American Elsewhere (83 page)

When the storm first came, everyone knew the dome had been struck by lightning. But, the dome being the dome, no damage was done. After all, the outside had showed no change, no damage.

But the inside… that was another matter. No one had thought that, perhaps, the inside of the dome had changed and become, like so many places in this valley, another place.

Perhaps a prison. A prison chamber for something very old, and something very angry.

It is then that, as is so often the case in Wink, things begin to happen in two places at once.

On one plane, Mona Bright sits on her mother’s couch, with her mother across from her in her chair. But as Mona whispers
Boom
, her mother looks up, as if she can hear something happening outside this dream house.

“What was that?” she asks softly. “What have you done?”

On the other plane, back in the smoking city, with the bloody woman on the rooftop and the giant standing in the park, something begins to poke its way out of the tiny hole in the skin of the dome: a long, black, gleaming claw. It makes the hole bigger and bigger, then slashes down, straight down, nearly splitting the dome in half…

Mona’s mother sits up. “What have you done, girl?” she asks.

“I let him out,” says Mona.

“Who?”

Mona does not answer.

“Who?”

Something changes in the air of the house. It is as if another room has just appeared, connected to their pleasant living room; a room
small, dusty, yet invisible; but they can
feel
it, a hall or a chamber just nearby, always glimpsed out of the corners of their eyes.

Then Mona sees him.

He stands in the dining room, watching them. A still figure wearing a filthy blue rabbit suit, and a strange wooden mask.

Mona’s mother sees her looking, and turns to see. When she sees this strange man standing in the dining room, she seems to deflate a little.

With quaking legs, she gets to her feet. “Oh,” she says in a crushed voice. She begins taking shuddering breaths. “It’s you.”

The man does not move. Mona becomes aware that whatever relationship she has with her mother, there is so much more—both in quantity, and in tortured complexity—between her mother and this new figure.

“You’ve… you’ve quite outgrown me, my boy,” whispers Mona’s mother. She stares at him, then slowly looks back at Mona. “Please, don’t.”

Mona is quiet.

“Please… please don’t let him hurt me.”

“I can’t tell him what to do,” says Mona.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t.”

There is a flicker. The man in the filthy rabbit suit is now standing just behind Mona’s mother.

“Please don’t,” her mother says to her. “Please… I just wanted things to be
right
. I just wanted things to be as they
should
have been…”

But the man in the rabbit suit reaches out…

In Wink, something long and skeletal begins to emerge from the broken dome. It is impossible to truly see it—it is somehow even bigger than the colossal giant standing in the park—but it only partially emerges, as if just poking out its hand, and its head…

And though no one in Wink, even the People from Elsewhere, can really understand what they’re looking at, those that see think they see a long, thin skull, and two tattered, pointed ears, and a bony,
clawed hand reaching for the backs of the giant’s ankles, as if to slash at them…

Tears fall and strike the living room carpet, a soft
pat pat
.

Mona’s mother, quivering, makes a fist and holds it to her lips.

The man in the rabbit suit touches her shoulder…

The claws strike home.

The giant begins toppling backward, moaning in dismay…

Mona’s mother, beautiful and perfectly arranged, falls backward, her red dress rippling like a flag as she tumbles…

The giant is so vast, it takes nearly twenty seconds to fall.

It falls in such a manner that it practically eclipses the park, smashing the courthouse, barely missing the dome, its broad back hurtling toward the dark, lacquered splinter of a tree on the north end of the park…

The tree stabs up, piercing the giant’s breast, poking through its chest just where its heart would be…

Mona’s mother gasps. “Oh,” she says, and touches her chest.

There is a spreading stain of bright red blood there, seeping through her dress.

“Oh, no,” she whispers. “Not like this. Not like this.”

Mona and the wildling both stand over her, watching. She looks up at them, eyes brimming with tears, but she cannot see either of them anymore.

“I just… wanted things to be perfect,” she whispers. “Just the way I wanted them… is there anything… wrong with that?”

She moans a little. Then she is still.

In Wink, the people from elsewhere stare, horrified, astonished.

“No,” says one. “No. No!”

On the mesa, Parson lets out a huge breath, and says, “Yes.”

Mona and the wildling stare down at their dead mother. Then, slowly, the wildling kneels and reaches out with trembling hands to caress her still, pale face.

Mona understands. She still feels the same, despite everything: she wishes her mother were here, alive, healthy, and that her mother loved her daughter with all her heart. Such desires can never really go away, no matter what you learn about your parent.

The wildling looks up at her, and though his wooden face is as inscrutable as ever, Mona thinks she understands him. He is asking—
What now?

“I don’t know,” says Mona. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Crushed, the wildling looks back down at his mother. Then, slowly, he gathers her body in his arms, stands, and carries her away, away from this perfect living room, down the hallway, and out of sight.

As he carries Her he cannot help but think about how small She is. He did not know he had grown so great. Or perhaps, underneath it all, She had been this small all along.

The wildling carries his Mother down a long, dark tunnel. It stretches on and on, dipping through planes of reality, over and under and around Wink.

Finally it ends in a small stone chamber. In the center of the floor is a pile of rabbit skulls. The wildling kicks these away, clearing a space, and gently, gently lays his Mother down in its center.

He has Her now. They are reunited. At last.

He has dreamed of this moment. During his long, dark days chasing his family, and all throughout his long imprisonment, this is what he dreamed of, what he hoped for, what he needed.

He hates Her and loves Her. He wanted Her to love him, and hated Her because he knew She never would. But now he has Her.

He sits down across Her. She is terrible and beautiful, all at once. Even in death.

And he waits. For death can only last so long. Things like Mother can never truly die.

And when She reawakes… She will be here. She will be trapped here, with him, with nothing to see but these stone walls, and no one to speak to but Her son. Her beautiful son.

And he will make Her love him. Forever and ever and ever. And ever and ever and ever.

Mona opens her eyes to a scene of total devastation.

The giant, strangely, is gone, yet she can see where it fell, leaving a huge indentation like a drained lake. It looks like it broke a gas main when it fell, and the shops on the northwest of the town square are ablaze.

All the children and the people from elsewhere are gathering at the square, staring at where their Mother once was. None of them move or speak. They don’t even notice the flames beginning to encircle them.

Mona walks down the stairs and out to the street.

The fire has reached the residential neighborhoods now. It is dancing up the walls and crawling across the roofs and leaping from structure to structure. The people (and the not-at-all people) watch the fire helplessly. Some do not even move or struggle as it consumes them.

One person asks her, “What do we do now? What do we do now that Mother is gone?”

But Mona has nothing to say. She climbs into the Charger, wheels it around, and points it back at the mesa again.

The People from Elsewhere look around themselves helplessly. They have waited so long for Her to return, and now She is lost again. What is there to do?

It is Mr. Elm who speaks first, whispering in his wife’s ear.

“The car?” Mrs. Elm asks. “What about the car?”

He mumbles something.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, you are right, aren’t you. The car does need work. It’s not quite right, is it?”

He shakes his head.

“No, it isn’t. I think you’re right. We do need to go home. We have some things to take care of. What if I make a nice pitcher of lemonade, just for you?”

But Mr. Elm is not listening—he turns and walks away, back to the house, back to do what he did the day before, and the day before that, and several hundred days before that.

One by one, they all agree—they have work to do. The Dawes children had planned to build a pirate ship out of sand in their sandbox, Mr. Trimley had intended to put up a new train, and Mrs. Greer must arrange for the next dinner party (which will be very nice indeed). Some of them even invite the children home, for despite their unusual appearance, the people of Wink have not seen their little siblings in so long, and taking care of one’s guests is what a proper host should do.

So, one by one, they return to their homes, and they go about their
business. Even when the fire begins licking at the sides of the houses, even when it bursts through the kitchen windows and crawls across the kitchen cabinets, even when it dances in their beds and across their carpets, they do what they did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.

There is a way things should be. This is what we are. This should save us, shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it? Now that we are these things, shouldn’t everything be fine?

The midday sun bakes everything, anything. It is so bright it has baked the blue out of the sky, the red out of the earth. The very air shimmers as if to get out of its way.

Mona sympathizes as she drives. She feels blackened, burned, both inside and out. She has walked through fire, now she is filled only with ash.

When she arrives at the mesa she sees things are much as she expected: Gracie, Parson, and her daughter sit on the shady side, under a shelf of rock. Gracie’s eyes are bright, bright red, veined and wet like peeled pomegranates. Her daughter sleeps in Gracie’s arms. The child’s fat cheeks make her lower lip jut out as though she is pouting over some recent slight.

Parson is waiting for her, as is someone else: a young girl of about ten, with mousy brown hair and yellow tennis shoes. She looks up at Mona with a piercing gaze, and she slowly stands as if this action normally causes her great pain.

“Mrs. Benjamin,” says Mona.

“Hello, dear,” says the little girl. “You’ve done quite wonderfully.”

“So that is you in there?”

“Yes. It is a bit unwieldy being so… short. But I manage.”

“It all worked?” Mona asks Parson. “You all got here safely?”

“We did,” says Parson. “Though some of us are the worse for wear.” He looks back at Gracie. “She has lost everything.”

Mona walks to Gracie, stoops, and holds her hands out. Gracie takes a moment to register this, then looks up at Mona and slowly holds out the sleeping child. Mona takes her and says, “You did a good job taking care of her, Gracie.”

Gracie stares into the stone. Her cheeks are so lacquered with tears it’s hard to see if she’s still crying. Any new ones simply dissolve and run down her face in a sheet.

“Thank you,” says Mona. “I really do thank you, Gracie.”

She sits down and holds her child in her arms. She stares at her daughter, and, without even knowing it, bends over to shelter her from the heat.

“What happened to Mother?” asks Mona.

“The wildling,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “He took her body, back to… wherever he resides. I do not know why, but I do not really wish to find out. I feel the answer would be unpleasant.”

“Then it’s over?” asks Mona. “It’s really all over?”

“Nothing is ever truly over,” says Parson. “At least, in my experience. But Mother’s efforts here do seem at an end.”

The little girl wakes and looks at Mona, then spies Mona’s watch and begins picking at it with her thumb and forefinger. “You want that? Here. Here.” Mona unclasps it and hands it to the girl. She holds it out as a fisherman would his prize, and smiles in glee and disbelief. “My goodness,” whispers Mona. “Isn’t that something.”

She revels in this maternal moment for a while, basking in the presence of her child like the warmth of a fire.

“What will you do with her?” asks Parson. “Keep her? Raise her?”

“Could I?” asks Mona.

“There is nothing stopping you.”

Her daughter’s interest in the watch wanes. She flops over, rests her head on Mona’s chest, and heaves a great sigh. “She’s tired. She’s had a long day.”

She thinks,
I don’t have anywhere to put her to sleep
. Then, with a shrill of fear:
I don’t even know what name to say when she wakes up.

Once more she remembers the look on the face of the Mona in the lens.

“But she’s so beautiful,” says Mona softly, as if arguing with someone. “She’s even more beautiful than I thought she would be…”

“She is quite terribly pretty, yes,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

Mona sniffs. She wants to walk away and to walk away now, because if she did she’d never revisit this decision and wouldn’t she be better for it? But she can’t help herself, and she says, “Parson—those alternates… the way things could have been…”

“Yes?”

“Are they… real?”

“Real in what sense?”

“I don’t know. In any sense. Or are they, like, ghosts? Echoes?”

“Well, the people in those alternates think themselves as real as the people here do. They have no reason to think otherwise. To themselves, they are real. After all—how real is the child you hold in your hands?”