GLASS SOUP Jonathan Carroll (good romance books to read TXT) 📖

as the boy staggered and called for his help. Haden knew he must try and save him. He had to save that brave and hopeful heart.

While he tried to figure out how to do it, Haden stiffened. Out of the blue he suddenly grasped that the boy and Sunday Suits were here together now. His past self and present nightmare stood together in front of him at the same moment. Forty-year-old Haden was a few feet away from thirteen-year-old Suzy, their eighth-grade classmates, et cetera. All of them were here together—now.

Haden the man had dreamt about Sunday Suits. Haden the boy had dreamt about being exposed in front of Suzy Nichols. Each of them thought the other’s nightmare was ridiculous. The boy had no fear of Sunday Suits because such a being frightened only adults. And the man thought that a dream about his penis sticking out with a parrot sitting on it like a perch at a school dance was goofy, not shameful.

“There’s no time here. Everything is right now.”

At last he understood that in death, time as he had always known and lived it was gone. Beginning, middle, and end were finished. There was only now, but a now comprising every second he had lived. So Haden the man and the boy coexisted now. All the Hadens who had ever been since the moment he was born—their experiences, knowledge, strengths and weaknesses—all of them existed now.

Without hesitating, Haden willed the boy everything that he was. He gave up owning the moment and handed it freely to his thirteen-year-old self. At once the energy that had bled out of the boy flooded back in. He rose from the floor and with only the briefest look back, moved to join the fight against Sunday Suits.

It ended very soon after that because none of the children had any fear of this adult nightmare. Grown-ups forget what it is like to have no fear.

A monster is not a monster if it does not scare you.

Broximon and Bob the polar bear were sitting in a diner having strawberry frappés when Haden sauntered by outside. Broximon saw him first and slowly slid the straw out of his mouth. Bob saw the surprised look on the little man’s face (Brox stood on the table so that he could drink from the glass which was taller than him, and look at the bear while they talked).

“What’s the matter?”

“Check out on the street.” He gestured with his head.

Bob looked and saw Haden who was wearing an expression that said he’d just won a jackpot. Both silently watched him pass.

“That was fast.”

“I told you the man wasn’t dumb.”

“Yeah, but come on, Brox, that was way too fast. I mean, really…”

“Sometimes it happens that way, Bob.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

“From what I know of Simon Haden, boy and man, he is not a ‘just like that’ guy. It’s more like he needs a road map to find his shoelaces most of the time. How old was he just now? I couldn’t tell.”

Broximon smiled. “Me neither, but that’s no surprise. He’s probably trying on all his ages again—like they were different clothes. Mix and match.”

Both of them looked out at the empty street. A round cartoony automobile with fat black balloon tires, like a vehicle R. Crumb would draw, toodled past. It was filled with large palm trees sticking out of every window.

Bob shook its head. “They have to be helping him. Simon couldn’t have worked it out by himself so quickly—it’s just too difficult. They need him now, so they fixed it so that he would understand. There’s no other way he could have figured out the time thing so fast.”

Broximon had known Bob for years. The two of them had first appeared together in a Haden dream when Haden was thirty-eight. They’d always gotten along well. Broximon instinctively felt he could trust the bear. “Bob, I know we’re never supposed to ask each other about these things, but I’m going to do it anyway because I am fed up with being in the dark.

“Do you know what’s going on here? Because I don’t. I know this much.” It held up his little finger.

Bob answered without hesitation. “Chaos has become conscious. It’s learned how to think and knows what it wants. What it’s trying to do now is take over.” He picked up his glass and looked into it, thinking about what to say next. “Always before, chaos just was, like a stone or a wave. But somewhere along the way it grew a brain and learned how to use it. Now it wants to be the boss.”

“But what about this—” Broximon gestured at the world around them. “Isn’t this chaos? You and me drinking strawberry frappés and having this conversation, a car full of palm trees?”

“No, that is imagination, not chaos. Human imagination can be chaotic, but most of the time it’s man’s only constant proof of God.

“If Chaos wins and takes over, then you and I will disappear. That’s a given. Simon and his imagination, which created us, will get sucked into its whirl and crushed up together with everything else in there. You’ve seen what’s left after a tornado moves through a town.”

Broximon was appalled but not surprised. He’d had inklings and connected some of the dots between things he’d heard and recent events. It had all pointed vaguely in this direction, but hearing it explained now put everything into clear, ugly focus with a thick black frame of dread around it.

“What’s being done to stop it? Can it be stopped?” Halfway through the two questions, Broximon heard his voice become plaintive. It sounded like a scared child’s asking a parent for reassurance.

“There’s a woman named Isabelle Neukor—”

“I know Isabelle. We met. I was told to keep her away from Haden because he’s supposed to find her. That’s all. That’s all I was told.”

“Then you know she’s pregnant. They believe her child will be able to help fight Chaos if it’s given