Lost Horizon
by Rosa Turner Knapp
Part 2
read part 1
"I'm leaving," Arlene said, as Dillon turned blankly from his computer. She was carrying a suitcase and had pulled on her overcoat, the charcoal one that brought out the silver highlights in her salt-and-pepper hair.
"Well?" she demanded, setting her bag down with a thunk. "Aren't you even going to say goodbye?"
Dillon's eyes flitted to the computer screen, where Electra beckoned him back into her alluring realm, and decided to save his words for the woman who mattered most.
"Fine," Arlene said, grabbing for her bag handle. "You and your little space cadet have fun."
Dillon waited until he heard the latch turning, then relaxed against his seat back, a slow comprehension tugging at the curve of his lips.
He shut his eyes and began typing with rapid-fire strokes, feeling for the keypad with the clarity of a blind man first gaining sight, as the words flew from his heart straight to his prose. And, though he didn't believe in God, not the sort that ruled over the firmament, he found himself praying wildly to him just the same... Begging of the heavens and whatever lay beyond that his words, and all the power they held, would somehow grant him wings—transport the whole of him to where his soul had already soared.
The hours ticked by but not as rapidly as the pages came. Spinning themselves out like golden threads cast forth from a relentlessly turning wheel, words twining effortlessly, braiding beats and speech together, as thought, talk, and deed took formed in one after another perfectly blended brilliant hue.
And as he pounded and reached for his story, its essence shimmering all around him, something engulfed him, hotter than white flames, colder than the black sleet that had begun furiously beating his window pane, until sound, sense, and light became one with his heartbeat... and all stood still.
"Dillon!" Electra took him in with surprise, dark eyes softening. "We've all been waiting for you. What's taken you so long?"
Dillon blinked and stared over his shoulder, seeing that what he recalled of his office had vanished. The world, as he knew it, had dissipated as well, remaining no more than a whirling dervish in his brain. The one thing that stayed clear, that was focused, was the unearthly kindness illuminating her smile.
"I had things to take care of," he said, thinking of the garbage but not saying it.
Electra's long lashes fanned black against the blue powder dusting her eyes. "There is serious work for you here. More than you've imagined." She gave him a wicked, winning smile and reached toward him. "Come. We've been calling for you for eons, but you've been fighting us every step of the way."
"Writer's block?" Dillon offered lamely, at the same time feeling it rang true.
Electra laughed, ash-black hair flowing past her bare upper arms in wild, sensuous array.
Dillon stretched out a shaking hand, surrendering his soul to the heat of her porcelain grip. Sensation blazed through him, as frigid and hot as dry ice. From the corner of his eye, he saw others approaching, an entire multitude of Dellatars and Keltoids, but—though they bore weapons—each remained at ease.
"Your new Commander," Electra informed them, with a deferent nod of her head toward Dillon.
A mixture of emotion swirled and collided within him. The Commander? Of Zordack? What of his world and all the rest? But try as he might to feel mournful, Dillon could not subdue the vigor arising in his veins, the strong sense of challenge that met him headlong at his core and incited him to pursue this strange new calling as if it had always been his destiny.
Dillon didn't know what had happened to him or fully comprehend where he had gone. But he sensed it had more to do with going deep down inside himself than with traveling any place external. Or perhaps, inside himself was where his escape hatch to the fantastic had always been.
"Will I ever return?" he asked, clinging to Electra's hand for the only lifeline that was left him. Though he was made aware by the double-moons hugging the turquoise horizon that the world it bound him to was not his own.
"To your house? No." Electra said, compassion in her eyes. "But I can assure you, Dillon Wade, you will at long last find your way into the homes of millions."
Two weeks later, Arlene returned to collect the rest of her things and found the house empty. Of course, she'd had heavy suspicion it would be. She'd tried desperately to contact Dillon to warn him of her advance but had reached only his voice mail, advising her of his inability to get to the phone.
The piled up newspapers outside the front door were another clue. Quite apparently, he hadn't retrieved nor read one since she'd left.
Arlene checked for Dillon's travel bag and found it still on the floor of his closet, just below his three pairs of freshly laundered jeans, six beige shirts, and four olive sweaters. Arlene didn't know what it was with Dillon and repetition, but he appeared too stuck in a pattern. Like this book-making mania that had recently driven him over the edge.
When he'd left his earlier job in newspaper reporting to pursue the novels, Arlene had been as excited about the promise of his new career as he had. Then again, along with that promise had come the potential to grow beyond his original modest beginnings and really break out in his field. Arlene now scoffed bitterly at the school girl fantasies she'd held: Dillon making the front page of Publisher's Weekly, Dillon making the television circuit, Dillon and her, side by side, at long last mending the ways of their myopic marriage at their own private retreat by the sea. Yes, she'd worked long and hard to support his habit, all the while hoping—against all hope, it eventually seemed—it would pay off.
Arlene gathered the few odds and ends she'd wanted...the gold-framed photos of the girls, as children, her private collection of classical CD's...and left her wedding band with a note on the kitchen counter.
She said what he already knew, but felt it bore repeating. She was leaving him to start a new life, and was hoping he would do the same.
It occurred to her, once again, that perhaps he'd already done that when, in one last sweep of the house, she found the manuscript sitting on the printer tray of his computer.
By God, Arlene thought.
She hefted the four-hundred and something page bulk into her hands and thumbed through its pages, noting it had been completed indeed.
Arlene glanced out the window as the mountains caught the twilight's call and found herself wondering where Dillon had really gone. She'd often seen him sitting right here, staring wistfully at this same view. Could it be her departure had spurred him into picking up and leaving for good?
If he didn't show eventually, the law would likely come looking. But she doubted very much they would find anything. No signs of forced entry, no signs of a struggle. For all intents and purposes, it would be just as evident to them as it was, at this moment, to her. Whatever his direction, Dillon had clearly left of his own free will.
But what then of this? Arlene looked at the pages clutched in her grip. Surely the story that had driven the final wedge between them should prove of some ultimate benefit. If not to her and Dillon, then perhaps to the children.
She packed it up in one of those large priority envelopes Dillon always kept handy and sent it to his editor in New York. Who knew what would come of it? Perhaps it would be just like the others and sell a bit, but hardly enough to get noticed. Then again, what if this very book was the one destined to take off for the cosmos?
Maybe that's what Dillon was afraid of, and had taken preemptive flight from. Because, as much as he had dreamed of it, Arlene also knew the notion he might really hit it big—because it would mean such a change from who and how he was—also scared Dillon senseless.
No matter what his final action, Arlene decided, Dillon must have, at least initially, believed this book held potential. For he'd certainly ended the text in a prophetic enough way.
Though she'd not read through his previous two stories, nor had any intention of trudging her way through this one, Arlene's eye had been caught by its final line and was immediately struck by how it distinguished this third novel from the others.
Whereas Books I and II in the Zordack series had ended rather predictably with the catch closing, "The End," this one had finished with an intriguingly different caveat. One that caused Arlene to question, once more, where Dillon had gone, and whether or not his writing days were truly done.
"Only the Beginning," Arlene mused, as she strode down their steep hill and popped the manuscript package in the mail box at the foot of the drive.
"I wonder what he meant by that?"
She was to find out a full year and a half later, when a reporter from Publisher's Weekly called to say he was doing a story on the unprecedented success of the disappearing novelist Dillon Wade, and to ask whether she might have a decent resolution photo she might lend for use on the issue's cover.
Arlene provided the picture. An old one, taken before Dillon had begun growing that dastardly beard. Though she never could dig up her husband, she certainly hoped he'd found what he'd been looking for. She knew she had. With the film option money Dillon's third book produced, she and her daughters had purchased a lovely vacation home at the beach.
Arlene was finally happy. And the odd thing was, each time she picked up one of the author copies his publisher had provided of his smash hit Lost Horizon, Arlene had the unmistakable—yet inexplicable—sensation that Dillon was happy, too. 
Copyright © 2002 Rosa Turner Knapp.
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