by B K Brain
Rachel looked to the front yard.
The dog’s barking went on and on. He’d made too many laps around the tree; the rope was tangled. “I’ll take care of Maurice,” she said. “Will you be okay for a bit? Or do you want to come with?” She hated to do it, but she had to take him to the pound. There were no other options.
“I’m sorry about him. Okay?” Eddie said.
Rachel put a hand over her sister’s and squeezed. “It’s all right. They’ll find him a good home.”
Sadly, dealing with the dog would be the easy part. The hard part, the impossible part, was waiting for the next terrible thing to happen to Eddie. Rachel hoped to God it was over, but something told her it wasn’t. She had an awful feeling, one she couldn’t shake, that the worst was yet to come.
Please let me be wrong.
The prayer was answered immediately, at that very moment.
The answer was no.
6
David walked slow and with a pronounced limp, down the corridor. The sciatic was really throbbing now, and he was pretty sure he’d pulled something in his neck.
He turned a corner to hear Cathleen’s shoes clacking over the floor. He looked up and saw her smiling like a mental patient with tears and snot streaming. “Oh,” she cried. “You did it! How did you? It doesn’t matter. Oh, God, I thought you-”
She rushed past him to hug the others.
Doug laughed. “Um. Okay,” he said as Cathleen threw arms around his belly.
Then she grabbed for Susan, who reciprocated the hug, yet looked very confused.
Steve was next. He endured the embrace, but not without scowling like he’d just smelled something putrid. Probably a personal space thing. David grinned in spite of the pain.
He led the newcomers past the open doorway of the control room. The only sound, a low, rumbling hum, originated from the quantum machine in the corner. Text scrolled down its interface monitor as usual, but thanks to Cathleen all other screens had gone dark.
He continued down the staircase, into the main lab. They filed in behind, gathering around a small table that held a solitary baseball. David knew it would continue to exist as long as the quantum machine ran, comparing values with one of Sam’s horrible algorithms. With the simulations powered down the ball should’ve been safe to move. David would remain cautious until he knew for sure.
He looked over Roger Clemens’ smudged signature, and then leaned closer to inspect a popped seam on the opposite side. He pulled a twenty out of his pocket, folded it down the middle to make a more rigid tool, and then reached out to nudge the ball.
“Uh, whataya doin’ there, Dave?” Doug asked.
The twenty-dollar bill and the baseball met without incident. The ball rolled about an inch, bobbled, stopped. “Okay,” David said, smiling at Cathleen. “It’s safe.”
He turned to see the others staring at him like he’d lost his mind. It made no difference. The looks on their faces didn’t affect his confidence in the telling of the weekend’s events. They’d believe when they saw the baseball disappear. And even if they didn’t, if all three were to blink at an inopportune moment, who cares?
He’d be enjoying whiskey and Coke a thousand miles from rural Pennsylvania by evening. He’d wake up in his own bed tomorrow, go to work, finish out the season, and retire from show business. The memories would turn to stories, far-fetched yarns that nobody would ever believe. They’d be the ramblings of an old man at a local bar, between afternoon fishing trips and bingo at the Elks Club.
Until one day, a day like all the others, save one thing. That particular day would come and go without a single thought of the man on the sidewalk. And maybe that day would eventually turn into two, then five, or even ten. Given enough time, maybe he’d forget altogether. Wouldn’t that be something?
He’d never forget the black hole, though. That one he’d be keeping, no matter how tall the tale sounded to those who weren’t there.
He told Doug and the others everything. Beginning with the original phone call from Sam, then moving along to the baseball, the man on the sidewalk and all the rest. Doug smiled and nodded. Susan too. Steve just looked confused.
Then David led them upstairs, to the quantum machine, to prove it. He couldn’t show them everything, naturally. He wasn’t about to start up the simulations again. He would not do that, even if he knew how. But he could show them the ball. He just needed to make sure they were paying attention when he cut the power.
It would vanish.
Oohs and aahs would ensue.
Good enough.
At the top of the stairwell, with the doorway to the control room in view, he stopped.
It seemed that retirement and bad memories would have to wait.
Because this tall tale wasn’t over yet.
7
Director Garret squinted into binoculars from a quarter-mile away, evaluating the structure and surrounding grounds as his team moved into position.
Pale yellow brick. Two stories, with windows at the second floor only.
Three visible entrances. Glass double doors at the front, a loading dock with garage door around back, and a single maintenance entry on the west side. A gathering of satellite dishes aimed skyward from the roof, equipment that likely required regular service. There had to be a door, or at least some kind of access hatch, up there as well.
Four vehicles in the parking lot. Stakovsky’s pickup and three others; a newer model Chrysler, a silver Chevy and a fifteen-passenger Dodge van. His missing agent rented the Chevy at the airport. The others were rentals as well, which meant the doctors had company from out of state.
Electric came from a coal power plant in Uniontown. Garret could cut the power, but if Jacobson were smart (and he was) he’d have generators on standby, if not already in use. The director lowered binoculars and rubbed at a gruff chin.
“Hold at outer positions,” he said into the radio.
A blackout would provide the time needed to locate the researchers and clear the building, once the generators and the backup batteries were disabled. Garret knew making his presence known before cutting power to the quantum machine would be very dangerous indeed. Jacobson was a desperate man with a gun, a gun that shot black holes for Christ’s sake. Backing him into a corner too early would be ill advised, to state the situation mildly.
Garret looked around, trying to remember where he’d set his coffee. He finally spotted a Styrofoam cup on the roof of the car. He took a drink, growled. It had gone cold again.
A junior Agent, Mike Stephens, walked up and began unfolding a schematic of the building over the hood of Garret’s car.
As expected there was a door at the roof. Good.
He’d be back at headquarters by sundown, sipping coffee at two hundred degrees Fahrenheit, just like nature and Juan Valdez intended.
8
When Eddie was ten her family went on a road trip to Florida, the one and only real vacation they ever got. They’d been to Grandpa’s house in Kansas numerous times, week-long trips their parents described as vacations, but windblown fields of wheat and relatives they barely knew were a far cry from Shamu and Mickey Mouse.
As they backed out of the driveway on that sixth day of June, the girls had never been so excited in their young lives. Naturally the excitement didn’t last. Three days in the back seat of Dad’s Plymouth listening to him talk about transmissions and carburetors could drain the fun out of anything.
They did get a thrill on the third day, though. On Highway 75, twenty miles south of Macon, Georgia.
Black thunderclouds had been chasing them most of the morning, light rain spattering the windshield, high winds occasionally shoving at the car. Dad only grumbled as he pulled at the wheel in an effort to stay in the southbound lane.
By noon the sky up ahead had gone yellow-green, like fumes rising off a spoiled swamp. Eddie didn’t like the look of it, not a bit. And neither did her father. His foot eased away from the gas pedal. He leaned forward, s
quinting. It was then Eddie noticed a cloud spiraling above the highway, dead ahead, a corkscrew of white that had begun to stretch downward.
“Dad! Look!” she yelled, pointing. Rachel, in the seat beside her, shoved Eddie out of the way to see. Mom gasped and put hands to the dash, as if to brace for impact.
“Hold onto something,” Dad said. He grimaced and stomped the gas pedal.
Eddie was thrown back into the seat. Rachel too. An elbow, a scream, and wind raging against the car.
“What are you doing?” Mom said. “Stop!”
“It hasn’t touched down yet. We’ll drive right past.” The Plymouth shot down that Georgia highway with barrels wide and glass packs grumbling like demons.
Dirt and gravel pummeled metal and glass. And rain, drops the size of golf balls. Eddie shrank down low, her eyes straining to focus through a distortion of water over the window.
The speedometer topped out at one-twenty, which was precisely where the needle bounced when Eddie looked. Dad’s fists gripped the wheel like a heavyweight boxer defending his title. His muscled forearms had flexed to granite. “We’ll make it,” he said in a growl. Everyone was screaming, even Mom.
The white funnel fingered its way down the sky like a snake. It touched down in a field on Eddie’s side of the car, to the right. A dark cloud of debris exploded when it struck the ground. The car fishtailed. Found traction. Straightened out. The white monster centered in behind them, chewing up blacktop with teeth made of nothing but air. Eddie watched the beast, in awe of its power, through the back glass as it fell behind. Somehow they’d outrun it.
Five minutes later, with the storm safely in the rear view, Mom finally turned to face front. It was another full minute before the silence was broken.
“Told you we’d make it,” Dad said.
Mom didn’t speak to him until they arrived in Orlando.
Eddie figured it was as close as she’d ever come to a tornado. She was wrong.
She’d just finished telling Rachel about the old guy, David Sandoval - the picture on Thatcher’s desk, the bar, the strange group of people behind glass - all of it. It was amazing to finally be able to talk openly about her hallucinations. Liberating, in an odd, almost surreal kind of way. She could tell Sis anything now. Because they weren’t hallucinations anymore, they were real.
Don’t start feeling too superior, girlie. You’re still a nut-kabob. You’d do well not to forget that. Out loud? No. And not real either. Pretty sure. Eddie fought the urge to answer the rude voice. She frowned, focusing on the table.
Rachel sat staring at her with a weird, smiley look on her face. Eddie knew the expression well. It was the infamous warm and fuzzy look, the I love you more than anything look. Awkward, and really irritating.
Then Rachel said she was going to take care of the dog. Eddie said she was sorry, and she really was. Then, another silent moment. How long did that go on? Not long at all because that was when-
The yard exploded. Well, pretty much.
A gale force wind arrived without warning, tearing at leaves, snapping branches into flying shards. A neighbor’s lawn chair tumbled across the lawn. Loose paper. Trash. Dirt and gravel, pummeling the new window like a hurricane full of hail.
Not a hurricane. A tornado. Right there on the front lawn. There’d be no outrunning this one.
They jumped up, away from the table, the window.
Maurice’s barking went unheard below the sudden blast. His leash was still tangled around the base of the tree, only ten feet beyond the surprise spiral in the yard.
Rachel stood and rushed for the door. “Stay here,” she told Eddie. Eddie followed.
With the knob turned a wall of air shoved the front door open, knocking Rachel back a step. Eddie squinted past her sister and through the dark vortex to see the dog yanking for freedom, barking and crying at a blinding sting of dirt.
A tornado, yes. A small one, perhaps ten feet wide, but it didn’t look small as she stood peering into it with watery eyes. Earth peeled away from the yard in big crumbly clumps. Boards rattled loose from the porch railing, disappearing into the storm.
“I’ve gotta get to Maurice,” Rachel said. “Stay here.” She clenched teeth, shielded eyes, pushed her way out.
Eddie tried to grab hold of her arm, keep her from going, but it happened too fast. Out the door Rachel went, into an unforgiving blast of earth and rock. Eddie screamed for her to come back. It was no use; she couldn’t even hear herself.
It was all Sis could do to remain standing, holding onto a six-by-six post at the corner of the porch, the only thing that hadn’t been torn away.
The dog couldn’t be seen anymore. The air was too dense, too black with debris. The tree across the yard, the one he’d been tied to, was limbless now, shredded to a single prong, a gnarled wooden stake pointing at the sky. If Maurice was still tethered to it he was surely dead. That didn’t stop Rachel. It seemed nothing would, that is until a thick branch knocked her from her feet. She slammed the deck hard, wincing at the pain. At the edge of the whirlwind and with nothing to grab onto she began to slide.
They hadn’t beaten the monster all those years ago. They’d only put it off for another day. It was back now. And it was still hungry.
Eddie didn’t hesitate. If Sis were going to die today, she wouldn’t be going alone.
9
David held arms out to the corridor walls to keep Cathleen and the others behind him, to prevent them from going any further. A bright white spiral hung in the control room doorway only a few feet from where he’d stopped. Another of the doctor’s booby-traps, no doubt. It hadn’t been there thirty minutes ago, when they’d walked by headed for the laboratory. Why was it there now? But more importantly, how? All the simulation computers were shut down. Had Cathleen missed one?
Sam’s smug, self-righteous words came back, loud and clear. Do I have your attention now, Dave, or am I boring you? Bastard.
David clenched teeth. Took a moment to loathe everything he knew about his host. This thing, whatever it was, spiraled like the gaping mouth of a deadly, ship-devouring Charybdis. Or an ivory galaxy, churning through the depths of space.
Hatred turned to fear.
And the memory of a man on a sidewalk.
This was nothing like that, nor the wall of temperature at the front doors. It definitely wasn’t a black hole. It pulled like a black hole; he could feel it drawing him in, testing the strength of fabric in his clothes and friction between rubber-soled shoes and smooth tile. Was it some kind of vortex, a magic doorway that led to another place and time? If so, where? The other end of the universe? Another dimension entirely? David had no desire to find out.
He leaned back, away from the glowing whirlpool. Tried to pull away. Voices shouting from behind barely registered in his brain. Hands, grabbing at his shoulders and arms, pulling, holding him back. Cathleen. Doug, Susan, and Steve. His crew would believe him now, wouldn’t they? Yes. They’d see this madness for themselves.
Then David saw her. A girl, curious and gazing out from the center of the storm. Hazy, obscured by the churning glow. Her arms outstretched, reaching. Was she coming through? Could this thing really be some kind of doorway?
Her thin fingers crossed the outer barrier, into David’s world. They were real. She was real.
The spiral’s gravity increased in that instant, yanking David forward. He stumbled toward the unexpected pull, digging the soles of his shoes over tile. Tread chirped and squawked as he slid. He threw his body weight back, but it was no use. He was still sliding. Hands groped for anything to hold onto. There was nothing, only smooth pale walls without purchase.
He went face-first through the mysterious spiral, a frightening cosmic plunge. An iron grip suddenly had him by the ankles. Doug’s thick hands, no doubt, holding him from being swallowed up completely. David squirmed, half-inside and half-outside. The top half, from head to waist, no longer felt solid. It was as if he’d become a beam of light trapped inside a pr
ism, or perhaps a gathering of particles.
The strange girl was there too. Struggling, no more a willing participant than he. And no more solid than he. The two hung there, mixed inside an impossible liquid threshold, each facing and being pulled from the opposite direction.
He could feel her, moving within him. He felt her confusion, her fear, as if it were his own. Did she feel him too? Yes, surely. They’d been thrown together like colors poured into a spiraling well. Two souls mixing into one. Becoming less, becoming more.
For a few fleeting moments it felt like they’d always been.
But that wasn’t possible, was it?
10
Eddie leapt out the door into hellish, stinging air. She was immediately thrown from her feet. The wood deck slammed her at the elbow and hip, shooting electric pain in all directions. She cried out. In surprise. Frustration. Then defiance.
She snapped a look down, past her scrambling legs and sneakers, just in time to watch Rachel get dragged into the black whirlwind.
No.
She cupped hands around narrow eyes, trying to see. Her vision, unable to penetrate the dense, raging wall, ascended to the sky.
The funnel was like no tornado she’d ever seen, not on the news, nor shaky video posted online. It was nothing like the monster that chased her down the highway when she was ten.
This thing traveled miles upward into clear blue and then hooked a sharp left, continuing east, until it faded into the distance and out of sight.
Also, it wasn’t moving. It hadn’t traveled an inch since it settled in front of the house. Almost as if Eddie’s yard was its intended, and only, destination.
This isn’t a real tornado, can’t be. It was something else.
Whatever this thing was, it just swallowed Rachel. Eddie pushed off the wood floor, letting the wind have her. She lifted off, disappeared into the punishing vortex.