by Tim Waggoner
"It's not our fault!" Lily said.
"You mean it's not my fault," Toby said, giving his sister a sideways glance.
Lily shot him a dark look that accused him of betraying her before turning her attention back to me. "Not our fault," she insisted.
I sighed. You know how twins are supposed to be inseparably close? Maybe that was true for identical twins, but for fraternal ones – at least for my twins – that wasn't always the case. Maybe they didn't fight anymore than other siblings, but sometimes it sure seemed like it.
"What happened? And don't both of you talk at the same time. Lily first."
Toby pursed his lips in irritation. "Why does she get to go first?"
Because she doesn't let her emotions get the better of her, I thought. Out loud I said, "We're going in alphabetical order."
Lily gave her brother a triumphant smirk before launching into her story.
"We were playing catch in the backyard near Mom's garden…" she began.
I already didn't like the sound of this.
"… when Toby threw the baseball too hard–"
"I did not!" Toby's hands curled into fists and his cheeks flushed with a mix of anger and embarrassment.
"… and it flew right by me. I tried to catch it, Daddy, really I did!" She lowered her gaze. "But I missed."
"What happened?" I had a basic idea by that point, but I wanted them to tell me on their own.
Lily didn't answer and Toby looked at her. When he saw how upset she was, the anger drained out of him. he sighed – sounding too much like me – and said, "You know the Buddha statue Mom has in the garden?"
"Yes…"
"The ball hit the statue pretty hard –" he glanced at Lily but she was still looking at the ground – "and, well, the head got knocked off."
I imagined Buddha's decapitated head lying on the ground amidst Devona's petunias and sunflowers. Something about the image of a headless body struck a strange chord in me, but I didn't know why. I decided to put it out of my mind and I laid a hand on each of my children's shoulders and gave them what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze.
"It was an accident, guys. Don't worry about it."
Some of the tension left them then and Lily's head snapped up, her expression suddenly hopeful. "Do you think maybe we can glue the head back on?" she asked.
"Before Mom gets back?" Toby added.
I started to answer, but another image flashed through my mind then: I was lying on a table, a nightmarish machine hanging above me, arms protruding from it, each gripping a stainless steel surgical instrument in its hand. The image faded as quickly as it had come, but it was so disturbing that for a moment all I could do was stand there and stare at my children. Eventually, I gave my head a shake to clear it – and for some odd reason I was reassured that it remained solidly attached to my neck.
I forced a smile.
"We can give it a try," I said, "but I think we'll need a lot of glue."
My smile, weak though it was, seemed to reassure the twins further and they smiled back. Before any of us could say anything else, though, we heard the sound of a car approaching and we turned to see Devona driving down the road in her Prius. She honked the horn in greeting as she slowed and then pulled into the driveway. The twins left me and raced across the lawn to greet their mother – and no doubt shower her with love in the hope of ameliorating her reaction when she learned about the fate of her Buddha statue.
Devona got out of the car. She'd gone out to play tennis with a friend, and she wore a sleeveless white blouse and athletic shorts, and she looked damned good to me. She hadn't returned empty-handed, though. She held a cardboard drinks carrier with four cups on it. The twins squealed in delight when she held the carrier out for them to select a pair of drinks, all thoughts of the decapitated Buddha forgotten. They grabbed two, along with a pair of straws, stuck them through the plastic lids, and sipped.
"Milkshakes!" Toby said.
"I got chocolate," Lily said, making a face.
"Mine's strawberry."
The twins switched cups, took another sip, and were both much happier.
Devona and I laughed and I started walking over to the car.
"Why don't you two go play in the backyard some more while I break the news to your mom." I paused. "And I do mean break."
The twins looked worried again, but I gave them a wink and a smile to let them know everything would be all right. Their own smiles returned and they ran around the side of the house, carrying their milkshakes with them.
"I decided to run through a drive-thru on my way home," Devona said. She held the drink carrier out to me. "What's your pleasure, Mr. Richter? Chocolate or strawberry?"
"You're my pleasure, Mrs. Richter."
I leaned forward and kissed her with a bit more passion than was perhaps decorous for suburbia on a Saturday afternoon out in the open, but what the hell?
When we parted, I took a chocolate shake, popped a straw in it, and took a long sip.
"That's good. Doesn't quite hit the spot like a cold beer would right now, but it's an acceptable substitute."
She grinned as she took a sip of her shake – strawberry, her favorite flavor. Which was of course why I'd taken the chocolate.
"They didn't have any beer-flavored shakes," she smiled. "Sorry."
She took another sip and a little spilled out of the corner of her mouth. But instead of being a light pink color, the liquid was a deep crimson.
"Something wrong?" she asked.
I realized then that I was staring at the thick red substance trailing down her chin. I touched my own chin to signal her what was wrong, and she reached up and caught some of the liquid with her finger. She frowned as she examined it.
"That's weird. Maybe they didn't mix it properly and there's a pocket of strawberry syrup at the bottom."
"Maybe." But that explanation didn't feel right and the substance on Devona's chin didn't look like strawberry syrup so much as it looked like… like… The word refused to come and I found my thoughts drifting back to the yard work that still lay before me.
Our home was a ranch house sitting at the end of a cul-de-sac bordering a small park. The kids loved the park's playground equipment and the small woods with a stream running through it. Devona loved the large oak trees and weeping willows. Me? I loved living next to a giant yard I didn't have to mow and trees whose leaves I didn't have to rake every autumn. Dealing with my own yard was enough work for me.
It wasn't quite lunchtime yet and I'd managed to get half the front yard done, but I still had to finish up here and then do the back before I could call it quits for the day. I glanced up at the blazing sun hanging in the summer sky. That is, if I could take the heat for that long. Then again, the Browns were playing this afternoon. Maybe I could finish the front now and put off doing the back until tomorrow.
Devona reached out with her tongue to lap up the crimson liquid on her chin then and I found the action to be at once both arousing and disturbing. She frowned.
"Funny. It doesn't taste like strawberry. It tastes different. Better." She smacked her lips thoughtfully. "Sweet, but it has a kick to it, almost like it contains caffeine. Just a little bit gave me a jolt of energy." She looked at me then. "Wait a minute, what were you saying a minute ago about having bad news to tell me?"
"The kids were messing around in the backyard and accidentally broke the head off your Buddha statue."
"Really? Oh, well. It's not like we can't get it fixed, right? We'll just run on over to the Foundry and…" She trailed off. "Why did I say that? What's the Foundry?"
"I don't know." But the truth was I did know. At least, it felt like I did, somewhere deep down inside me. Only I couldn't quite remember. I decided not to worry about it, realized I seemed to be deciding that a lot lately, then decided not to worry about that.
I took another sip of my shake and my mouth was filled with a taste so foul that I turned to spit the muck out on the grass.
"Wh
at's wrong?" Devona asked.
"Damned if I know. It suddenly tastes like shit. Literally. Like the kind of swill they serve at Hem–" I frowned, unable to finish the word, though for the life of me I didn't know why I couldn't finish.
An unusually cool breeze blew across the yard then, causing both Devona and I to shiver.
"Something's not right," she said, a note of fear in her voice.
I knew just how she felt but once more, I decided not to worry about it. No, not decided. I couldn't worry about it.
Devona held her shake in one hand and the empty drink carrier in the other, so I couldn't take hold of her. Instead I stepped forward and put my arm around her waist.
"Tell you what, Mrs. Richter. The kids are busy making more mischief in the backyard and you and I are both hot and sweaty – me from my Herculean efforts to tame this lawn, you from exercising your athletic prowess on the tennis court. Would you like to join me in a cool, soothing shower?"
Devona eyed the half-finished lawn. "It's not like you to leave a job undone."
I kissed her gently on the neck. Her sweat coated skin had the tang of salt. I found it to be erotic and I felt my body responding.
"Some sacrifices are worth making."
I leaned in to kiss her lips this time – trying not to think about how she'd lapped up the crimson liquid a moment ago – but before we could kiss, the sun dimmed as if suddenly blocked by clouds. The sky had been clear only a moment ago.
We both looked up and saw that there were no clouds. Instead, the sun had taken on a shadowy cast, and it now gave off a purple-tinted light, painting the world in strange dark hues. A word popped into my mind then, one I'd never heard before but which at the same time seemed so familiar. Umbriel.
The breeze returned then, even colder than before, and this time it didn't pass but continued blowing.
Devona dropped the drink carrier and her shake and put her arms around me. I slipped my own arms around her shoulders, noticing that the lid had sprung off her shake cup when it hit the ground. Thick red liquid that looked nothing like strawberry was soaking into the grass.
"Matt, I'm scared. What's happening?"
It's breaking down, I thought, though I wasn't sure what that meant.
Yes, Devona said. It's our link. Or maybe it's Papa Chatha's necklace. Hell, maybe it's a combination of the two. Whichever the case, something is preventing the illusion from taking full hold of our minds.
I realized then that Devona wasn't speaking. I'd felt her reply more than heard it, as if she were somehow speaking in my head.
"Illusion?" I said aloud. I had no idea what she was talking about. And yet… I did.
She frowned. "I don't know." She'd returned to speaking her words instead of thinking them to me. "It made sense a second ago, but my thoughts keep slipping away. I can't seem to hold on to them for very long."
I gripped her tighter as the world continued to darken around us. "I know what you mean. It almost feels like we're fighting on some level… resisting. But I don't know exactly what we're fighting."
Devona started to say something, but her reply was cut off by the sound of our children crying out in alarm from the backyard. Without thinking I dropped my shake and Devona and I started running. When we reached the backyard we saw the twins near their sandbox. They lay on the ground, bodies covered with long tendrils of some kind of strange weed growing out of the ground.
Leech vine, I thought. I didn't know what that was, but I instinctively knew it was something very bad.
The vine had burrowed into the children's skin at various place – face, neck, hands, back, belly – and it was pulsing rhythmically as if it was pumping something into them. No, I realized with horror. The plant was pumping something out of them: blood.
Devona and I stood there in shock for several seconds and during that time we watched the twins' suntanned skin begin to pale as the leech vine rapidly drained the life out of them.
Devona and I started forward. I didn't know if I would make things worse by tearing the vines away from the twins' flesh. I only knew I couldn't stand by and watch as my children succumbed to some sort of parasitic plant. But before either Devona or I could reach the twins, Lily held her hand out in a stay back gesture.
"Don't!" she said. Her voice was so much weaker than it had been only a few minutes ago in the front yard and hearing it broke my heart. I started forward again, but Toby repeated his sister's gesture.
"Listen to her!" he said, his voice just as weak as his twin's. "We know what's happening." His hand dropped then, as if it were too weak to hold it up any longer, and Lily's did the same.
"None of this is real," my daughter said, her voice now little more than a whisper. "We're not real, Toby and I, we're… pretend. This whole place is pretend."
Toby's head gave the slightest of nods, all that he could manage. His skin, like his sister's, was almost ivory-white now, eyes sunken in, lips blue-tinged.
"You and Mom are fighting. Trying… to break free. That's why all this is happening. Why we're…" He trailed off.
"Dying," Lily finished for him. "But it's OK, because we were never really…"
"Alive," Toby said.
I turned to Devona, and I saw she now possessed overlong incisors jutting down from her upper jaw. I looked at my hands and saw they were gray-tinged, the flesh dry and flaking.
"Pretend," Lily said. "Just… pretend."
Sorrow welled up strong inside me, along with anger. This family, my house, my life wasn't pretend. It couldn't be! I wouldn't let it be!"
A shimmering passed through the air, like ripples in a pond, and when it cleared, the sunshine had returned in full force and my children stood there, free of the leech vine, strong and healthy once more. Devona no longer had fangs, and my hands looked normal again. Everything was as it should be.
I was so relieved that I started toward the twins, wanting nothing more than to wrap my arms around the two of them and never let go. But the expressions on their faces – sadness, disappointment, regret – made me pause.
"Don't, Daddy," Lily said. "Don't use us as an excuse to hide."
"You've always faced the truth, no matter how hard it was," Toby said. He smiled then. "That's your job, right? To find out the truth."
"Find it now," Lily said. "For us, if for no other reason."
I turned to Devona, and I didn't know I was crying until she reached up and gently brushed the tears from my face. She was crying too, but her tears were tinged with red, and while that should've seemed strange to me, I somehow knew it was perfectly normal for her.
"It tears me up to say this, Matt, but they're right. I can feel it. And I know you can too."
I wanted to tell her that I didn't feel anything, that this was real, and I didn't want to hear another word about it. But instead I nodded. I took her in my arms and held her as tight as I could.
"This really sucks," I said softly.
"I know. Ready?"
I wanted to look at the kids one last time, but I knew I couldn't bear it. So I closed my eyes and said, "Ready."
I felt Devona's mind reaching for mine and I reached back. Vertigo took hold of me then and when the world stopped spinning I opened my eyes and found myself standing amidst dozens of bizarre displays – and I remembered.
I was no longer physically capable of crying, but if I had been I'd have broken down and sobbed right then.
It's all right, love, Devona thought. It's over. We're back.
I tried to move, but I still couldn't. Orlock's stasis field was still in effect and I knew that it had remained so the entire time.
What he said about time passing pleasantly… He created an illusory life for us to live while we were trapped here. Like filling an aquarium full of plastic plants and ceramic undersea ruins for the fish to swim around.
Yes, Devona thought. But he didn't count on your necklace and our telepathic link. They reinforced what was real and fought against what wasn't. Because of that, the i
llusion couldn't sustain itself.
I thought of all the other beings trapped within Orlock's stasis domes, all of them living virtual lives deep within their minds while their bodies remained frozen as the long years passed. It was like being trapped in a kind of hell, only one that you weren't aware of. Somehow that made it all the worse.
Then again, maybe it was worse to come out of the dream. I missed my children and grieved for their deaths, even though I knew they'd never been real. And now Devona and I faced the prospect of spending our time in stasis without the comfort of Orlock's illusion to distract us. I wished my necklace had nullified the stasis field too, but either it was completely technological or its magic was too powerful for the necklace to handle on its own without the added help of Devona's and my telepathic link. For whatever reasons we'd broken the illusion but the stasis field remained intact.