by S. T. Joshi
Trent heard the methodical scuffling of feet passing across the oiled wood floor. He grabbed his receipt and hastened for the door.
* * *
Trent spent more energy trying to keep his anxieties in check than he did cooking dinner. The food was delicious, but Melissa wasn’t swallowing his forced joviality. Over dessert Jasmine began to show signs of too much sun and surf, so Melissa tucked her in early. When she returned to the deck she was armed with two glasses of white wine.
“So?” she asked.
Trent shrugged.
“You’ve not been yourself since you got back from that damned assignment. What’s troubling you? Still this Dark Matter business?”
He sighed with authentic resignation. “I honestly don’t know. I just have this heavy feeling. I’ve had it since I went down into that damned lab. I don’t seem able to shake it.”
“But you’ve covered stories far more disturbing than this, hon. Teen shootings, sweatshops, terrorist cells …”
“I know, but I was able to wrap my head around those. I’d almost always uncover at least some of the causes behind the problem: poverty, loopholes in corporate law, whatever. Those cases would always offer at least some promise of a solution. But this …”
His words trailed off. Melissa reached over and entangled her fingers with his. They sat and looked skyward; Melissa at the gleaming stars, Trent at the cold hollow between them.
Trent did not dream of Dark Matter that night. He did not dream at all. Dreams require sleep, and Trent knew none. Even his reliable trick of monitoring his breathing failed to lull him.
He shut his eyes and fought to shut off his brain.
But Night was lodged within his head. Constellations shimmered and blinked. They were smeared across the seemingly endless curve of his calvaria, like his very own planetarium. Between and beyond the nuggets of silver light stretched the vacuum of dead space; still and lightless and seemingly silent.
Seemingly, for there was a grating, grinding sound; underlying and ever-present, like the gears of some unfathomable machine turning, slowly turning …
He was being drawn into the black gaps. Trent felt himself being pulled like a hooked fish into that abyss where even the flesh is forbidden. He struggled to pull back, but was lost in a magnetic field. Black grit whisked about him like granules in a sandstorm. It stung and froze his flesh. In a mere heartbeat Trent felt himself encased in scales of this light-eating armor.
There was purpose in their assault.
The specks of nothingness dug into Trent’s flesh until every pore became a socket embedded with a minute onyx eye. At once, these billion eyes sprung open. Trent Fenner became Sight itself; omniscience, the chariot that bore all the Dark Matter whose reality was not ours. In this new unlighted form, Trent tasted the colours of sounds, he seized the great cold knowledge that secrets itself within the rasping of the stars.
He understood, knew. No, more: Trent was Radiant.
He bolted up in bed, his sight instantly, mercifully dwindled down to a pair of a mortal eyes that witnessed the bedroom in predawn gloom. Although he was not an emotional man, even in times of duress, Trent began to cry. The fount of his sorrow was so deep it was incomprehensible to him. He pulled his aching body out of bed and crossed the cottage to the room where Jasmine slept soundly. He meditated on how dear she was to him.
How miraculous to be able to love, he thought.
Almost mindlessly, Trent donned his sweats and his runners.
He took to the dirt road, allowing blind instinct to guide him.
* * *
The footpath that fed off the shore and up onto the bluffs was thoroughly unremarkable; an almost unnoticeable strip of dirt that was only nominally less stony and weed-entangled than the untamed areas on either side of it.
Trent found the incline almost insurmountable. The sheerness of it caused his thighs to tighten and, seemingly, to ignite. His breathing was ludicrously laboured, as though he had reached some impossible altitude, when in fact he was scarcely above the tree-line. His fatigue baffled him. He had run much harder, over much more arduous terrain, and for much longer spans of time.
By now the sun was layering the lake with a netting of glints. Magpie-like, Trent fell under the spell of the distant shimmer until an obstacle on the path tripped him up. The object entangled around Trent’s ankles, acting as a tripwire. He smashed down on the path, the breath instantly banished from his lungs. Pain speared through his ankle. His hands, bearing the bloody stigmata of tiny stones, reached down to remove whatever had ensnared him.
It was a plastic shopping bag. Dregs of wet sand lined its inner creases.
He was tearing it from his feet when he noticed the shadow staining the path.
Trent twisted his head to a painful degree, but all he could discern was a figure made coal-smudge-anonymous by the rising sun behind it.
Righting himself put on more weight than his ankle could bear. Trent stumbled to one side and came to rest upon the bluffs.
Isaac (Trent could clearly see him now) had turned away from his intruder and resumed working. The same swimming trunk Tiki masks watched Trent even when the old man couldn’t be bothered.
Trent found himself oddly entranced by Isaac’s labours. The crouching old man reached blindly for handful after handful of wet sand, culling it from the pile of bulging shopping bags beside him.
Isaac made a sudden sense to Trent: his eccentric attire, his aloofness, his peculiar reputation among the locals. He was an artist. Trent had interviewed enough of them last year for a story on homeless people who elaborately decorated alley walls and sidewalks with chalk drawings, many of which were astonishingly beautiful.
His journalistic instincts stoked, Trent pulled himself up and hobbled over to peek at Isaac’s work-in-progress.
What he found was a hole bored deep into the bluff. Isaac was crouched at the lip of it, pouring handful after handful of clumpy sand into the aperture. Unless this was some Zen practice, Isaac was engaged in a fool’s chore. Trent eyed the pit, then that morning’s stockpile of beach sand. It was like a reverse version of the old fable about bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon.
Reposing next to Isaac was a chunk of dark matter.
Of course this black rock (likely volcanic glass) wasn’t true Dark Matter, but its similarity to the computer-generated models used in his news story was strong enough to frighten Trent.
“I let it out.” The creaking voice reminded Trent of an old gate swinging on rusty hinges. “Don’t tell nobody. I let it out, but it wasn’t nothing but an accident. Righting wrongs takes time, but I’m trying. See? I’m trying.”
Another fistful of sand was ground between Isaac’s palms like baker’s flour. Into the hole it fell. Another reach, more sand. Trent could actually see Isaac’s joints bucking and twitching within his scrawny frame like pistons of bone.
“Is there anything I can do? Why don’t I get you some breakfast? You look like you could use it.”
Isaac shook his longish head. “Too late for that now. All the eggs are broken anyway. You think you’re smart enough to put them back together? I’d like to see you try!” There was a flare of indignation in his voice. He clasped the wiry medallion and brought it to his lips.
“Can you tell me what happened here, Isaac?” He had slipped into reporter-mode; a state of mind that brought Trent both comfort and confidence, if for no other reason than that it afforded him a sense of detachment from his surroundings.
“I’m trying to fix this!”
“Fix what?”
Isaac fed a few more grains to the shadow.
Trent tried to swallow but found his throat a sandy tunnel. “What’s down there, Isaac?”
“Hardly anything now,” Isaac replied. “I told you, I let it out. Every night I’d hear it scraping and scratching inside the earth here. Every morning I’d pray that the noises would stop. Finally I came up here and did what I thought it wanted; I dug it out.
“I know it was a mistake. I know that now. So all I can do is try to right the wrong and try to fill the whole thing up so it’ll stop leaking out.”
“So what will stop leaking out?”
“It’s spoiling everything, everything it touches. And that big empty is getting into everything. I found this black rock here to plug the hole. I thought it would be fooled by the black colour, that it’d think this was still an open hole. It didn’t work.” Isaac held up his crude pendant. “I’m pretty safe though. I built myself a seal for protection. I’m airtight. But you? I don’t see a seal. You’re a fool coming up here without one. You’re a damned fool.”
An eel of nausea began to wriggle in Trent’s stomach, swimming up with such velocity it seemed to set the whole Earth spinning. He shut his eyes and saw dark amoebas splattering and splashing against his eyelids; tassels of midnight lustre that shrivelled as quickly as they thrived.
He was absorbing them now, eating this Dark Matter, his eyelids chewing the particles, his brain digesting them. Whether they were invading him from the open bluffs or whether he’d been contaminated in the old iron-ore mine was irrelevant. These seeds were beginning to hatch. They sprouted teeth and they were eating him, gutting him. Trent could feel them chewing up his muscles and bones, rendering him hollow. They passed through him like a rapid, ravenous cancer. And once he’d been voided of organ and bone, sinew and breath, Trent experienced the awful rasping sound as the Dark Matter grated and spun and revelled in the great absence within him.
He touched his chest. The lack of a protective talisman drained all the strength from his body.
Now intoxicated, Trent staggered helplessly back along the path.
Despite this drama and din, Isaac remained riveted by his task.
* * *
Trent hid among the pines until he felt he had his contagion under control.
He eventually returned to the cottage, telling Melissa that he’d gone for an especially long run this morning. She informed him that they were going to the beach after lunch. Trent layered himself in clothing to keep anything from radiating outward.
“You’re going to roast!” she declared as Trent exited the patio door.
He stood dumb, dazed.
“Beach, mommy!” Jasmine cried.
They walked.
The beach was even busier than yesterday. Youth was everywhere. The only people Trent spotted who appeared older than him were the shore-bound fishermen stationed in their lawn chairs in the shallows.
They staked out their spot. At Jasmine’s bouncing insistence, Melissa helped her wriggle into her water wings. Trent, overdressed in long trousers and a jacket, refused to lower himself down onto the granules. Nor would he heed the voiceless beckon of the bluffs. He looked out across the water and wondered how many more days of sunlight were left.
“Trent!”
He turned to see Melissa hunched before Jasmine. “For the fourth time, where is her lifejacket?”
Trent looked about foolishly. “I … I must have left it at the cottage.”
“I wanna swim, mommy!”
Melissa sighed. “Can you go back and get it?”
“Hmm?”
“Never mind,” she huffed, pushing herself to her feet. “I’ll go. Watch her, please. She’s got her water wings, so she can go in, just not too far.”
“Right.”
“Trent?”
He looked at her.
“Watch her.”
He pushed his mouth into what he hoped was a reassuring grin. Judging by Melissa’s reaction, it was not.
Trent took Jasmine’s hand. Her palm was like a tiny silk pillow. They parted the water.
Jasmine slid her fingers free and began to stomp the shallows. Her steps caused water to bounce up like miniature fountains in the air. The tide flowed and ebbed. Overhead, gulls spun out precise spiral patterns.
A slow and silent tide also touched Trent from within. In no time it subsumed him. Trent saw the sky as a great murky ocean, pouring its Dark Matter down like sand through a sieve.
The scope of it, the indifference it exuded as it went through its bewildering machinations—these stifled Trent.
All was silent and dim; human activity was dimming, like candles guttering out one by one.
But then the candles began to brighten, raging against this meta-darkness. There was a flaring.
There was a crescendo of ugly sounds.
Trent snapped his head, and the Dark Universe was once more hidden behind a bright and busy mask. A stark image filled his eyes: a tiny figure in a shell of many colours, twitching just below the water’s surface.
“Mister!” yelled a male voice.
The fishermen had sprung from their lawn chairs as quickly as their aged bones would allow. Their poles were jerking about as though they had live wires in their spinners.
The men were waist-deep in the water now. One had scooped a bulky shape from the waves while the other ever-so-gently manoeuvred the fishing line.
The sight of Jasmine’s head hanging limp and heavy from the crook of the fisherman’s arm summoned in Trent a feeling that was far worse than being emptied. It mangled his heart. The alpha and omega of all life blazed from the crushed and dripping form that was drooped over the old man’s arms like a boned fish.
With trembling hands the second fisherman removed the last loop of the nylon line that had wound itself around Jasmine’s neck. They laid on her on the sand. Trent scuttled over to her, howling, his movements as alien-looking as a crab’s crawl. He positioned Jasmine’s head and attempted the Kiss of Life.
Even in the cold, thick mire of his dread, Trent was somehow still aware of his contagion. The grinding voice in his head assured him that he would not be saving Jasmine, he would be poisoning her; breathing into her the tainted black particles of the mine shaft and of the gutted bluffs.
He sat up to draw in a fresh breath. Jasmine was still.
An eagle-like scream pierced through the murmurs that were swirling above Trent. All heads turned to see Melissa standing near The Snack Shack, the lifejacket hanging needlessly from her fist. She dropped it and ran forward.
Trent arched down to exhale again. He was abruptly shoved aside.
He remained slumped in the shallows, his clothing growing cold and heavy with the tide, and watched as Melissa did what his toxic self could not.
Jasmine convulsed. Melissa began to weep as she turned her child onto her side and saw water and saliva trickle out of the tiny mouth. Jasmine began to cough, and then to cry. She sounded like a mewling cat. Melissa kissed her sand-encrusted hair and sobbingly urged her to breathe, breathe …
“Thank God,” one of the fishermen said. “Thank God. I’m terribly sorry, ma’am. Your little one, she was starting to stray over to where our lines were cast. We tried to warn your husband. We didn’t see her go under. We didn’t know she’d gotten tangled up right away. I’m just … Thank God, ma’am.” He patted Jasmine’s head delicately, as though she might shatter at his touch.
* * *
Melissa carried her back to the cottage, cooing to her, telling her how brave she was and how none of this was her fault. By the time they reached the back deck Jasmine was no longer crying.
Trent lagged behind, a pack mule burdened with all the cargo that was infinitely less precious than Jasmine.
He was not yet at their yard when Melissa flung open the sliding glass door to announce that she was driving Jasmine to the hospital to be examined. She did not ask Trent to join them.
Their vehicle roared out of the driveway and down the country lane. Trent dropped the beach items on the lawn and shuffled to the cottage’s living room, where he fell into one of the wicker bucket chairs.
It was dusk before Melissa returned. She entered the cottage with a bag from a fast-food chain. She uttered only two words to Trent: “She’s fine.”
She and Jasmine dined in the kitchen. Trent did not join them, but instead went to lie down.
The n
ight deepened. Melissa had obviously opted to sleep next to Jasmine in her bedroom.
When Trent had at long last managed to shake the pieces into a pattern, he understood what had to be done. Still dressed in yesterday’s clothing, he crept to the doorway where he lingered to watch the two most beloved things in the world to him sleeping peacefully.
Melissa had intervened in time. Jasmine hadn’t been poisoned by him. But Trent could not run the risk of such a thing happening again. The indifference of the universe, which had somehow come to house itself in his heart, had to remain his alone. He could not let it leak out to spoil his loved ones.
He slipped outside and began to walk. He tried to jog but found that his black lungs were strained even by the mildest activity. It was coming to a head much quicker than Trent had suspected.
It was still dark when he reached the empty bluffs. Isaac was likely enjoying a well-earned rest somewhere.
He found the chunk of blood-black glass that doubled as both marker and plug. He rolled it free, allowing fresh Darkness to geyser up and out, but only momentarily.
Trent climbed down into the pit and began to rake the cold earth down onto himself. The grains wedged themselves beneath his fingernails and they gloved his palms. He pulled down enough sand to keep him snug. Then he reclined his head and waited.
Pent with folded limbs and arched neck, Trent shut his eyes and tempered his breathing. The sand seemed to be grinding in his ears, chirping in the mad language of birds, or in the secret tongue of the Conqueror Worm.
The longer Trent lingered, the more acute his aerial sense became. In time he was able to see clearly, despite the narrow womb that would not spore him, despite his tightly shut eyes. He had been right. Melissa would never know it, nor, thankfully, would Jasmine, but he was right. Science had delivered Trent into this heart of darkness, but Nature had provided him with the means to save his family from this fate.
Trent’s eyelashes were dewy. He could feel the Dark Matter gathering on his skin like some type of cosmic pollen. It was vacuum-cold, but Trent had already reached the point of acceptance.