The Fact of the Moon Is Stranger Than Most Dreams

by Palmer, Jacob

  Hours passed in silence, the sun tracing through the holes in the roof and shining light onto the floor like a cathedral. Abram lay on his back, red eyes open, clean tear tracks across his dirty face.

  He sat up and stared at the gold bar next to him. He rose from the floor with difficulty, like a very old man, and limped out and around to the side of the hangar. The sun was at its apex and the heat was a tangible weight on his shoulders. He looked out into the open desert at nothing.

  A small shape leapt from a tuft of dry grass a few feet ahead and stopped at the base of a saguaro cactus, the only cactus as far as the eye could see. It was in full, magnificent bloom. The mouse picked up a fallen petal and nibbled at its edge while looking at Abram. The mouse finished the petal and then began digging furiously at the ground in front of the cactus. It stopped abruptly, looked up again at Abram, and bounded away like a shadow, vanishing in the scrub.

  Abram looked at the small indention left by the mouse in the sand and dropped to his knees and began digging, first with his red, cracked fingers, then with a nearby stone. A few inches into the earth, Abram found the memory card in its small plastic case, which had been rubbed opaque by the sand. He held it between his fingers and then set it aside and kept digging. Once the hole was a foot deep and beginning to collapse in on itself in the loose soil, Abram dropped the gold bar and shoved the earth over it, patting it smooth. He took the memory card and walked back into the hangar, where he placed it in the center of the charred spot on the floor and lay down again, staring at the ceiling. He soon fell asleep.

  36

  As Octavia slept, Edie sat up, back against the wall, knees pulled to her chest. She stared at the old wooden door, at its frosted glass window and the low, steady light on the other side. She heard a small scratching, the familiar microscopic scraping sound of mouse teeth, so close, seemingly from somewhere beneath her.

  She lifted the corner of the mattress, careful not to wake Octavia. The artificial rabbit, powered down, lay limp and lifeless between them. The floor below the mattress was ancient, yellowed linoleum tile, but the four tiles below her were a slightly different shade. Edie crouched, staring.

  She heard the scraping again and pressed her hand against the tile, felt the burrowing teeth mil-limeters away. When she removed her hand, the tile lifted slightly and the scraping stopped. Edie caught her fingernail below the edge of the tile and lifted slowly. There followed a quick scurrying sound and Edie gasped, dropping the tile. Octavia grumbled and rolled over, turning her back to Edie and snoring softly. Edie carefully lifted the tile again, finding a mouse nest, some paper scraps, mouse shit, all positioned on a rough wooden plank like a diorama.

  She lifted the adjacent tile, uncovering a small latch recessed into the ancient wood. A door that looked as if it hadn’t been opened in a century. She pulled at the latch, and the wood squeaked loudly. She dropped the mattress back down and froze. Octavia slept, a submerged child’s sleep, twitching and dreaming.

  Edie watched the frosted glass of the door, her heart pounding into her throbbing fingers. She carefully lifted the mattress corner once more. Placing her pillow on top of her hands to muffle the sound, she yanked up on the latch. The wood gave way, and the small trapdoor opened, yawning out the smell of musty wood and the damp subterranean stone innards of the building. Edie lowered the mat-tress and placed it gently over the open hatch.

  A small, sharp sound on the other side of the frosted glass. Possibly a large aquarium filter motor on a timer. A shadow passed over the glass and Edie dropped again, feigning sleep. She waited. Another sharp sound from farther away and a dense, low thud. And then nothing. Gathering courage, she rose to her knees and lifted the mattress corner, peering down through the open porthole in the floor, her wet face bathed in the cool basement air. Her eyes adjusted to a long, dark passage and a drop six feet to a dusty, littered floor. Some kind of service corridor, heavy with the undisturbed sleep of decades. There were tracks for a small cart recessed into the floor.

  “Wake up, Octavia,” Edie whispered into the child’s ear.

  The child grunted and opened her eyes, rubbing them with small, limp hands. “Is it time to leave?” she said, looking around the room, confused.

  “Shhhhhh, don’t talk. Just put on your shoes. Here, I’ll help you.”

  Why am I taking her? Edie thought, fastening the child’s pink, Velcroed sneakers. I should just leave her here with her aunt. I could’ve just slipped away. Why am I taking her? She’s not my child. This is kidnapping. I can’t leave her here. I can’t. Why am I doing this? I have to get to the police somehow. Sort it out there.

  “Here, put on your sweatshirt. I found a door,” Edie said, putting the rabbit in her purse, careful not to power it on by pressing the area between its shoulder blades.

  “The Blue Lady told me about this door,” Octavia said, still drowsy.

  “Sure, sure. Okay, come on. Stay quiet. I’m going to lower you down first.”

  “I’m afraid, Miss Edie. It’s dark down there.”

  “Here, hold my phone. Let me turn on the flashlight. I’m going to lower you down, and then I’m going to jump down, okay? I’m coming right down after you. Hold my purse and don’t spill anything. The rabbit is sleeping in there.”

  “Pinocchio.”

  “Pinocchio is sleeping in there.”

  Edie lowered Octavia down by her wrists, letting her drop the last couple of feet to the floor.

  “Shhhhh, don’t move,” Edie said. “Just stay right there and hold that flashlight. I’m coming down.”

  She lowered herself down while simultaneously pulling the hatch door closed behind her, her arm muscles trembling violently under the strain. She dropped and crouched in the dust and hugged Octa-via close.

  “Okay, let’s start walking this way. We have to be quiet.”

  “No, Miss Edie, the Blue Lady said we have to walk this way first.”

  Edie paused and looked at Octavia in the dim light. She was holding the flashlight with shaking hands.

  “Okay, sure. It’s not like I know where I’m going anyway. Let’s go your way. Just be careful where you step, and go slow. I’m right here next to you. I’m going to hold the flashlight.”

  “Okay.”

  They made their way down the corridor of exposed, rough brick with stone bedrock occasionally jutting through. A gathering of mice exploded from under a pile of yellowed newspapers stacked against a wall and ran ahead of the light. Octavia screamed, and Edie immediately stifled the scream with her hand. They stopped at the sound of water rushing above them, a thunderous, muffled roar.

  “That sounds like a river up above us. The Blue Lady told me that when we meet the river, that means the devils are up there looking for us on the other side of that river. We have to hurry.”

  “I think I see a door or something up ahead.”

  They reached a large metal freight elevator door. Upon sliding it open, they found themselves at the bottom of an empty elevator shaft, a rebar ladder leading up and into the yawning darkness. They heard a sound, a pattering like small footsteps far behind.

  “Shit!” Edie said, heaving the metal door shut behind them.

  They stood in the elevator shaft, Edie frantically shoving small bits of wood and trash into the corner of the door’s track mechanism, intending to wedge the door shut.

  “We have to go up the ladder, now!”

  “I’m scared, Miss Edie.”

  “Go! You go up first, and I’m right behind you. Go now! Now!”

  Edie shoved Octavia up the first few rungs of the ladder and turned, holding a broken brick from the floor, her hand shaking, her purse dangling in the other hand. The door shuddered and inched, and what looked to be fingers reached around the edge. Edie threw the brick at the hand and kicked the side of the door.

  “Get the fuck away!” she screamed, picking up the brick and climbing the ladder, looking back and down furiously behind her, into the black. She heard the door squeaki
ng and grinding slowly on its tracks below. She quickly caught up to Octavia, who was already twenty feet from the bottom and still dutifully climbing with her small child arms.

  “Octavia, I’m coming up below you. Just keep climbing. Don’t stop.”

  “I’m scared, Miss Edie.”

  Octavia aimed the flashlight downward, and Edie caught a glimpse of a shape just below, a face, white and ascending fluidly up the rungs, inhuman. Edie began kicking wildly below her and scream-ing. Her purse snapped from her shoulder and fell into the emptiness with the artificial rabbit sleeping inside. Octavia slipped on a rung and fell onto Edie immediately below her.

  “Grab the ladder, Octavia. Climb, climb!”

  They reached a dim shaft of light between two elevator doors, and Edie climbed over Octavia and wrenched it open with one hand. She climbed over and pulled Octavia out of the shaft and into a dusty hallway. Both Edie and Octavia pushed the elevator doors shut behind them and tore down the hall. Edie stopped and picked up Octavia and continued her run. Edie noticed that Octavia was crying and then noticed that she was crying, too.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t cry. We’re fine.”

  “I want my momma.”

  “Well, we have to get out of here first, and then I’ll take you to your mom.”

  “Where’s my aunt? You think the devils got her?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to get out of here, okay? Come on.”

  They reached the end of the hallway, and Edie looked down through the window. They were on the second floor, a dark alley below. She checked a nearby door, which was locked, and after a few tries, she kicked it open, antique wood flying from the doorframe. The dark room was stacked to the ceiling with white office boxes coated in dust. Edie made out a dim shaft of light from behind a stack of boxes against the wall. She pulled the boxes onto the floor, spilling papers and file folders. They stacked boxes against the door, and Edie unlocked the newly exposed window with shaking hands. Leaning out, she could see a small, graveled roof landing below.

  “I’m going to hang out and drop, and you’re going to do the same thing after me and I’m going to catch you. Okay, Octavia? Are you listening?”

  “Where’s Pinocchio, though? Did the devils get Pinocchio? We have to go back, Miss Edie! We have to!” the child began crying harder than before, her face contorted with sobs.

  “We’ll go back and get Pinocchio, goddammit. But right now, we have to do this.”

  “When are we coming back?”

  “When it’s safe. Come on, we have to go. Watch me. Watch what I do.”

  Edie held onto the window frame, lowered herself over the edge, and dropped down, tumbling on the sharp white gravel and cutting the palms of her hands.

  “Okay, now you. Do what I did, and I’ll catch you.”

  Octavia crawled out onto the window ledge, slipping and catching herself.

  “I hear the devils, Miss Edie. They’re trying to get in.”

  “Just hang down and then drop, just like I did. I’ll catch you.”

  Octavia let go with one hand, wild-eyed, face drenched in tears. A figure clenched Octavia’s arm. The calm face of the little red-haired girl. Her eyes caught the dim light unnaturally, like two black pools, empty. The child spoke to Octavia, but Edie couldn’t hear. Her head began pounding. The red-haired child’s face went out of focus and Edie fell to her knees, a throbbing, vomitous wave passing through her.

  “Let go of her! Let go!” Edie screamed, tossing a handful of gravel. The little girl held her blank expression. She whispered into Octavia’s ear and then dropped her, Edie just barely catching her. They rolled, and Edie cut her face on the gravel and lost consciousness for a moment.

  “Miss Edie, are you hurt?”

  “No, it’s just another bad headache like before. I just need to—”

  The red-haired child dropped down onto the gravel with otherworldly grace and began slowly, carefully pacing toward them, holding a package of some sort, what appeared to Edie as a silver mylar balloon. She opened her eyes and watched the balloons drift above her in bed, floating in the night cur-rents. She reached over and put her hand on Abram’s chest as it rose and fell slowly and surely. He snored and she watched the mirrored balloons and smiled and thought of satellites, thought of Abram’s new artist residency.

  She was proud. She could make out the image, her and Abram, their faces lit by the streetlight via a gap in the blackout curtain, a shaft of light repeated like a kaleidoscope in the softly dancing balloons above. The softly dancing satellites miles above them with their images of the Earth, second by second, and Abram’s task of assembling them into meaning and matter. She thought of the children at the church shelter. Octavia. Edie opened her eyes, and her pounding head hung over the edge of the roof, the pain nearly unbearable, catastrophic. She rose and frantically searched for Octavia and found her standing near the red-haired little girl, talking.

  “Stay right there, Octavia. Do not move,” Edie slurred. “If you hurt her, you little monster, I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

  “Look, down there, Miss Edie. That’s where we have to go. That truck there. See?” Octavia said, running past the red-haired little girl and helping Edie to her feet. The red-haired little girl looked on with an expression of quiet, playful confusion.

  “She just wants to play with me,” Octavia said, leading Edie down onto an air-conditioner on top of an adjacent roof landing. “I don’t think she’s even a devil at all. Or she’s a devil and she don’t know that she is. Now look, Miss Edie, just one more jump down onto that dumpster, and then we gotta get over to that truck, Miss Edie. You gotta drive it.”

  “I don’t know how to drive.”

  “You have to. I’m too small.”

  As the air-conditioner roared to life behind them, a shot rang out simultaneously, sending a white plume of dust from the gravel beside them. A bullet missed the back of Edie’s thigh by inches.

  “They’re shootin’ at us, Miss Edie!” Octavia said as she shoved the staggering Edie off the roof, and they both fell, landing with a thud on the thick plastic lid of the large metal dumpster below.

  “Wake up, Miss Edie!” Octavia screamed and slapped Edie hard with her small child’s hand.

  Edie woke and deliriously broke into a clumsy run, eyes half closed, for the large, parked truck, Octavia running behind. The door of the truck stood open, and Edie picked up Octavia, tossed her inside like a bag of laundry, and then dove in herself. Another shot rang out, ricocheting off the pavement.

  “Why are they shooting at us? This is ridiculous,” Edie slurred and laughed, her head slung back and then forward again, hitting the steering wheel. “I guess I have to drive this thing. I don’t feel good, Octavia.”

  “Miss Edie, look, my aunt Gabrielle is hurt bad!”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Edie said, nose bleeding, turning the key she had found al-ready in the ignition. The large diesel engine chugged to life, instantly filling the alley with the smell of exhaust. Grinding the gears, Edie rolled out of the alley, scraping the wall.

  “Alright, we did it. We’re out,” Edie said, rolling through an empty stoplight and down New Montgomery Street.

  “Miss Edie, we have to stop and get some medicine for my aunt Gabrielle. She don’t look good!”

  “My dad tried to teach me to drive stick once when I was a kid. I guess I remember a little bit. Sink or swim, right? Are they still shooting at us?”

  “Miss Edie, watch out!”

  Edie clipped the front bumper of a parked Volkswagen, and a hand took the wheel from below, steadying it. Gabrielle slid from the floor and into the driver’s seat, nearly sitting on Edie’s lap, her shirt blackened and shiny with blood. Octavia pulled Edie over, across the bench seat and onto the passenger side. Edie slid instead onto the large floorboard, retched, and spat blood.

  The rearview mirror exploded like a balloon popping.

  “Octavia, get over here!” Gabrielle yelle
d over the roaring, straining engine. Outside of the pas-senger window, the little red-haired girl peered in, upside down, apparently lying on the roof of the ve-hicle.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” Gabrielle jerked the wheel back and forth, fishtailing the vehicle and attempting to throw off the little girl. The little girl slid to the front windshield with squeaking hands. Octavia fran-tically rolled down the passenger window.

  “What are you doing, Octavia? Get away from the window!”

  “She’s my friend. She was helping us. She’s gonna fall off out there.”

  “That’s not your friend. She’s a murderer. They killed everybody! Fuck, stop it, Octavia. Get away from the window! What are you doing?” Gabrielle said, slamming on the brakes too late as the child ef-fortlessly hauled itself in through the open window, and the two children fell violently to the floorboard, landing on Edie.

  Gabrielle stared down at the red-haired child in horror and began striking at her wildly with one hand on the steering wheel. The child blithely moved out of reach with a look of playful bemusement. The child wore Edie’s purse like a backpack and pulled the artificial rabbit from it, handing it to Octavia, who raised her other little hand to protect the red-haired child from Gabrielle.

  “Stop it! She’s not a devil! She don’t know she’s a devil!” Octavia said as the passenger side mirror exploded behind her small head.

  Gabrielle floored the vehicle as a police drone dropped into view and bounced off the windshield, creating a large spiderweb crack. Another drone flew near, keeping pace and shining a bright light into the cab, announcing something inaudible over a speaker.

  “Get down, Octavia. Stay on the floor!” Gabrielle said, driving wildly with one arm and holding her bloody side with the other, her face glistening with sweat. She rounded the corner at Howard Street, clipping and scattering a plastic bench. Gabrielle fished her phone from her pocket, wincing with pain, and tapped out something with a shaky hand. The police drone keeping pace suddenly lost power and fell to the ground. The streetlights on the block strobed wildly and went out. The sound of police sirens could be heard far off, quieting, moving in the opposite direction. Gabrielle jerked the wheel and took the highway on-ramp, U.S. 101 South, joining the few autonomous semis on the road at this hour. She blacked out for a moment and then came to with a yell.