
"You're seeing what there is to see."
"That's bullshit, Abner. Bullshit! Who are these people?"
"Who are these people?" He was incredulous. "I'm surprised at you, Sam. These people are spooks. We live in a world of spooks." He put his hands hard on my shoulders as if to keep me where I was. He whispered harshly, "We live in a world of the dead. But the dead live in the walls, they live behind the doors and the windows, they live in the air, Sam, like the birds; and they fly, they do fly." His grip strengthened on my shoulders. He went on, his whisper changing to a high wheeze, "They fly like the birds do, and they come to rest on the tops of buildings, in attics, on statues, on the hoods of cars."
Beyond, far beyond the world I was seeing, the boy flying the Star Wars kite appeared at the top of a dune and charged down it, his kite fluttering behind him. "May the Force be with you," he yelled.
Abner said, behind me, "Did you see Star Wars, Sam? I saw it three times."
The kid stumbled on a rock and fell forward, so his elbows stuck into the dune. He pushed himself quickly to his feet and swiped frantically at his clothes as if trying to brush away a nest of spiders.
Because those people were all around him. He had fallen into their world.
They touched him, stroked him, a woman hugged him from behind. And he went on frantically brushing at his clothes until, at last, he panicked and began pulling at his clothes as if they'd gotten stuck to his skin and were burning him. "Mommy?!" he called. "Mommy?!" he called again. "Mommy?!" he pleaded. And then he started tugging at his kite string as if he could pull himself back to his own world with it.
Abner sighed. "He doesn't know what's happening to him. Poor kid. They'll pull him right down into the sand."
I looked around at Abner, open-mouthed. I could say nothing.
He repeated, "They'll pull him right down into the sand and tomorrow he'll be one of the missing."
And across the awful expanse that separated us I yelled to the boy, "Run! Goddammit, run!"
He looked at me, shook his head disbelievingly, and pushed at the people who were tugging at him and pulling him into the sand.
This is what separated me from that boy: the sand, the grass, the air. And the dead. As I watched, the boy's calves disappeared, then his knees, his thighs. "Mommy!?" he screamed, still tugging desperately at his kite string, pulling the kite closer. It shredded on a sharp rock—the same rock, I think, that he had tripped over. He continued pulling. "Mommy?! Mommy?!"
I started for him. I wrenched free of Abner's strong grip and, seconds later, found myself on my back on the kitchen floor, Abner standing stiffly above me. "Sam, you're a fool! There are no heroes here. Only fools!"
"But that boy—"
"You can't affect what these people do. You can only watch. And you watch, Sam—you watch because you want to watch, because something very deep inside you wants to watch. Otherwise, my friend, you wouldn't see a thing."
I scrambled to my feet, rushed to the door, and stopped. "My God!" I breathed.
The boy was gone.
Behind me, Abner said, "He can only feel them, Sam. He can feel their hands now, their mouths, their hair, probably. And he knows what's happening to him, I think he knows he's been sucked into the dune, but I doubt he knows why." He put his hand on my shoulders again. "And I wish to God that there was something you or I could have done for him, Sam. But there wasn't, you see. Not with these people. You might as well try to reason with a dinner napkin as try to reason with these people. They're not like the cop that stopped us; they're not like Al, or Phyllis. They're kind of like leftovers. Humanity's leftovers." He shook his head: "Madeline would shoot me if she heard me say that."
"You murdered that boy, goddammit!"
"No, Sam. He has merely become one of the missing. Thousands of people turn up missing every day. You know that. And some of them, like that boy, get pulled into sand dunes. Others get carried away, the way rabbits get carried away by owls. And others, a few others, get themselves stuck in the walls." He grinned slyly, as if keeping some dark secret from me. "They get put into the walls, Sam. And they stay there. With the dead! And no matter where they try to go—Good Lord, they could try to go into insanity, or into their pasts—the dead go after them and drag them back."
"Well, dammit," I said, "I'm going to go and look for that boy."
"Of course you are, Sam. I can't stop you. But I can tell you what you'll find. You'll find sand, and sand fleas, a few beer bottles. You'll find gum wrappers, maybe a rubber or two. But you won't find that boy. He's one of the missing. He'll always be one of the missing. Like Amelia Earhart and Judge Crater and Jimmy Hoffa. They all got grabbed."