Tesseracts Seventeen

by Colleen Anderson

  I couldn’t believe my luck. I’d shopped, made a long stop at the side of the road, found nothing untoward inside the house, put away groceries, and avoided any encounters. And Baby slept through it all.

  I carried Baby upstairs to her crib, wondering if I should wake her. I wanted to give her a bath, but hadn’t given her one since the day I brought her home. If she slipped under the water I’d never forgive myself. Baby wouldn’t sleep tonight after this long nap. When I got to the nursery I saw that my luck had run out.

  The Wall was there.

  Waiting.

  It had appeared in my second trimester and had looked like nothing more than a simple shadow. I paid it no attention until the day after I had Baby’s room painted light green. That was when I truly noticed it.

  It was only three meters in length and half as high as a regular wall. It was just a shade darker than any of the other walls in the room— no matter which room it chose to appear in. Then there were the catlike eyes that reflected a dark green glow, but worse yet were the small clawed paws that it shuffled and scraped along the floor as it pulled its long flat serpentine form from place to place.

  It re-appeared the day I brought Baby home. I think the Wall had hidden in the basement. As I laid her down it moved opposite her crib, growing denser, thicker and darker in hue.

  This wasn’t the first time that I had seen the Wall.

  At twelve years old, on hot summer days I would sit in the garage to stay cool and be alone. One afternoon I heard a soft rustle and shuffling from under my dad’s tool bench. I looked, thinking it was a rat or an open air duct. That’s when I first saw it. My mother had mentioned it in one of the many stories she told before bedtime.

  “Watch for the Wall,” she had warned. “It tried to take you once, when you were small.”

  I had always thought it a fairy tale.

  The Wall was smaller that day in the garage, but it was still big enough to scare me. It hid, long and flat like a dark stain tucked beneath my father’s workbench. A mother-rat and her nest of babies curled near to it. The rat’s soft movements must have excited it because a small area of the Wall liquefied into an opening and it swallowed some of the rats whole, vacuuming up the bodies like dirt from the floor.

  Then the Wall became transparent. I was terrified by what I saw beyond its membrane. A hellish land of fire and a creeping demon with the head of a monkey and alligator jaws. I watched anxiously as the Wall pulled each hairless baby rat into that place on the other side, and the demonic creature devoured them. Its long sticky froglike tongue lashed around searching for the mother rat. She screamed as the demon bit down.

  The beast slunk away and the Wall returned to its former density.

  The narrow green eyes stared at me, never blinking. I was frozen with terror as I watched the Wall’s membrane bulge in one spot; where the rats had gone through. I smelled a choking odor like car oil.

  The Wall approached me, shuffling across the garage floor. It stepped on a plastic bag and dragged it along under its feet.

  I tried to run, but fear paralyzed me.

  The Wall drew nearer.

  It brushed against my hand with its horrible, black liquid mouth opened wide. I wanted to vomit. The Wall’s long whiplike tongue unrolled and struck at me. The disgusting tongue hit my yellow dress leaving a black stain, ruining it. It was then that I finally ran.

  Later, I found the remains of the regurgitated rats inside sandwich bags, in the lettuce crisper, soaked bits of fur, bones and tail, sloshing in brown sludge with white bits of cheese that smelled like sour feet.

  Now the Wall was in Baby’s room.

  I thought it might have moved closer to the crib, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I blearily tried to keep my eyes open. I never should have put Baby in the crib knowing the Wall was right there. Once it entered a room there was no moving it. It would have to creep away on its own. I thought Baby would be fine as long as she didn’t touch the membrane, and she wouldn’t because she was such a good baby and wasn’t rolling over yet.

  I recalled one day when I had left Baby in her carriage in the yard, to soak up some sunshine. The neighbor’s boy had rabbits that he kept in chicken wire cages in the backyard. By the end of the summer the smell of rancid bunny turds lingered in the August heat. I had grown sick of the long-eared pests and their reek had tormented Baby, only a month old. She cried loudly and often.

  The Wall crept slowly from the inside of my house into my backyard. Then it pressed itself up against the fence, looking like shade. It was the perfect camouflage, but the giveaway was its tiny, clawed feet and blinking eyes; every once in awhile its tongue would whip out, hitting the ground with a thwack, thwack, thwack.

  I crept out and opened the gate between our yards and released the boy’s rabbits. They hopped free but only for a moment; then they headed for the warm, dark Wall, as if an invisible force pulled them.

  I grabbed Baby from her carriage and took her inside. I watched from Baby’s window. The bunnies nuzzled into the liquid mouth that spilled over them, and the tongue, like an oily cord, grabbed them and pulled them to the other side. I was so excited to see the baby bunnies go away that I sat Baby up at the window so she could see, too.

  Yet, like the regurgitated rats, those rabbits also came back.

  I was raking leaves in the yard when I found them under my boxwood hedges, inside green plastic bags, tiny furry balls of decay.

  In the nursery, I tucked Baby as far away from that dreadful, awful Wall as possible. I laid her on her back, the monitor close so I would hear her every breath on all the speakers in the house. I’d only leave her for a moment.

  I returned to the garage where I’d seen a box of empty wine bottles. Someone had forgotten to take them to recycling. While I was upset that the bottles were still there, at the same time I felt a deep sense of relief. I pulled the box from the corner, checked them all for wine, but they’d been rinsed clean.

  I backed the van out into the driveway. My neighbor saw me and waved hello. I waved back, but remembered the time she’d left her stupid Pomeranian in the yard to bark all day, while she was out, and Baby got no sleep. After barking all afternoon, I figured the dog might be hungry, so I offered the creature a few biscuits. My little trail of biscuit crumbs led him right to the Wall.

  The next weekend teenagers found an abandoned plastic garbage bag in a fallow field. When they emptied it they found the soupy remains of a small dog. The Wall loved to regurgitate.

  The garage was quiet, cool, and Baby’s soft breaths reached me through the monitor, a reassurance that she was fine. If only the Wall hadn’t settled in her room. Its presence made me numb. Frustrated by its unalterable presence, I slid a wine bottle out of the box. I threw it, watched it rotate before it smashed against the cement floor of the garage. I pitched another bottle, relishing in its complete obliteration as it made contact with the floor. It was the noise from the smashing bottles that prevented me from hearing Baby roll over and touch the Wall.

  After Baby disappeared I linked up with a postpartum group. We met once a week and for the first several meetings I just sat there, silent, staring.

  Everyone in the postpartum group saw all kinds of horrible things. I considered myself luckier than the rest of them. I only ever saw the Wall.

  After a few weeks of hearing their terrible stories, and for the first time since Baby’s disappearance, I felt safe enough to talk about the existence of that hideous barrier.

  I was surprised by the group’s supportive reaction. My group leader, Anne, told us that she’d lost her second child to the Wall.

  “I was rocking Sidra,” Anne said. “I’d just changed her and given her a bottle. She lay awake in my lap and stared over my shoulder. I turned and saw this thing had crept into the nursery, sneaking in like a shadowy lizard. The Wall
began to liquefy and turn transparent, right by Sidra. When the fucking Wall turned black again, my baby was gone.”

  No one blinked. I wanted to ask her how she carried on, but the words buzzed liked a bad radio station inside my head. After Anne told her story I decided then and there I wanted to know everything possible about the Wall, and I planned to stop sitting around crying, and kick its butt.

  I researched for several months only to discover not much more than I already knew. Then one night Anne called and told me that she knew a way to get through the Wall. For a time she had practiced a dreaming technique that she’d discovered through meditation. She warned me not to expect to find Baby quickly, or spend too much time there on the other side. I’d get trapped like she nearly did, but she was willing to help me. After many sessions with Anne, I finally was ready to go find Baby.

  I went into Baby’s room. I touched her blanket. I smelled the powder I had used to change her. I shook her favorite rattle. I cried at the rabbits and mice dancing on the bedroom wall.

  Two nights later I dreamed lucidly about the Wall, alive and very, very aware of me. The steady beat of a drum grew closer. Just when I thought I’d found the place where the drumming was coming from, I dreamed of Baby beside me in the bed, nestled up under my arm, warm and solid; and in my dream I detected the Wall close to my ear, breathing.

  I saw its small catlike eyes watching me. I touched the Wall and my hand passed through.

  I sat up in bed alone, my heart pounding.

  For months the dream re-occurred every night. My dream-Baby would return and sleep beside me. Eventually, we passed through the Wall together. I knew I’d actually crossed over the night I heard the cries and whines of the poor animals that had recently gone through. I carried dream-Baby through that dark land, searching for the perimeters, but on this side the Wall had an infinite presence. I moved silently and tried to keep dream-Baby quiet, so that the ravenous demon creature that had eaten the rats when I was twelve wouldn’t notice us.

  My obsession with dreaming my way through the membrane wore away at my health. I hadn’t realized how bad things were until the terrible nightmares. In them, Baby became a part of the cursed black Wall; her little pink mouth turned into black oozing liquid lips that tried to latch onto my breast. I woke drenched in sweat. I waited for my heart to calm before I got up and went to the kitchen for some food

  When I pulled the fridge door open the small light lit a single, plastic grocery bag on the shelf. I reached for it, hoping something edible lay inside. As I began to unwrap it, the sour smell of old milk and rotten meat nearly brought me to my knees, but I was so hungry. I don’t know why I took it out of the fridge and wrapped it in a dirty dish towel and put an oven mitt under it, then left it on the kitchen counter.

  I spent more and more time in my dreams, more and more time on the other side of the Wall. If I didn’t find Baby on the other side— well, I couldn’t go on with my life.

  I dreamed of Baby every night in a land of beastly ghouls. Her face once pink and peach colored was now blackened and bruised. Her eyes, once the color of Forget-me-nots, were now hollow sockets. Baby had become a creature with ever-sucking purple lips wanting to come home with me. And the Wall, and its hideous demon creature, having sucked the marrow from Baby’s bones, was ready to send her back, but I didn’t want her to come home as a regurgitated bag of bones. I wanted to find her and bring her back in my arms.

  The last time I went through I wandered aimlessly in the dark limbo, waiting for the drumbeat to lead me out, but the sounds of children’s laughter and a baby gurgling drew me still deeper into the fog. The dark, silky haze lifted quickly and sunshine revealed a bright playground, children swinging, and sliding, small babies in carriages. Mothers sat on benches.

  I greeted a young woman who rocked a sleeping baby in a stroller.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “The other side of the Wall.”

  “But what is it?”

  She shrugged.

  I looked at her child. “She’s beautiful,” I said.

  “She’s not mine. We just take care of them as they appear.” I looked around. A few mothers chatted and played with the children.

  Then I heard the drum. It boomed like thunder overhead. Fog rolled in and the scene disappeared.

  The Wall displayed tranquil scenes of the world I’d come from, trying to entice me home, but I refused to go without Baby. Once in a while a small animal or a child slipped through. I would save these pitiful creatures and return them whenever I could. It was difficult to push them back and took all my effort. Afterward I was so hungry and weak I could barely function, but I had learned something about the Wall. It left raw meat for me, on the benches, in the grass. I ate without pause and then vomited up much of the meal, but there would always be a fresh meal nearby. It became so difficult to push back the small animals and babies that came through. Eventually, I stopped returning them. The effort made me ravenous.

  Once, as I was pushing one of the last of the small children back to its proper side, I saw something that terrified me. The Wall had become transparent as it often did at the very moment I returned a child. In a mirror, in the room where the Wall had settled, I saw the demon again. Its monkey face stared back at me. It mimicked my behavior and appeared to regurgitate chunks of digested meat that dripped and fell from between its teeth. The dark hunched creature terrified me and at the same time I seemed to frighten it. It turned its back and disappeared into the black oiliness of the Wall just as I was about to turn into the soft limbo of the land on my side. Instead of fleeing I found myself staring at a small girl who drew with chalk on the Wall in her bedroom. I knew that in moments it would swallow her. From my side I bumped hard up against the Wall to frighten her. She jumped away and cried. As she ran to the protective arms of her father she screamed “monster” and pointed at me.

  The quiet here and the volumes of time are exchanged for the worries on the other side. Anne was right; a mother can’t stay here too long, and the Wall has stopped providing for me. I am ravenous, insatiable. I dreamed that I would return with Baby in my arms, but now I dream only of escape from here back to the food I left on the counter in my kitchen. I no longer remember what Baby looked like, but a delicious smell of sour milk and rotten meat wafts through the Wall, and the soft rustle of a plastic grocery bag draws me home.

  * * * * *

  Rhea Rose lives in Port Coquitlam, BC, but was born in Etobicoke, Ontario. She studied her craft at UBC, Clarion West and a bunch of writers’ workshops. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in anthologies. Some of her writing has been nominated for awards, including the Rhysling award for poetry, and the Canadian Aurora Award. Her work appears in the upcoming Dead North. She has twice received honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s BHOTY. She has visited every province and territory except PEI.

  2020 Vision

  Lisa Smedman

  Used to be, the religious nuts who came knocking at Abe’s door wore a shirt and tie and carried pamphlets urging him to Awake! Now they looked like characters from a 20th century TV show and carried copies of the Primary Directive on flashdrives.

  The young man Abe spied through his securicam was no exception. Straight, short black hair blunt cut across the brow, quizzical eyebrows, pointed ears. Blue shirt with black collar. Tight black pants flared at the calf, black boots.

  Another proselytizer from the Church of Spock.

  Abe sighed. He hadn’t meant to found a religion. The video he’d posted online nearly twenty years ago, proclaiming himself the founder of a new religion, had been a joke. Even in his most caustic moments, he never would have predicted that anyone would take it seriously, that it would go viral. Anyone thinking it through would realize that a faith based on logic didn’t make sense. Religion was strictly a belief-based system, built on shaky foundation of circular argu
ments. Ask a believer to prove God existed, and he’d turn the tables on you and tell you to prove God did not exist. Because you couldn’t prove it to him, therefore, God existed.

  Religion, by its very nature, was illogical.

  Except to would-be Vulcans like this one.

  The young man stared hopefully into Abe’s securicam. He looked like he was in his late teens or early twenties— young enough to have been spoon-fed the faith. He was rosy-cheeked, clean-shaven, his face beaded with sweat in the summer heat. His eyes were intense, shiny with belief.

  “Mister Chudwick? Are you there?”

  This wasn’t a cold call. He knew who Abe was.

  “How did you find me?” Abe asked.

  “I read your postings in the Spocktalk forum. You mentioned the noise from the airport, and the highway construction. And last week’s power outage, which only hit this neighborhood. You said you drove a Humble. With all those clues, it was almost as if you wanted to be found.” He stared hopefully into the securicam. “Can I come in?”

  Abe sighed. His first instinct was to tell the kid to get lost. But if he did that, the nutcase would probably just keep pestering him. If Abe gave the boy a peek at how lackluster his idol really was, maybe he’d just go away.

  Abe smoothed down his thinning hair and fastened the lower buttons of his Hawaiian shirt over his paunch. Might as well get this over with.

  He opened the door. “Well, son? What is it you want to know?”

  The young man opened the black rectangular pouch at his hip and fumbled around with something inside.

  “Son, I don’t need a copy of the Primary Directive. I wrote it, remember?”

  The young man nodded, kept fumbling with whatever was inside his pouch. Abe heard a metallic click.

  “You don’t need to…”

  Abe found himself staring into the barrel of a gun.

  The kid moved a foot against the door, preventing it from closing. Sweat blistered on his forehead and trickled down his temples. He jerked the gun. “Inside.”