Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

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Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors Page 274

by Anthology


  “Clever.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I know. But the thing is, while there were two holes, Dad never got around to cutting the second hole. If the message means something, maybe it’s that he hid something here.”

  By now, he had cleared the door of rotten lumber and debris, and the two of them stumbled into the outhouse. Sure enough, they were staring at a room with a wide bench across the long end. There was a hole on the right side of the bench, and more than enough room for a second hole on the left.

  Allen went straight toward the void on the left. “We always used the one over on the right, so this,” he said, prying up a loose board, “should hold whatever we’re looking for.”

  With a crack, the old board came loose. Rachel held the glowing key next to the hole and peered inside.

  Underneath the bench was a marble slab—a headstone. Rachel gasped.

  Carved into the stone were a name and a date.

  Henry, Jr.

  Oct. 19, 1959

  Rachel turned to look at her uncle. It was difficult to tell in the eerie glow from the key, but he seemed to have lost some of his color.

  “What…?”

  “I don’t know, Rachel. Mom said they were originally going to name me Henry, Jr. Did they have this made, thinking I was dead?” Allen asked.

  A few moments passed silently between them. Then Allen reached down, grabbed the edges of the marble slab, and lifted it aside. Rachel gasped, but Allen wasn’t listening.

  “Time for some answers. If Mom can’t tell me, I’m going to find out for myself.”

  Underneath the marble was a metal box. Gingerly, Allen reached in and pulled it out. It was big enough to be a makeshift casket for a baby.

  “This is awful heavy to have only a dead infant inside,” Allen said. “I’m not sure, but I think this box is made of lead. Should we open it?”

  Rachel briefly thought of every horror movie she’d ever watched, of how she would scream at the protagonists to not open such a box, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to know what was inside. She needed to unravel the half-century-old mystery.

  “Yes.”

  Allen must have felt the same way, as he immediately placed the box on the ground and crouched down to examine it. A simple latch on the front popped open with a little pressure, and Allen flipped up the lid.

  Instantly, the contents of the box illuminated the entire woods, just as the key had lit up Rachel’s room back at the house. But this was no subtle glow—it was a ferocity of brilliance that made the night seem like day. Both Allen and Rachel put their arms up to shield their eyes from the intense light.

  Once her brain was able to cope with the brightness, Rachel realized her hand was vibrating. Or more accurately, the key in her hand was vibrating. She squinted and examined the key closer.

  “Uncle Allen, the key…”

  “Yeah, I was just wondering the same thing,” he said.

  Allen shut his eyes tightly and began exploring the object in the box with his hands. Though the glare was blinding, Rachel chanced a quick glance down, and saw that the object was a case of some kind, and seemed to be made of the same material as the key. It was like a large tube, almost like a small keg of the kind Rachel had seen at parties when she was in college. Allen’s fingers were probing a small hole.

  “Hand me the key,” he said.

  With one arm still covering her eyes, Rachel put the key in Uncle Allen’s hand. And then she chanced another peek into the brightness. She needed to see Allen open the container.

  Allen inserted the key into the hole and turned. The tube opened. Immediately the light began to wane, and their eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness once again.

  The outside of the tube had rotated back, revealing a few items inside. But the thing that Rachel noticed first wasn’t what was there, but what wasn’t. There were no bones.

  Allen moved aside some official-looking papers and uncovered what looked something like a modern-day iPad. “Holy cow,” he whispered. He picked up the tablet as Rachel leaned over to see what he held.

  “Stop!”

  Rachel and her uncle swiveled around to find Grandma Naomi staring them down, an old Rayovac flashlight in her hands, her cotton nightgown fluttering in the evening breeze. Her usually perfect perm was unkempt, and she had a wild look in her eyes.

  “Grandma?” “Mom?” Rachel and Allen both exclaimed simultaneously.

  “You two have no idea what you’re doing. You need to stop. Put it all back and forget you ever found it,” Naomi said, approaching them slowly and determinedly.

  Rachel looked over at Allen. Was this a new side of her grandmother? Had she known about this all along?

  Allen was apparently having none of it. “I’m not going to do that, Mom. All this—Dad’s diary, this creepy headstone—it’s about me. Me! I have a right to know what it’s all about,” he said defiantly. “And if you can’t tell me, I’m going to dig until I can’t dig any more.”

  “Son, listen to me. I know I’m not always myself. The moments when I’m in the present are becoming fewer and fewer, but I do know this: some secrets are best left buried. Leave it be.”

  Rachel knew they could never do that, not now. Too much of the past had been exposed for them to simply tuck it away and pretend they never saw it. Allen deserved to know the truth about himself. Everyone deserved that much.

  “For the last time, you tell me, or I’ll read the diary myself,” Allen said.

  Even in the semidarkness, Rachel could see the rage and frustration boiling up within her uncle. She looked back at her grandmother and felt something new toward this old woman. Respect? Anger? Fear? The grandmother she had always known, who had always been a source of strength and comfort, was not who she appeared to be. And apparently never had been.

  The look on Grandma Naomi’s face would have sent Rachel running for cover when she was little. Now, though, Grandma was frail, no match for her son, who faced her in a silent standoff. In an instant, her hard visage crumbled and her shoulders slumped.

  “Fine. I never thought I would be alive for this, but I suppose you deserve the truth.”

  “And what’s that?” Allen asked, his voice still sharp. “Did I have a twin? Did he die?”

  Laughing strangely, Naomi shook her head. “Nothing as simple as that, I’m afraid.” She sat down on a log and took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. “You see, in 1959, this farm was visited by aliens,” she said.

  Rachel and Allen exchanged a look, unsure what to think.

  “Aliens. You mean illegal immigrants?” Rachel asked. These days migrant workers came north to work on farms throughout the Midwest. She hoped that was all that Naomi had meant. Although she was sure it wasn’t.

  “No, Rachel. I mean aliens. Extra-terrestrials. From another planet,” Naomi said, sighing. In spite of her resistance to telling the truth, doing so was clearly lifting a burden from her. “The first day they came was the day Allen was born. I gave birth at home, and he wasn’t well. They came to our door, offering help.”

  “Help? Why didn’t you take me to the hospital?” Allen asked.

  “We did, actually. Your father was at his wit’s end trying to figure out what to do. We ended up taking the farm truck to the hospital, but you’ve got to realize this was the 1950’s. Technology wasn’t what it is today. The doctor took one look at the baby and told us to go home, hold our son, and wait for him to die.”

  “How horrible,” Rachel whispered. She looked back to Allen and found him held rapt by his mother’s tale. Grandma Naomi, on the other hand, was fighting tears, reliving one of the worst days of her life.

  “So we came home and there were…people here. I’d call them men, but they weren’t. It was almost like something out of a half-remembered dream; they appeared human, but there was just something…off. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.”

  “And you let them help me. That’s the big secret? I was cured by aliens?” Allen asked quietly.<
br />
  “No. Your father wouldn’t let them help.”

  “Then how…?”

  “Henry would have let you die, out of stubbornness, but I snuck out of the house and they met me out here in the woods. I gave you to them. And they cured you—in a way,” Naomi said, her eyes shut to the world around her. “Then they took you away.”

  Rachel was speechless. Was Grandma losing it again?

  “I’m not crazy,” she said, as if reading Rachel’s mind. “All those things I say…they’re real. Or they were real. Just let me finish my story, and then you can decide.”

  “Fine, I was taken to space by aliens. How did I come back then?” Allen asked, his voice more than a little shaky.

  “Oh, Allen, that never happened. The deal was that if we let them cure you, they could keep you. We were devastated. Henry went out and bought a headstone the very next day. That was your name,” she said, motioning to the headstone. “Henry Junior.”

  Allen stared down at the headstone, speechless.

  Grandma Naomi wiped her hair back, taming the wild locks to a small degree. “But the visitors returned that afternoon. We refused to see them, but they kept coming back until we finally came out of the house.”

  “Okay…and what about the part where I lived here for the past fifty-five years?” Allen asked.

  “That’s exactly what they were there for. Their leader—his name was Refl—had claimed to need you, or at least to need someone from our family. Something about our DNA. Back then, neither one of us had heard of DNA, but the aliens were convinced there was something special about our family. They said they wanted to give us something in return, but of course there was nothing they could give me to make up for losing Henry Junior,” Grandma Naomi said. “My grief was too much and I just walked away. I couldn’t bear to hear any intergalactic sales pitch for my son. The son I would never see again.

  “Your father, on the other hand, was intrigued. He talked to Refl, and told him how I felt. A few days went by without our visitors, and then at last they stopped by with an olive branch.” Grandma Naomi looked up into Uncle Allen’s eyes. “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. They took some of Henry Junior’s DNA and made a copy. You’re a clone, Allen.”

  “Wha…seriously?”

  “Would your mother lie to you? Wait—don’t answer that,” Grandma Naomi said. She sat a little taller on the old log, her words giving her life. “I don’t know all the reasons why they didn’t just take Henry Junior and leave, but they didn’t. They gave us you. You might be a clone, but you’re identical to Henry Junior in every way, and I’ve loved you every day of your life. You are my son, Allen, and always have been. We sent Henry Junior off with aliens, and they left us with you. You, and that capsule.”

  The entire time Naomi talked, Rachel had forgotten about the capsule. She looked back to discover the capsule was still faintly glowing. She’d been clutching her T-shirt with a death-grip, and Allen still held the iPad-like device.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head.

  “It is pretty incredible,” Rachel said. “You…a clone, and your brother, or whatever you want to call him…”

  “No,” Allen said, cutting her off. “It isn’t just incredible. It’s impossible. You tell me that ridiculous story and expect me to believe it? If it was true, why didn’t you tell me before? I think maybe you need help, Mom. I’ve been willing to help you stay at the farm, but this is the last straw. I don’t know where all this stuff came from, and I don’t care.” Allen’s voice seethed with anger.

  “Allen, you don’t understand. We couldn’t tell you. Do you really think you could have gone to school and not told anyone where you came from? That you were a clone of someone living on another planet?” Tears streaked down Naomi’s cheeks.

  “It doesn’t matter. Come on Mom, let’s go,” Allen said, stomping over to his mother. “It’s past your bedtime.”

  “No.”

  Allen stopped in his tracks. He had taken his mother by the elbow, but she refused to stand up.

  “You think this was easy on me?” she said. “You think I wanted to keep this secret from everyone, let alone you, for all these years? You think it was a cakewalk taking in a copy of my dying newborn son and raising him as though nothing had happened?”

  “Grandma, no one said any of that,” Rachel offered.

  “Don’t patronize me. I’m not a child. I know I’m not always with it, but I am completely alert right now. More than I have been in years. Maybe it was one last gift the visitors left for me: a chance to set the record straight,” Naomi said, throwing her shoulders back. “So here it is: Allen, I love you. I didn’t give birth to you, but I’ve loved you as if I did. Even though I saw a nearly dead infant each time I picked you up when you were little, I still loved you.”

  She slapped the log, sending up a spray of dirt and debris. Her cheeks were moist with the emotion she’d pent up for decades, but her voice was surprisingly strong. “And yes, I loved Henry Junior as well. Every night when I go to bed, I look out my window, hoping and praying that one day he’ll come back to me. One day he’ll know I loved him, too.”

  Rachel sat down beside her grandmother and wept. She felt how Naomi must’ve felt back then, giving up a child, never to see him again, only to get him back, but not quite the same. As tears obscured her vision, Rachel saw the tablet come to life in Allen’s hand. Allen hadn’t done anything to turn it on—the hand holding the tablet still hung loosely at his side—but for whatever reason, the screen had lit up.

  “Uncle Allen? Grandma?” Rachel pointed at the device. Both Rachel’s uncle and grandmother turned their heads, first toward her and then toward the screen. Allen held it up so that they could all see it clearly.

  A man came into focus. Behind him was a reddish sky with strange, alien buildings. He wore a tight-fitting uniform of some kind, and his face was remarkably similar to Uncle Allen’s, if perhaps a bit smoother and less worn by the Midwestern summers. For whatever reason, the image brought memories of her mother back to Rachel’s thoughts. She might not have her mother anymore, but perhaps somewhere out there, her family was alive and well.

  Before anyone could say anything, the man spoke.

  “Mom?”

  The Control(Novelette)

  by Will Swardstrom

  Originally published by Windrift Books

  There exists for everyone a moment.

  It’s so small, you can almost miss it, but it’s important. Vitally important. In that moment, all can be lost, or all can be saved. It is that moment that stands between victory and anarchy.

  In music, you hear it when the song swells, building bit by bit until eventually the music reaches a cliff. All the instruments drop out. The vocalist may act as a bridge of sorts across the chasm of silence, but the moment is solely dependent on the other musicians. The impetus is on the piano, percussion, and the collection of other instruments to count, to keep a steady but silent beat internally, only to resume playing at precisely the right time.

  Should the band hit the mark, the song sends shivers up your spine. It brings the crowd to their feet, and gives the piece an air of authority it didn’t have before.

  If the musicians miss the landing, there may be no salvation. Their chance is gone, now just part of a disjointed past. Whatever the song sounded like before that infinitesimal break, it now has the sound of ruin. For the audience, the failure of a solitary moment within the song only accelerates their desire for the end. It cannot come soon enough.

  But in that moment, neither has happened. The musicians have not yet succeeded or failed. Both options await them, depending on their internal clocks. The overwhelming joy of everyone rejoining at the perfect moment is balanced with the abject fear of failure.

  It was there, in that moment, where I lived. Always waiting. Always letting my fate be determined by others. Always hovering between a rousing triumph and a crushing catastrophe. I was that momen
t. But my moment was never under my control. I was always under his control. Throughout the moments of my life, though, I became the man I am, and I am not ashamed of it.

  Those were the moments I truly remembered. Over time I learned that names and dates are utterly forgettable. I can’t tell you the name of the man who decided whether or not I deserved to board one of the few lifeboats on the night of April 14, 1912. I don’t remember what day of the week it was when I was chosen to be one of the first to experience the guillotine during the peak of the French Revolution. I have no idea what clothes I was wearing when I was part of the crowd that decided the fate of Jesus of Nazareth.

  What I can tell you is how I felt. For a brief moment, I thought I was the master of life and death. I was not. As was so often the case over the past few millennia, the result turned out to be death, but over and over I was brought back due to a gift. A curse. An experiment.

  Whatever you want to call it, immortality has followed me.

  My name is Bek. I have been alive for nearly five thousand years.

  I live for those moments, but I have come to realize that the truly special moments happen too infrequently. My sense of mortality has grown too thin and I have found I don’t have the same thrill about my life anymore.

  My only wish is to finally die. To experience an end. When I was younger—in my first life—I would have craved a life like this. A life apart from all the rest, where death held no reign over me, and I could live like there was no tomorrow.

  Instead, I simply move from one experience to another. I cannot die as everyone else does.

  My master will not permit it. Instead, I am forced to live. Again and again, my life is forfeit to satisfy his curiosity. For a long time, I thought the irregularity of my existence was a blessing. Instead, I have come to understand that it is a curse. Over and over I have tried to end my life, only to be brought back again and again. Different place, different body, but it’s still me.

 

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