“I know what’s wrong with this kid,” Gary declared. “His daddy’s a druggee. He’s shootin’ up the boy. Brags about it!”
Gary grabbed Nonnie who didn’t resist. “Don’t believe me? The kid’s high. Look at the needle marks…”
He rolled up a sleeve on Nonnie’s coat. A woman screamed, a few men cursed, and the two teenaged girls vomited. Nonnie did indeed have needle marks in the crooks of his elbows. Maggots were corkscrewing up through the holes.
Gary let go, self-consciously rubbing his tainted hands on his jeans.
Roy-Sean’s ears pricked up, hearing whimpering. He cocked his head, suspicious.
“What you got in your pocket, kid?” he wanted to know. He was annoyed at losing his chance to lob his protest through the window. Angry that maybe he’d lost his nerve with his window of opportunity. This little brat was up to something. Making them think they saw things, keeping them sheep so they’d stay glued to the tube. Likely was put up to it by that writer who rigged the TV to begin with. Maggots? Bull. And Corrine had probably just had an hysterical pregnancy, no real baby after all.
Everyone else realized they heard crying coming from the pocket, too.
“That’s my baby sister,” Nonnie explained impassively.
Was that possible with pockets so small?
“Look for yourself,” he offered, spreading his hands away from his body.
“Gotta be a mouse,” somebody said.
“Or a kitten,” another suggested.
People pawed his coat. The pocket seemed endless. A woman dropped her keys into it and they jingled out of sight. The old man dropped his sandwich and couldn’t tell where it landed. The teenaged girls put their nail polish in, and a cowboy threw in about two six packs worth of Lone Star empties. People were throwing stuff in left and right, shouting when it just vanished. A man carried over an eight foot length of demolition site rebar. Nonnie didn’t bat a sloe eye but stood as if frozen, unfeeling. The man stuck one end into the pocket, sliding the rebar in, finally dropping it. Nothing/to nowhere.
“I gotta see this,” a waitress named Tiffy declared, kneeling down. She put her face all the way against the pocket and gazed in.
“Tiffy…” her boyfriend guffawed. “This is gone far enough… You’re makin’ a fool of yourself.”
“Kid’s some kind of magician. Who taught you this neat trick, boy?” the old man wanted to know.
Tiffy poised, head cocked against the hip of the child. She began to moan, rocking on kneeposts. She fell back, eyes rolling up to whites, pupils speckled as if reflecting the burn-out of Fourth of July fireworks.
Roy-Sean pulled the grenade from his pocket. People shouted and ran, the waitress’s boyfriend grabbing her by one arm to drag her across the asphalt street.
Roy-Sean leered. “Let’s see that pocket make this vanish.”
He pulled the pin and dropped it down. He ran a short distance, counting seconds, then threw himself headfirst into the dirt. The kid didn’t move. He didn’t detonate. He didn’t come apart to prove flesh and bone after all. There was a small explosion far up in the sky and some of what they had thrown into the pocket began to rain down in pieces.
Slivers of steel rebar, splinters of keys, rocks split into grapeshot, nail polish red as blood. Nonnie let it hit him without being injured. When the falling objects stopped, those who hadn’t fled home screaming crawled back to stare at him. He turned and there was movement at his coattails that they at first took to be smoke but turned out to be small black birds. Or were they moths? There were no feathers and the tails curled into question marks over their backs.
Nonnie pointed toward the sky.
“Oh, yeah. That’s who stole my soul.”
««—»»
Primetime news shows had specials on THE WATCHERS. Cable news followed the phenomena closely as if it were a war. In a couple of days—swift as a plague—the screen filled with footage of people staring at the sky, faces twisted into hideous masks of horror. No one knew what they were watching. The expressions were hardened, like stone, eyes bulging and mouths stretched back into hissing grimaces of primal terror. They were paralyzed, unable to move, not ever looking away. No screams were heard. At most would be a minor gasp as air sucked into lungs. Then it didn’t seem to be breathed out again.
It affected thousands of people within hours. Soon there were millions of watchers across the globe.
Apparently not everyone could see it. One in every six or seven. It happened night or day, going down the street, walking across a field, washing hair in the river to then raise the head and shake the water out while gazing up. They couldn’t be taken away, the bodies rigid as if they’d grown roots.
Governments were frantic as populations panicked.
Don’t Look Up! was shouted through loud speakers, repeated over the radio, flashed in bold letters on the television.
“So what are you going to do now?” a reporter asked the head of a team sent to a large group of watchers in New York’s Central Park.
“We’re going to administer injections of antipsychotic drugs,” replied the doctor-in-charge with a feigned smile of confidence.
Cameras showed needles penetrating flesh. Panned on rigor faces. Revealed not even a blink. In the peripheral of onlookers was a hollow-eyed man wearing a placard which read The End Of The World Is Night.
Iraq In efforts to control mass hysteria in Tehran, soldiers machine-gunned anyone in statue-pose staring at the sky: men, women, children. About eight thousand were listed as dead so far. Rumors were that the bodies didn’t collapse. This couldn’t be substantiated since no one was able to smuggle film of the atrocity out of the country.
Malaysia Tens of thousands of helpless citizens in Kuala Lumpur were hacked to pieces by frightened neighbors wielding machetes. Severed limbs were reputed not to fall but apparently remained up in the air in the pattern of human bodies. Terrified, many killers ran off into jungles or threw themselves into the ocean. The single video obtained of this event was grainy, obviously held by a badly shaken cameraman. One channel showed it in a special. The eerie—grisly—sight of dismembered and disembodied human remains suspended in red, steaming tropical air was questioned by most experts, who thought it about as valid as the so-called alien autopsy of years back.
Commercial Panning of street full of watchers, chins uplifted, all craning to stare upward.
Voiceover: “Stuck with a stiff neck?”
Flash to name: BREYMER CHIROPRACTIC CENTERS.
Washington A teenager in Olympia was arrested on a charge of mass murder after he attacked watchers at a mall with a large knife. He claimed he got the idea from the Malaysian tape, wanting to prove it was possible. Credited as being the first American copycat of watcher-related crimes, he had a friend present with a camera who made an excellent record of parts hanging in the air, severed heads turned up to stare at the sky.
««—»»
Gellie watched the guard walk past her cell. She frowned, burn scars pulling at her cheeks.
She waited until the guard was at the end of the long row and then she whispered to her cellmate, “Hey, have you noticed anythin’ unusual?”
Janine muttered back, “Like?”
The keloids of Gellie’s lips twisted. “The guards have been on duty a long time. The same ones showed up for the evenin’ shift, stayed for the night shift, and are still here for the day shift.”
“Thought they was lookin’ tired,” Janine replied with a smirk. “Others probably called in sick and are hunkered in NRA survivalist forts, huggin’ stashes of rifles and crates of Oreos.”
A masculine voice announced, “Stand back from the doors. Get ready to form a line to be taken to supper.”
Women stood at attention behind the bars. The doors slid open.
“Remember what you were told this mornin’. Once outside between the buildings do not look up. Repeat, do not look up,” the guard ordered, shadows under his eyes.
The prisoners cooperated. Many had
televisions in their cells and had seen the news reports. Nobody wanted to end up like that. It was bad enough to be incarcerated in a prison but nobody wanted the prison to be their own body. Besides, if it even looked as if someone was going to sneak a peek, a guard hit them on the head with a baton.
“You gonna put us in a shelter when that Prophet Cloud hits?” Janine asked.
“Afraid of a little dust? And you from West Texas!” said another prisoner named Santiaga.
Janine grinned. “Yeah, and I didn’t suffocate my cheatin’ husband with that pillow. It was good ol’ Texas dust.”
“Whole world’s gonna turn to stone—except for those in prison because we weren’t allowed to look up,” added a Vietnamese teenager named Mai. “We’re gonna get with guys at the Uvalde Unit and repopulate the planet.”
Janine guffawed. “There’s a plan. You done killed two babies of yer own!”
“Shut up!” snapped a guard. “Just move along to the mess hall.”
“Gettin’ cranky after twenty-four hours duty, Dale?” Santiaga crooned.
A helicopter buzzed overhead. Gellie couldn’t help a glance up as the sound of blades cut the air. She could see it was a Channel 4 News chopper, probably flying over the correctional facility hoping for a breaking story on hundreds of liars and killers and thieves oh my, with fossilized aspects of abject terror turned grimly heavenward.
There was a painful thump on the back of Gellie’s skull as a masculine voice yelled, “Don’t—Look—Up, dammit!”
The helicopter’s steady din suddenly altered. There was a piercing engine whine and the blades lost their rhythm. The chopper began to spin. Maybe the pilot had taken a gander at too much sky.
Now everybody looked, startled as the helicopter plummeted, blades whirring unevenly as the chopper caromed in a 45 degree angle descent. Even the guards jerked their heads up, unable to keep from it with the sight of the helicopter falling toward them.
Guards and inmates alike gasped as their faces contorted. Some stayed in this Halloween-masked position, unable to move, having glimpsed something far away. A few froze just because the vision of the crashing chopper scared the willpower out of them. Many finally broke rank, running before the helicopter struck the main building of cellblocks and exploded.
Gellie was one who ran. She stopped, hearing screams from those trapped in their cells. She saw Janine on the ground, a piece of blown-out wall having crushed her back and skull. She saw Santiaga staring fixedly at the blank, late blue heaven, too soon for stars. It was weird but even Santaiga’s sweat seemed frozen, like zircons sprinkled on the brow, dimestore rhinestones freckling cheeks. The perspiration didn’t run, drip, or dry.
Gellie watched Mai slip the pistol out of a paralyzed guard’s holster and shoot him in the head with it. Then she turned and shot an inmate in the face.
“Hey!” Mai laughed. “They really don’t fall down! Where can I get me a big knife? I got another theory I wanna test.”
Gellie headed for the fence.
A few guards who apparently didn’t have ‘the watcher sight’ charged from the mess hall, called for fleeing inmates to halt, and began opening fire on those who kept going. A bullet grazed Gellie’s skull, near where she’d been thumped a few minutes before. She fell face down, sure she’d black out. She saw blistered stars with hot liquid centers, magnitudes flaring, about to burst. Dazed, she climbed back to her feet and staggered forward, spitting dirt out of her mouth.
Other prisoners took weapons from watcher guards and shot back. Injured women—many burned, others with broken bones showing through flesh—crawled out of the ruined prison building. There was a second explosion. Gellie wanted to stop and help but she knew this was her only opportunity to get home to her son.
««—»»
Gellie ran in spurts, about as much as her legs would let her. The legs had been burned almost a year before but she had almost full use of them back, thanks to a lot of physical therapy. She thought about the women who were burned back there and wondered if there was going to be anyone around to help them. She knew what it would be like for them as they faced mirrors, trying to learn to live with a nightmarish version of themselves.
The blood had dried where the bullet creased her skull. There were gouges on her hands and legs from climbing the fence. It made her sick to recall it, surrounded by other women who had been climbing when they’d looked up, seen whatever the hell was up there and stiffened, the weight of their bodies sagging them down into poses of distorted crucifixion on the barbed wire.
She thought of a saying that Zen Buddhists had. That a finger was needed to point at the moon, but that we shouldn’t trouble ourselves with the finger once the moon has been recognized.
She held up a bleeding digit and examined it in in the twilight.
“Hey, is there anythin’ up there?” she asked it.
It didn’t move like the needle to a compass, pointed out no spoiled lunar faces, no North Stars, no beacons for an unspeakable dread colored like a cosmic crème de menthe in chili vomit.
A vintage convertible MGB was crashed into a tree, upside-down, tires still spinning in a crooked and desultory fashion. The driver had half a face left but it was upturned. The single remaining eye was cocked toward the sky, the empty socket just as vigilant.
Further down the road was a man standing beside his car, staring up, blanked out in all but the twisted, fossilized tremor of the face. Gellie touched his shoulder, almost expecting him to speak, to scream perhaps. But he didn’t move.
“I’m sorry, Mister. I’m afraid I’m goin’ to have to steal your car,” she said softly. “Good luck.”
The keys were in it and it was running. Her knuckles were white on the wheel, the radio tuned to some religious station and a freaking evangelist was orating in an overblown style about the Prophet Cloud.
“Gonna come with the dawn! Are you right with your Lord? Are you ready? Let that Dr. Prophet put his ear to his telescope and he’ll hear the trumpet of Gabriel! Be out at sunrise, folks, and open your arms to the host of angels! God is coming down! I say—I say! God is COMING DOWN!”
That last bit made him sound cartoonish, like Foghorn Leghorn.
It was only an hour’s drive to Garza. Passing through some little farm burg named Memory Gellie noticed the water tower. There was a person who had climbed the ladder that went up the side and swung onto the narrow catwalk near the top. Their head was tilted back and the body leaned away slightly, precariously over the edge. She couldn’t tell how they were holding on for their arms were lifted into the air. They might have originally gone up to spray paint their names for a dubious posterity and then slipped. Or they might have intended suicide. About to jump off, something had caused them to glance up, maybe offering a final prayer for forgiveness. (If you can come down, Lord, so can I. Down DOWN DOWN!) The angle of the body was untenable but they didn’t fall. The proper laws of gravity decreed they must but there they were, poised for questionable flight.
Gellie’s eyes popped and she braked, tires squealing on worn asphalt. She waited for the person to descend, like the helicopter had—waiting for them to do what objects did when the earth called them down. Yet the body stayed suspended, eyes looking at something. But what?
Gellie drove away. Eventually she reached Garza. She went up the main drag where she had to stop because there were too many watchers in the street. Getting out of the car, she walked between rows of them, nauseous to see the distorted countenances of folks she knew. She poked a man in the stomach to see if he’d jump. It was said these folks didn’t move at all but she saw a slight bobble in the eyes. She even stuck a finger in a woman’s eye to see if she’d blink. A few tears popped out, unusually bright, fractious with a liquid jade shot through with quicksilver. These trailed down the immobile cheek like notes in the margin alongside a central equation, the answer to which would be some devastating fission.
Gellie trembled, whispering, “The Chaos that can be spoken is not Chaos
,” paraphrasing a quote about the Tao.
Gellie followed their gazes, persistently trying to see, disappointed when she saw nothing unusual. There was only the shimmer from the approaching cloud, now fully blanketing the horizon. Yet this was not where the watchers were focused.
Her body hurt, from the bullet and falling face down in the dirt and running on her scarred legs and being torn up from the barbed wire. Everywhere she’d been burned felt searing hot again, tight as if shrink-wrapped. She thought it might be comforting to be frozen hard/cold, to have the mind gone.
“No, these folks don’t seem relieved.”
What was up there? Gellie considered Newtonian law, gravity, classical mechanics, solid bodies. But what if it was a mistake to apply such restricted standards to this mystery? What if she needed to think of nouveau mechanics, windows of space, bodies of time?
Einstein once said, “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
Gellie saw a guy moving. Was one of the watchers coming out of it? She hurried up to him, realizing he was talking to himself.
The man saw her and flinched, about to take flight or launch an attack on her. But he was only shocked to see her.
“Gellie? What are you doin’ here? How did you get out of prison?”
“Tom?” Gellie recognized her ex-husband. She stalked up to him and grabbed him by the lapels. “What have you been doin’ to Nonnie?”
Tom winced at the sound of their son’s name. He shut his eyes tightly for a moment as if trying not to think about it.
“There’s somethin’ wrong with the kid. He’s crawlin’ with bugs and other filth—just all of a sudden. He looks like some kinda zombie but he isn’t one of them,” Tom stammered, gesturing to the watchers. “No, he’s somethin’ else… He came up to me while I was talkin’ to Bud Chambers and Brian Daily. He asked ‘Are you the one you stole my soul?’ Then the li’l bastard pointed to the sky ’til both Bud and Brian looked up. It was like they’d seen the Medusa. I almost looked up, too. Now I keep my head down all the time, talkin’ to myself, remindin’ myself not to look up, no matter what.”
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