American Elsewhere (79 page)

She knows it. She knows it as well as she knows herself.

“Hello, Momma,” she says softly.

The natives of Wink—the real, human natives—have up until this point stayed inside their houses, eyes obediently averted from all windows. Because when Things Happen in Wink, you stay indoors, and you stay quiet. That’s the way it’s always been, and if they keep to this, they think, then they’ll be fine, just like always—though some do mutter that really, this is ridiculous, don’t they have their time at night for these sorts of goings-on?

But then the natives feel the earth shake, and the air turns beige with the crush of dust, and when they look out the window they notice the queerly pale red skies, and the thin shadows…

This is different. This is not supposed to be happening. This is not normal.

And then, one by one, they begin to See.

It starts happening at the southern end of Wink first. They, of course, are closest to the Arrival: they cannot avoid seeing the form rising up from the mountaintop, arms extended as if seeking to embrace the valley. Mark Huey of 124 Littleridge Lane is given the inauspicious honor of being first: he runs a fairly decent lawn mower repair shop, and when the earth begins to shake he looks up from his work. His wife bursts in and frantically asks what is going on, and Mark, being the man and all, takes the responsibility of peeping out his blinds.

And he Sees.

He looks for ten seconds. Then, without a word, without answering a single question from his wife, he walks to his workbench, opens a drawer, takes out a lawn mower blade he’s been working on, and jams it into his throat.

He dies almost instantly: all the blood in his skull simply falls out in a rush. His wife, shrieking in terror, runs out of the shop. When she hits the street, she looks back. And she Sees.

She stops screaming. Instead she walks back to the shop, rummages in its front flower bed, finds a good-sized rock, and begins to pound it against her temple with a very singular concentration. This proves less efficient than her husband’s method: it takes nearly a minute before her right eye socket caves in, followed by the coronal suture of her skull, which causes her brain to begin madly swelling. She drops to the ground, shivering and dying, but thankfully blind.

Slightly more effective is Angela Clurry’s approach: she walks out to her back patio to try to see the source of the dust; and when she does, she walks back in, goes to her sink, turns on the Dispose-All, and, with calm, Buddhist-like focus, slowly inserts one arm all the way up to the elbow, and then the other.

It takes her a little over three minutes to bleed out. But this, of course, is better than Seeing.

Ashley and David Crompton, married for three years, happen to See together. Without any discussion they walk upstairs, wake their children from their naps, and usher them into the garage. The two parents buckle them into their seat belts, give them their preferred comfort toys (for Michael, a blanket; for Dana, a bear), turn on both cars, and patiently sit back and wait for the fumes to do their work.

It takes a lot less time for the children, small as they are. But this is so much better than allowing their children to See.

Seven-year-old Megan Twohey is quite fortunate: she has chosen to stay hidden down in Lady Fish’s home. She does not want to come out—she
never
wants to come out, ever again—but when she hears the rumbling and feels the earth shaking around her, she tries to burrow ever deeper (for Lady Fish’s home is quite extensive). Though she does not know it, her father has drunk a pint of bleach upon Seeing, and
collapsed on the kitchen floor in spasms; and her mother does not See at all, having drunk herself to death in the night.

As the Arrival becomes harder and harder to ignore, the natives of Wink all take the same action: some choose blades, others poisons, the calmer ones choose automobiles, and those who have access to firearms use them both clinically and carefully: if you could listen over the buzz, you would hear a series of little pops all throughout town, as if someone’s wine cellar were overheating. Of course, there is the odd boom of a shotgun: for example, Julie Hutchins uses her shotgun on her husband, who has not yet Seen, but she finds him in an odd state: he is standing in the garage, but the floor and walls are black and smoking, as if the garage has just been struck by lightning. Her husband is staring at his hands with a very confused look on his face, and when she enters he looks up and says, “Who are you? Ah. I know… I seem to be a man this time. Tell me, where is the center of town from—Is that a gun? Wait,
no
!”

The shot catches him in the belly. He falls to the floor with a disappointed look on his face, and just before Julie puts the gun against her jaw, she hears him say, “Oh,
bother
.”

Joseph Gradling, hopeful paramour to Gracie Zuela, is called into the living room by his father. Joseph expects his father to explain what’s happening—his father always understands these things—but as he enters the living room his father, who is standing just beside the entryway, lifts his .22 revolver and shoots his son twice in the head. Joseph dies immediately, which is actually quite good, for he never quite sees the sight waiting for him: his mother and baby sister lying on the couch with pillows stuffed over their faces, each pillow smoking and bloody from muffled gunfire.

Unhappy Margaret Baugh is one of the few who manages to resist for some time (her husband, on the other hand, did not: he lies dead on their porch with a nail gun in his hand and a clutch of nails in his right temple), and she staggers out the front door and over to the neighbors’ house, seeking Helena. When she enters the house, it is silent and seemingly empty. She stalks through the rooms, wondering if (and maybe hoping) they have left; but then she sees Helena’s husband,
Frank, or at least what’s left of him, sitting on the floor and propped up against the pump-action shotgun.

Margaret sees the back door is open. She slowly, slowly walks out.

Helena is there, as if she was waiting for her. She lies facedown in the grass, her body pointing in the direction of the fence. Her back and neck are perforated with buckshot—and Margaret wonders if Frank thought he was putting her out of her misery, or if desperation drove Helena to reveal her relationship with Margaret, and he retaliated…

It doesn’t matter. It’s over now. And Margaret knows where Helena—
her
Helena—was going.

She sits down beside the body in the grass, and picks her up so her head is in her lap. She strokes Helena’s hand, and carefully coils her index finger around Helena’s. Then she looks up at the hole in the fence before them, and remembers what they had, which was always enough.

“It’s okay,” Margaret says. “I’m here. I’m here with you. We’ll see it together.”

And they do.

One by one, all the natives of the town, who have bartered so carefully for their little piece of property, who have agreed to willfully ignore what is outside their doorsteps so they can live in peace and harmony, begin to wink out like candle flames in the wind, starting at the southernmost tip and moving northward in a wave.

Because it is possible for something to enter your world that is so vast, so terrible, so foreign, that you cannot coexist with it: you must, in some way or another, vacate the premises, give up your seat. Merely knowing that this thing exists pulls the supports out from everything you know and trust: the established world falls around you like a circus tent whose center pole is cut.

And you must go with it. You must get out. You
have
to get out.

Mona and Gracie stare at the giant standing on the mountain. Mona is still struggling under the realization that this—this
thing
was what looked at her from behind her mother’s eyes all her life. This thing orchestrated the conception of this entire town, and Mona’s return to it; this abomination constructed and planned her entire life, from her inception to her childhood to now; and it was all for this moment, all for this chance for complete and total breach…

They watch as the yellow eyes swing back and forth, flashing through the dust clouds.

The baby coughs in Mona’s arms. Then she realizes—
It’s looking for her. It’s looking for my daughter
.

The giant pulls one mammoth foot free of the pile of earth that the mountain has become, swinging its leg out and forward, and finds purchase on the slope down. It is so huge that watching this small step is like seeing a cruise liner dock, and it completely outpaces the rivers of children rushing down to the town.

“It’s coming,” says Mona. “Jesus Christ, it’s coming for her!”

“For the
baby
?” asks Gracie, incredulous.

Mona doesn’t stop to explain. She runs for the Charger, intending to jump in and… hell, she doesn’t know. Go somewhere. Anywhere.

But as she approaches, a small figure comes running down the street to her. Mona stops: though she has the baby in her arms, the rifle is still
slung around her shoulder. She wonders how to bring it up and use it safely when the figure cries: “No! Miss Bright! Stop!”

Mona grabs her rifle with one hand, but does not bring it up. That voice is somehow familiar, but she cannot understand why: as the person gets closer and Mona sees him better, she is positive she has never seen this young boy in the bunny pajamas and the huge glasses before in her life.

“You do not recognize me,” says the young boy as he stops in front of her, panting.

“No…” says Mona. But as he looks up and pushes his glasses up his nose, an absurd thought comes to her. “Wait a minute…
Parson?
”

“Yes.”

“You’re in that… in that little boy?”

“Yes. I have been since last night. Though you are not aware of it, I have been attempting to assist you since my, well, death.” He looks her up and down. She realizes she is still covered in blood. “Though it may not have been particularly effective…”

The dark giant pulls its other leg free of the earth. Mona gauges the distance: it can cross the valley to Wink in only about three or four more steps.

“What the hell do you want, Parson?” asks Mona. “We don’t have fucking time to sit here and talk!”

“We do,” says the little boy (who Mona tries to remember is Parson). “She is about to be delayed. I assume you wish to run?”

“Well shit yes, we do,” says Mona.

The giant’s next step is slowed very slightly by the uneven terrain, but it is not much of a delay, if that’s what Parson was talking about.

“You cannot,” says Parson. “The child is linked to Her. She can see it—She will always know where it is. And She will not permit it to leave Wink. You cannot run from Her.”

The giant’s next step toward town is totally unhindered, and its massive leg moves so quickly they can hear the air being split from here. It is like low thunder, a crackling in the air.

“Then what the fuck do we do?” cries Mona.

“There is another way,” says Parson. “You must wait for Her. And meet Her.”

Both Mona and Gracie are stupefied by this. In unison, both shout, “What?”

“She does not control everything in Wink,” says Parson. “Not everything here has happened as She intended. There are flaws. One, in particular.”

The giant’s foot crashes down on the highway out of town. Chunks of asphalt go flying up. Its yellow eyes are fixed on where the three of them stand before the Charger.

The baby shrieks in her arms. Mona is so anxious she thinks she might faint. “Will you kindly get to the fucking point!” she says. “We are about to die here!”

Parson says, with infuriating calm, “No. We are not.”

Mona screams, “What the fuck do you mean b—”

The giant is taking another step forward when it is suddenly thrown off balance: it is like it has been pushed by some invisible force, staggering backward and falling (with the astonishing enormity of the
Titanic
falling out of the sky) onto the ruined mountain behind it, accidentally crushing a sizable number of the children. A squeal rises up from the mountain as all the tiny horrors try to get clear of their progenitor.

The giant itself seems no less surprised by this than Mona or anyone else: it stares around, bewildered, before looking up at something on the outskirts of town.

There is a shimmering there, like a crinkle in the air. If Mona looks at it just right, it looks like a huge… well, a huge
something
standing on the edge of town, something extremely tall, but not half as tall as the giant: in comparison to the behemoth lying on the mountain, it is about the size of a toddler. Mona thinks she can discern long, thin arms, and many wriggling
somethings
, as if the top half of this creature is wreathed in tentacles…

Then she hears the fluting. It is hauntingly beautiful, yet also alien.

Beside her, Gracie gasps. “What?” she says softly. “No.
No!
”

The buzzing in Wink tapers off. The children, who are trying so
desperately to get free of their Mother (who, in turn, seems to hardly notice them), stop struggling and stare.

A second noise begins echoing through the valley: a deep, resonant
om
, like thousands of monks beginning to meditate.

The giant cocks its head, and slowly starts to rise to its feet.

Gracie bursts into tears. She tries to run forward, but Parson grabs her by the hand and holds on. “We cannot let her go!” he shouts.

Mona, who is juggling just a hell of a lot of shit right now, manages to free a hand and grab Gracie’s other arm. “Stop, Gracie!” she shouts. “Just stop!” Gracie fights for a bit before giving up and crumpling to the ground, sobbing in terror.

Mona looks down on her for a moment before glancing back up at the shimmering thing on the edge of town. “What the hell is
that
?”

“That,” says Parson, “would be the rebellion of the obedient son.”

The fight begins.

It is a fight beyond nearly everyone and everything in the valley, save for the two fighting: it is a fight that takes place on many invisible fronts, using methods and modes undetectable to nearly everyone’s senses; and it is a fight that only rarely intrudes into the physical realm and its rudimentary dimensions. To nearly all onlookers, each blow and each small victory has completely random results throughout Wink, while First and his Mother stand almost utterly still, staring at each other across the ruined southern end of the valley.