by Jay Brushett
Brad’s back broke the surface, closer to the edge of the pool. Then his shoulders were out, and the back of his head until, finally, his face was free. He sucked air deep into his lungs.
His arms were halfway out of the dirty water but his hands, and what they carried, were still hidden. He was hunched over, struggling to get it, whatever it was, out of the pool. He paused a moment, resting, letting his breath return to normal.
Then he continued.
An object rose out of the water. Jimmy thought it was a stone at first, as muddy water streamed off its smooth edges. Rhonda thought it looked more like an egg, though that was only due to its whitish colour. It was rounder than an egg. Then Brad’s hands broke the surface and they could see the entire object. As the last dead leaf slid from it they could see it was pure white. And it wasn’t perfectly round. Brad’s left hand was flat against the large orb’s side, but his right hand grasped a smaller orb, a nodule that grew from the side of the larger one. They were one object and yet they seemed more like fitting puzzle pieces than a united whole.
“What is it?” Rhonda asked.
“How should I know?” Brad asked.
“Is it a ball?” Jimmy asked.
“No, too heavy, and it has this other thing on the side,” Brad said.
He stood erect now, near the edge of the pool, near Jimmy but with his back to him, facing Rhonda. When retrieving the object from the bottom of the pool Brad had appeared to struggle, but now it didn’t seem to offer him much trouble. He still grasped it with both hands — it wasn’t light, but manageable. It was heavier than its size would have indicated. The larger orb was about the size of a basketball, while the smaller one was not quite as large as a baseball.
“And… it’s weird, ” Brad said. Blinking the last of the water and debris from his eyes he could see the surface of the object clearly now.
“Weird?” Rhonda asked.
Brad ignored her question, engrossed in his study of the object. He noticed that it wasn’t perfectly white. No, there were gradations of white, slight off-white areas that looked like they could have been drawings. Or letters. Or both. And — was he mistaken? — they shifted and swirled, forming new patterns. It must have been a trick of the light. Yet the little sunlight that did fall on it appeared to get swallowed, not reflected at all. It didn’t glint or shine. But it was beautiful, entrancing.
And it spoke to him.
“Brad?” Rhonda asked. She didn’t look at him though, she looked above him, beyond him, beyond Jimmy too. Her eyes were wide. “Jimmy? Guys?”
There was a crack behind Jimmy as a branch snapped. Jimmy turned and saw Larry lumbering toward them. “Brad, we’ve gotta go,” he said.
There was no answer and Brad made no movement. None. Jimmy, retreating, joined Rhonda on the opposite side of the pool. They both held their breath, waiting to see what would happen. The mysterious object was momentarily forgotten.
“Scared stiff, twerp?” Larry asked, stopping at the edge of the pool, behind and above Brad. He laughed as he saw the state that Brad was in, saw the water and mud glistening in the small boy’s hair and on his soaked clothes. And Brad was still standing waist-deep in dirty water. “Oh dear, had a little accident, did we?” Larry laughed again, happy with himself.
He couldn’t see Brad’s face. He couldn’t see that Brad made no reaction, had not heard the laughter nor what Larry had said.
Larry tossed aside his baseball bat. He leaned down, roughly grabbed Brad under his armpits and hoisted him from the water. The larger boy swung Brad like a rag doll and sent him tumbling to the ground beyond the pool.
Watching, Rhonda and Jimmy winced, wanting to help but knowing they could do little.
Brad still clutched the object, exactly as he had, though he now lay sprawled on his side.
Larry saw the white orbs then. “What is that?”
Squatting he reached out with both hands to grab the larger white sphere, to pry it from Brad’s hands. Brad still didn’t notice, was still somewhere else. Larry’s hands made contact with the whitish surface, palms and fingers grasping it. Larry’s eyes became unfocused and he, too, stared at nothing.
Inside his head he screamed. Outside there was complete silence and stillness.
Brad screamed then, breaking the quiet, and jerked hard to his right. As he twisted the small orb twisted too and detached from the larger one, staying in his hand.
The basketball-sized sphere, no longer white, now a pulsing blue, fell backward with Larry as he toppled over, unbalanced. He landed on his side with a thud and the orb slipped from his grip and went bouncing along the ground. Its pulsating blue form rolled over the lip of the pool and disappeared beneath the muddy water.
Jimmy, with Rhonda close behind, came around the pool to Brad’s side. Brad lay, propped up on his elbows, his hand still closed around the smaller orb, looking dazed but okay.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Later,” Jimmy said. He retrieved Brad’s soggy shoe and handed it to him. The boy put it on, screwing up his face with disgust at the squoort sound it made.
Jimmy and Rhonda helped Brad to his feet. Glancing over his shoulder Jimmy saw Larry stirring, rubbing his head. “Come on!”
Sopping wet still, Brad followed the other two out of the clearing and back through the trees. He turned his right hand over and opened his fingers to look at the strange object.
All he saw was a smaller than normal baseball, scuffed leather woven together with red thread.
He shoved the oddly-sized ball into his pants pocket and ran, squishing in his wet Reeboks, to keep up with his friends.
Back in the clearing next to the pool, unheard by the others, Larry sat up and called out to no one in particular. “The stars. There are so many. So many stars. So many…”
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IT WAS ALIVE AGAIN. It was on The Blue Green.
Yet, it could not be sure of anything else. Things were different for it now, confused.
But it had made contact, The Bridge had detached and The Marker was injected. The Process had begun. That was all that mattered; that was its purpose.
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LARRY STOOD AND STARTED to make his way back to the playground. The sun was further along in the sky than he thought it should be. Hadn’t he only been sitting there, dazed, a few minutes? His stiff muscles agreed with the sun.
The other kids had left him there, alone. But he couldn’t blame them, he had chased them, scared them. That reminded him of his baseball bat, which still sat on the mossy ground next to the pool in the clearing. It didn’t matter. It was only a baseball bat. He realized that he didn’t like hitting rocks that much anyway. He just liked watching the arcs that the stones took through the air.
The playground was empty when he arrived there. A gentle breeze pushed the swings back and forth, the squeak of the chains the only sound. The steady gurgling of the river replaced that sound as Larry descended the hill. He started following the trail back to the road.
He had never realized how much things made noise, had never stopped to appreciate it. It was beautiful, magical even. As were the patterns the water in the river made as it passed over and weaved around the stones in its path. As was the yellow-orange glow that danced along the surface of the moving water.
Larry stopped, admiring all of this. He had never done that in his life, admire something, look at it for the inherent beauty it contained. For some reason the simple miracle of life had never dawned on him.
He continued, across the brook, down the trail and back to the road. Here and there he stopped to inspect a flower or to gaze for minutes at a stone, admiring its roughness or smoothness.
The world was alive, pulsating. Pulsating like…
At the road he turned left, the opposite way from which the other three kids would have turned. Any other day he would have been home in a few minutes, but
this evening it took him closer to half an hour. Each vehicle that passed was intriguing, human ingenuity forged in steel and glass. Each seagull or crow a mystery of biology that needed study.
Larry walked into his driveway — his dad’s car wasn’t home yet, that was good — and into the small mobile home. The stench of deep-fried oil hung in the air. That was nothing new, but the heaviness of it occurred to him for the first time. The house was empty except for him, his mother having left several years ago. Larry hardly remembered her.
His dad wouldn’t be home until late, it was Saturday. Larry rarely saw him on weekends, not in a sensible state anyway. Most Sunday mornings Larry would clean up a little. Often that would involve wiping up a pool of sour vomit next to the couch while his dad slept it off, as the man often put it.
Larry made himself a sandwich and sat on the couch. He ate it and made himself another. He was still hungry. The feeling subsided after a third sandwich.
The TV sat, silent and dark across from the couch. Any other day it would have been on and he would have lost himself in the world of baseball or some sitcom like Webster or The Facts of Life. But that didn’t appeal to him then. He sat and stared out the window at the failing light, at the way the clouds moved.
When it was too dark he moved outside, onto the small stoop, leaving the light over the door off. He planted himself there and lay back, looking up into the dark sky. Why did he do this? He couldn’t have said but he knew it wasn’t right, or at least it was not something he had ever done before.
Above him, a canopy of lights resolved. There were only a few at first. Then more and more and more; the stars lit up the night sky. They appeared all white at first, but Larry could have sworn some were tinted with blue or yellow. As the blackness deepened his attention increased.
He felt weird. He felt alive, to be sure, but strange, confused. He had never stopped to look, to lose himself in the intricacies of the universe. It was so large, so much beyond him, beyond everything he had known in the small mobile home. And yet it had been there, all this time, waiting for him to look up.
And now he did. He saw it.
No, he felt it.
School lessons he hadn’t known he retained came back to him then. The Earth was spinning. The Earth was going around the sun, at tremendous speeds. He could have sworn he felt it moving beneath him, could feel the celestial tug of gravity.
Above him the stars were brighter than ever, beacons, calling to him. The ribbon of the Milky Way — a galaxy, Larry remembered — arced from horizon to horizon, dense with thousands of stars. It was like a road to the heavens.
Something clicked in Larry’s mind then. He pulled himself up onto his elbows and cocked his head.
He stood and went to his room. There he stopped in front of a wall, staring at it. He didn’t see the posters — a Lamborghini Countach, Run-DMC, and the 1986 roster of the Toronto Blue Jays — he only saw the blank, inviting white surface underneath. He ripped the posters down, shredding them into several pieces as he did so. He was hardly aware of doing it. Soon the wall was empty.
He found a mechanical pencil in his school bag.
In the lower left corner of the bare wall, on his hands and knees, he drew a circle. Not a wobbly, tentative ellipse, no, a perfect circle, as if drawn with a compass. He traced a line from it with his finger, coming to a stop several centimetres away. There he drew another perfect circle. Again, his finger moved and, again, he drew another circle. Again and again he repeated the process.
Hours later, his wall now covered in an uneven pattern — and it was a pattern — he passed out on his bed.
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BRAD WAS SLEEPING.
He had arrived home soaking wet and covered in mud, a story on his lips about slipping down the bank into the river. With his face already wet he had even been able to fake tears. He threw in whimpering for good measure.
His mother bought the act but had still worried about him. She had made him strip on the doorstep, strip right down to nothing. Even his Real Ghostbusters underwear had sat atop the pile of discarded clothing. Standing on the front stoop, his face red from embarrassment and his wet skin chilled by the late afternoon air, he had remembered the ball. It was in his pants pocket. Before his mother had shuffled him off to the bathtub, he managed to retrieve it and had placed it on the top of his dresser.
It sat there still, a couple metres from where he slept.
A baseball. For that was what it was now, even if smaller than a regular one.
And even Brad, as he crawled into bed, was starting to believe that’s what it was. It had been stuck to some old piece of junk in the dirty pool, that was all. And it had come loose when he had tussled with Larry. That was all. It was easier that way. Easier to forget the swirling, shifting shapes that had passed over the surface of the object.
Brad opened his eyes.
He looked to the ball, could see it in the glow of his nightlight. It was no longer a baseball. It was white again, and smooth.
Tossing back the bedsheets he stood and walked to the dresser. He stopped and looked at the orb. Once again shapes and symbols washed over it, even, it seemed, through it.
Brad picked it up.
Several minutes passed as he held it, unmoving.
It was early Sunday morning; his parents and brother were sleeping. His mother’s deep snores reached even his room. The snoring was the only sound in the house aside from the occasional cutting in and out of the refrigerator.
Brad’s eyes were still open, though he didn’t see. He wasn’t there. And yet he started walking. He crossed the room, opened the door, walked down the hallway, down the stairs and stopped at the front door.
Brad unlocked and opened the door with one hand, while his other held the white orb. The early morning greeted him with half-light, unseen; cool air, unfelt; and birdsong, unheard.
His bare feet stepped across the threshold. Wearing only Transformers PJs he walked down the stairs — the door wide open behind him — down the gravel walkway and along the side of the house. Soon, the semi-darkness swallowed him.
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JUNE 20, 1988
Bradley has been missing more than a full day now.
I can’t imagine my little boy all alone out there. In some ways though I hope he is alone and not in the clutches of some monster.
Did he leave on his own? Were we bad parents? I don’t think so. We go to church every week, we’re good people.
Anyway, the police are looking for him, and others, neighbours and stuff. They’re all searching, all the time.
We’ll find him. We have to.
Chapter 2
THE PLANE TOUCHED DOWN a few minutes after noon local time. As it taxied across the tarmac to the gate, Jimmy heard the familiar cellular telephones may now be used recording. He retrieved his phone and switched it from airplane mode.
He yawned and stretched, rubbing the stubble on his chin and jawline.
Finally, the 3G network icon displayed in the upper left corner of the screen. He tapped on the email app to open it.
Nothing. That was good. Becky hadn’t written, hadn’t thrown him another curve-ball. With luck, she would sign the papers today, tomorrow at the latest. Signed, sealed, delivered, I’m no longer yours.
Half an hour later Jimmy was in a rental car driving away from the airport. A few minutes after that he was on the Trans-Canada Highway, heading out of the city. Two pit-stops and five hours more and he pulled up outside a hotel.
Walking across the parking lot he breathed deep. He looked around, trying to see if something, anything about the place seemed familiar. All he knew was that it was different. He had spent the best part of the last twenty-four years in Vancouver, thousands of miles away. Of course, it was different.
The front desk attendant, Martin according to his name tag, was young. He looked like he was in his late twenties, a
good ten years younger than Jimmy.
“Good evening, sir. Do you have a reservation?” he asked, smiling that mandatory hospitality industry smile.
“Yes. James Noonan.”
Martin consulted an iPad, affixed to a stand, humming and hawing a moment. “Yes, here we are, Mr. Noonan. I’ll just need your credit card to verify the reservation. Of course, you can pay however you like when you check out.”
Jimmy nodded and handed over his card.
“Just yourself?”
“That’s right,” Jimmy said. He was getting used to the idea of it now, being alone.
“And you’ll be staying seven nights?”
“Yes.”
Martin tapped away on the iPad, setting everything up. As he worked he made small talk. “In town on business?”
“No, just visiting.”
“Are you from here? There are a lot of Noonans in this area.”
“I did grow up here, yes,” Jimmy answered.
He remembered the small-town nosiness that his mother had been happy to get away from. She had been hesitant to move to such a small place, but it was where Jimmy’s father had been from. There had been work here too, then, and so that was that. But it was with relief that she went back to Vancouver, to a proper city. Even Jimmy’s dad grew to like it after a while. And Jimmy loved it. Right from the start. Loved the trains and the buildings that reached high into the sky. But it was time for a change.
“Do you know Ed Noonan, by chance?” Martin asked, looking up again from his tapping. “He’s my uncle.”
“No, I’m afraid not.” Jimmy knew he had family in town, all his father’s family. All of them. Not a single one had left that he was aware of, well, except for his dad of course. But he didn’t know that family, hadn’t seen any of them in years. He was okay with that. Maybe, in time, he would approach them. In time. Maybe. “I’ve been away a long time.”