Short Story: ‘The Toll’

Ty’s first thought was that he had no feeling in his right arm. His second thought, the one that made him feel stupid for even thinking the first, was that he had no feeling anywhere. He was awake, and he was dimly aware of himself, but he couldn’t feel a thing. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know anything and that terrified him. Ty considered himself a smart man. Not the way he’d declared himself smart in college, although that had sparked a tinge of narcissism that had followed him the rest of his life. No, Ty was smart in the only way one could be proud of their intelligence without being a pompous ass: he’d earned it. Intelligence was something Ty had gained through experience, through trial and error and he did his best to hold on to it. He didn’t like not knowing. So, right now, he was scared out of his mind.

Ty sat up and tried to make some attempt to figure out where he was. He could not feel his limbs, but it seemed he could move them just fine, which was interesting but not what he needed to focus on. He was in a room. It was gray. At first, he presumed it to be concrete, but it was too smooth for that. He couldn’t place the material to look at it. It was simply flat, like nothing he had ever seen. But maybe that was it. If nothing had a shape, this would be it. So flat and un-textured he could barely see the corners of the walls, barely see where the room began or ended. It was enough to drive him mad, and though Ty supposed that he was within his right, it would have to wait until after he had found a way out of this room and back home.

Yes, home. That had all but slipped his mind. Alice and the children, Jamie and Carol. Were they worried about him? Did they even know he was gone? How long had he been gone, anyway? That, he knew, was useless to think about. He didn’t even know where he was or how he had gotten here. Every time he tried to think about it, he got lost in a fog and wound up right back where he was. It was just… fuzzy. He couldn’t explain it and the more he thought about it, the more he didn’t want to.

Another observation: the room had no door. It didn’t make sense, but there it was. No door and the ceiling above him was flat and solid. He hadn’t been dropped in. That was impossible. He was inside the room now, wasn’t he? So he had to have gotten inside somehow and that was that.

Yes, that was that.

Ty almost laughed at the thought in part because of the confusion of it, and in part because he was beginning to think that insanity was looking more and more like the most sane and rational place to be right now. Yes sir, insanity seemed almost comfortable. Anything else scared him too much to think about.

It had always been one of his biggest fears, going insane. Ever since childhood he had hated the thought of just waking up one day and something being different, being off. Gone in such a way that he could never get it back. It was looking more and more likely that today was that day. If Ty could feel anything right now, it would be dread.

He lost his train of thought when he heard a door open behind him. Ty froze. He had searched the room high and low and he knew there was no door in it. But there was a door and it had just opened. And if it had just opened that meant it had opened and he could have turned and run right the hell out of this room if he’d only reacted sooner. Somehow, though, he doubted that. He had a feeling that he could have searched the walls for years and never found a way out of this room on his own.

Slowly, Ty turned. The man standing at the opposite wall smiled politely and patiently. He was an older man. His hair had just begun to erode from his forehead, gray with specks of brown. His face was old and made no attempt to hide its wrinkles, but it was pleasant. The man was well dressed, not in a suit, but a blazer and slacks. He was not, in short, who Ty expected to see if he had expected anyone at all. “Mr. David Tyler. Didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said. He had an accent that Ty couldn’t quite place. Somewhere in the North, he thought. He had a dead stare, balanced by the kind smile of an old man, sculpted by insincerity.

Ty said the only thing he could think. “Where did you come from?”

The old man laughed. He caught himself, seeing the confusion on Ty’s face, and then offered his hand. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be rude. Name’s Ernest Gale.”

Ty stared at the hand for a few seconds.

Gale drew it back. “Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s nothing. I just… I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything.”

Gale nodded, sympathetically. Whether it was sincere or not, Ty couldn’t tell. “Well, it’s really about the gesture anyway, isn’t it?”

They shook hands, locking eyes briefly, each one trying to get a read on the other. Ty asked, “Where am I?”

“I really am sorry about all of this. I don’t know why it has to work this way, I really don’t.” He started to speak again, then saw that Ty was still waiting on his answer. “I came from the other side of the door, Mister Tyler.”

“There is no door.”

“No, not at this moment.”

“What do you mean — ”

“I mean what I say, Mister Tyler.”

“People call me Ty.”

Gale’s dead stare was colder and deader than ever. “Not anymore,” he said.

Ty almost felt something right then. Not a chill, exactly. More like a hammer striking a large block of ice. A crack, an explosion, and then nothing again.

“We usually wait for people to figure it out on their own,” Gale said. “But you’re a stubborn one, Mister Tyler. Can’t accept it, I suppose. I won’t pretend you’re anywhere close to the first. Still, some people just take things the way they are. I like those ones.”

“Accept what, Mister Gale? Could you stop being cryptic for two fucking seconds and tell me what the hell is going on?”

“You have to arrive at some conclusions yourself. That’s the only way we’re going to have any kind of common ground. Now tell me, try and think, what were you doing right before you woke up in this room?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“It doesn’t sound to me like you’ve been trying too terribly hard.”

“I can’t.”

“No,” Gale said, shaking his head slowly. “No, you’re afraid to remember. Because there’s some part of you, somewhere deep down, that does remember. That knows exactly what happened and it is screaming for the rest of you not to find out. And frankly we’ve got to get over that because we have other business to attend to, you and I.”

“Car crash,” Ty said without thinking.

Gale gave a gentle half-nod. “Yes, I thought it might work something like that.”

It was like going to bed with the feeling that things are unfinished, that you’ve got something important to do, but you can’t remember what. Then it wakes you up in the middle of the night when it’s already too late and there’s nothing that can be done. That was exactly what Ty was feeling right now.

Except more than that. This wasn’t remembering that you needed to pick up a carton of eggs. Ty had been in a car accident. The car in front of him had stalled and died and he had reacted a half-second too late. He swerved into the other lane. There was a truck coming right at him and there was nothing he could do about it. He tried to move, the truck struck him, he remembered a feeling like he couldn’t breathe and then he was rolling downhill.

He was dead. No more thought to be had on the subject. That was simply the end of it. Ty couldn’t bring himself to speak the word, to even truly grasp the concept, but it didn’t make it any less true. He was dead.

“I see from your face that you’ve figured it out and while I’m sorry for what has happened, but it is what it is and we’ve business to attend to.”

“Are you Death?” Ty found himself blurting out.

Gale let loose a hell of a cackle. “Christ, no! And I ain’t him, either if you’re going to be playing that sort of game. I told you my name was Ernest Gale and that’s who I am. No more than that. I’m a businessman. Bit of a debt collector, I suppose.” He thought about it for a second longer. “Aw, hell. That doesn’t fit either.” A pause, brief hesitation in his voice. “I suppose you could call it the IRS of the Other Side. I just want you run your receipts and make sure the books check out.” He smiled. This was not the smile of an old man. To Ty it looked like the wide and toothy smile of the Devil. “And to collect your toll, of course.”

“My toll?”

Gale gave a tired shrug. “Well, I don’t make the rules,” he said. “But it is my job to follow them through. This room here, this is just a sort of holding place. You don’t have to worry about it for very long. Once you pay,” he turned and gestured to the wall behind him, where the door he had entered from had been. “You’ll be on your way,” he finished.

“Pay what?”

“Before we get into that, let me stress again that I do not make the rules.”

“Pay what? I — I don’t have any money. I’m fucking dead. I don’t have anything.” It hit him right then, when he wasn’t looking for it. A swift punch to the stomach. “I’m dead,” he said softly, his voice hollow. This he felt.

“Yes, Mister Tyler. Yes, you are dead. I understand your… discomfort, but you’re wrong. You have something to pay, in fact you have a whole lifetime of somethings. You have plenty.”

“Christ, Gale, do you ever make your point?”

A shrug and a twinkle in the old man’s eye. “Frankly, Mister Tyler, I think if we talked about these things matter-of-factly your head would probably explode.”

“I can take it,” Ty said.

“No, you can’t. Not all at once. But if that’s the way you want to play it, that’s fine with me.”

Ty knew for a fact that Gale was right. He was barely holding on, barely processing any of this. But he was dead already, right? How bad could it be? “I can take it,” he said again. The doubt in his voice was weighty and thick.

“Fair enough. You have to give something up, no argument, that’s just the way it has to be. You have to give something before you can move on.”

“Move on to where, exactly?”

Gale shrugged again and smiled that smile. “I can’t say,” he said.

“That’s bullshit. I’m dead already, I deserve to know, don’t I? So don’t you fucking give me that when I’ve already come this far.”

Insincere as the smile was, the cold look Gale wore now was very real. “I can’t say because I don’t know. I’ve never been there, myself.” Both men were silent for some time. Then, Gale gave an irritated sigh. “You’ve got your problems, buckaroo, and I’ve got mine.”

“What do I have to give up?”

“A memory.” Then, before Ty could respond, “No, not just a memory, that’s not right. You’re not wiping something out of your own mind like a magic eraser. What you’re picking, that will be a thing that never happened. Not to you, not to anyone. What you need to give up is an accomplishment, Ty. Something to not be remembered for.”

“So, I pick something out of my own life,” Ty said, running it through in his head. “And it will have never happened?”

“That’s right.”

“But doesn’t that change things? I mean, couldn’t it screw things up just to take an event out of the world like that? You know, the butterfly effect?”

“Happens every day and it seems to me the world spins on just fine,” Gale said. He paused, thinking. “More or less.”

“This isn’t just…” Ty realized how it was going to sound before he said it. “Of course, this isn’t just me. This is how people get to the other side, isn’t it? This is the toll.”

“Very good.”

Ty thought about it. “Has anyone ever not paid?” he asked. “I mean, has there ever been anyone that just couldn’t do it?”

Gale gazed at him.

“I’m not saying that’s me,” Ty said, catching Gale’s look. “But it is a big decision and I want to understand every side of it.”

“That’s reasonable enough,” Gale said. “Of course, there are people who don’t pay. Of course there are; it’s just like any other toll.”

“What happens to them?”

Gale’s voice went quiet. “Think about every ghost story you’ve ever heard. Every haunted house in every town you’ve ever lived in. Every phantom chill on the back of your neck or every time you felt you were being watched even though you knew nobody was there.”

Ty understood. For the first time, he found himself unable to meet Gale’s eyes and opted instead for the floor.

“Some people can’t pay the toll,” Gale echoed, slowly nodding his head. “So they can’t move on. They have to stay. Forever and ever, they stay.”

“So I have to choose,” Ty said, not even to Gale or anyone in particular. “This is fucked up, Mister Gale.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, son, and in how many different ways? I don’t make the rules.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” to Ty’s shock he meant it. He was having an actual conversation and, even more uncomfortable, was growing to understand the man he was speaking with more and more. “It’s a lot to process. I can’t think of anything. I mean, something to wipe out of my entire life. It’s a lot.”

“I figure that’s why they ask it.”

“Right. Just… let me think. There has to be something.” He drifted into the quiet. “Oh!” Ty snapped his fingers. “Donna Stewart, eighth grade. I went up to her and I tried to ask her out, but I had barely ever talked to a girl before in my life. Ever. I wound up stammering and making an ass of myself. She never spoke to me again, but she talked about me plenty. Got a reputation as a weirdo that took me all of high school to overcome. I guess I’ve never forgotten it.”

Gale raised an eyebrow and looked at him for a long time. “And you’re… proud of this?”

“Well, no.”

“You see the problem, then. It’s not a toll if there’s nothing to be paid. There’s no sacrifice. And to find your way out of this room, to make that door appear behind me, there has to be some kind of sacrifice.”

Ty took it in. He understood. He didn’t want to, but he did. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I can see that,” Gale said. “Mister Tyler.”

“I’m proud. I’ve done a lot in my life and now that I think of it, there’s very little that I would actually want to take back. I have a beautiful wife and two beautiful children. A son and a daughter. I’m proud of my family more than anything else and I would never give them up for the whole world.”

“So you’re saying that you choose to stay behind after all. To linger in the walls and corners and become nothing more than a ghost.”

“No,” Ty said quickly. “I’ll think of something. I promise you, I will. Just give me a chance.”

“Very well. I didn’t take you for a spook, anyway. I knew just as soon as I looked at you that you’d have something to pay.” He thought about it a second longer. “But you claim that you’re only proud of your family and at the same time you adamantly state that your family is off-limits.”

“I…”

“Tell me about them.”

“What?”

“Your family. Tell me about them.”

Ty thought. He thought about the fact that he would never see any of them ever again. They were gone to him. Whatever he chose from this point on, he had lived his life. He had his own memories and the experiences of his life would stay with him, if him alone. Was that enough? “Alice and I met in college,” he said, when he realized Gale was waiting for him to speak. “We took writing classes together, although we had different reactions to them. College made her fall in love with writing. Made me hate it. The analyzing, the picking apart down to its bones, sucking all the fun and mystery out of it. I always thought as a child that I was going to be a writer. Then I met her and I saw what a real writer was. I was awestruck. I decided that world didn’t need anybody like me fucking around with it. Haven’t picked up the pen in years and I couldn’t be happier.”

He glanced into Gale’s eyes. The man was waiting for him to continue. Those eyes told him that if he dug deep enough he’d find his answer and Ty half-suspected that they were right.

“We’d only been seeing each other about a year when we had Jaime,” Ty continued. “That’s our son. He wasn’t planned. I had just graduated school and Alice had another year left. That meant that when the baby was born, I was actually the one to look after it most of the time. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not one to run away from my responsibilities and it turned out, I was good at it, and I ended up loving it. I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. But I guess if I’m to be honest, for that first stretch there, I hated him. When I was left to look after him, while she was still in class, sometimes I wished he would choke on his own vomit in the middle of the night and that would be the end of our problems. I’m not sure fathers always love their children right off the bat, the ones that love them at all. I grew to love Jaime over those first few months. Now? He’s my whole world. I couldn’t ask for a better son.”

“And your daughter?”

Ty swallowed. He looked almost as if he hadn’t heard the question. The decision, the weight of it, was closing in with every second and he could feel it. “My daughter? Carol?” He tried to quiet his mind as he spoke. “She’s beautiful. We decided, Alice and me, to make a conscious decision to have a baby that time. We wanted the circumstances to be under our control.” He paused and thought about where he was and how he had gotten here. “I guess nothing’s ever totally under your control, is it?”

Gale did not reply.

“Carol’s a good kid. She’s very pretty. She takes after her mother in that department. God, she looks so much like Alice, it’s unreal. She’s a smart kid, too. Not as smart as her brother. I guess he’s what you’d call naturally talented. He can do just about anything he sets his mind to. Carol doesn’t have that, not as much. She’ll give up after the first try, and always blame us for making her try in the first place. Her tantrums come on strong and fierce. Everyone sees it, the way she never takes no for an answer. They say she’s strong-willed, but I know it’s their polite way of saying she’s a brat. But I love her. I mean, she’s my daughter. She’s my daughter.” He repeated the words as if trying to see if they still held meaning. “Some kids, you can just see it in their eyes that they’ve got a bright future ahead of them. You can see that they’re going places. And I… I guess I just don’t see that in Carol.”

Ty was silent for a time after that. Gale didn’t try to push it, but eventually he spoke. “So, have you decided, then?”

“It sounded like an admission to me.”

“Stop that!” Ty shouted. “Stop the interrogation, this is absurd, I’m not- you’re asking me to kill my own child, you son of a bitch.”

“I never asked that, I asked you to give up something you’re proud of, and it simply sounded to me like you had.”

“How proud could I be to even be thinking this?”

“You must be, or the option wouldn’t even be on the table. It’s not a murder, Mister Tyler. She would never have been born. No one would mourn her. No one would know. You’re hardly the first, you know.”

Ty looked up, eyes wide and nearly bloodshot. “Wait a minute. I mean, just because I say something doesn’t mean, um, doesn’t mean it’s all the way true. I do love her. But… Carol’s never done much of anything. She’s never really made her mark. I suppose she hasn’t had time, but that’s not terrible, is it? She’s so young. She’s barely left a footprint on the world. So there won’t…” His lips, though numb, were trembling. “There won’t be too much impact if she’s gone.”

The thin lines of the door were beginning to appear on the wall.

Ty shook his head furiously. “But goddamn it… no! God damn it, I love my daughter!”

Gale waited patiently for him to settle, then asked his question again. “Have you decided?”

“I don’t want to be here forever,” Ty said. “I don’t want to haunt decrepit old houses and watch the world pass me by without being able to touch it. I’d rather take whatever’s beyond that door than that. That’s worse than Hell.”

“Have you decided?”

“I don’t. I can’t.”

“We have to be on our way. Believe it or not, we do not have all the time in the world for these matters, Mister Tyler.”

There has to be another way,” Ty said. His voice was empty. He knew full well that there wasn’t.

Gale could see that and there was real sympathy in his eyes for the first time now. One final time he said, “I don’t make the rules, Ty.”

He moved to the wall, where Ty could see the lines of the door getting thicker. Thin, yes, but getting thicker and thicker. Watching the door appear was like uncrossing your eyes. Gale went to the door, touched the knob, and then looked back. “Well?” He moved aside to allow Ty to open it.

Ty stepped forward and outstretched his arm. He reached for the silver knob, shining blindingly bright in an oppressively gray room. He could feel the doorknob when he touched it. It felt weighty.

He decided.