EverFall

by Joe Hart

  I felt cold all over, as if I’d just stepped into a meat locker. A gust of wind came across the lake and pushed its way through the rides, its hollow voice talking amongst the flaking bars and beams. Several plastic bags skittered past us, as if fleeing from something. A tinkling sound like falling icicles drew my attention, and I saw that a game booth to my right was full of hanging knives suspended from the ceiling by twine. Their blades flashed as they spun in the breeze, and when I looked down at the sash of the booth, I saw row after row of human teeth lodged in the rotting wood.

  I snapped my eyes back to the grass beneath my feet and walked in time with Fellow’s shorter steps. Just breathe, I told myself. Don’t look up again.

  “Dad?”

  I stopped, transfixed by the sound of my son’s voice.

  Beside me a pointed tent smiled with pinned flaps that opened unto darkness. Without thinking about it, I stepped up to the counter and peered inside. “Jack? Is that you?” I called. Something tugged at my sleeve, trying to pull me back, but I yanked my arm away. “Jack?”

  “Dad?” It was Jack, but something was wrong. His voice was different, lower, with guttural tones just beneath the boyish curl of his words.

  “Michael!” I didn’t want to look away from the tent because something was moving in there, something short, about Jack’s height. It was coming closer, and I was afraid if I looked away, he’d disappear. “Michael!” I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw that Ellius and Fellow were right behind me on the path. “Come here now!” Ellius yelled. I looked back into the tent and saw the shape again, but now it was too wide, with short, piggish arms at its sides.

  “Dad,” it called again, but now it was laughing and didn’t sound like Jack anymore. Its voice bubbled, as if it were talking through a layer of mud. I sprang backward just as a single hooked claw sank into the counter where my hand had been. I felt Ellius grab me by my shirt and haul me onward. Watery laughter trailed after us through the tent flaps.

  “What was that thing?” I asked, fear hacking my words off unnaturally.

  “Not your son, that’s all you need to know,” Ellius said over his shoulder as he led me on. We neared the entrance to the roller coaster, and Ellius passed through the gates without pause.

  “Get in,” he said, pointing to one of the canted cars on the track a few yards away. Fellow surprised me by reaching out and taking one of my hands in his own. The flesh beneath the glove felt odd, as if it were made of ropes and hard segments instead of skin and bone. I followed him across the grass and stepped into the car, the smell of mildew and decay wafting up to me as I sat on a cracked seat. Fellow reached forward and pulled a heavy bar toward us, which snapped down painfully across the front of my hips. The tracks ahead of us were uneven. Some of the bolts and rivets were missing, and the rails ran askew of each other at multiple places before vanishing over a steep crest in the distance.

  A jolt of movement from the cars snapped us back in the seat, and the coaster rolled forward. “No way,” I said, trying to push the locked bar away from my lap. “This thing’s gonna come off the rails.” Hearing a clanking sound behind us, I turned in my seat and saw Ellius in the car to our rear. “Are you crazy? You’re going to kill us!” I yelled at him, my stomach dropping as the train of cars began to climb the rise.

  “We will be fine,” he said. “Now hold on tight.”

  I faced forward just in time to see the first car fade from view, into the drop on the other side. My hands gripped the ragged steel bar as my teeth ground together. I hated roller coasters.

  For a moment we hung high above the earth, and then descended in a drop that lifted my lungs and shoved the air from them. I couldn’t have screamed if I’d wanted to—and I wanted to. The rattling of the cars on the rails was unholy and I felt my eardrums waver with the noise. We hit the bottom of the hill and swooped up and to the right. The force of the turn slid me sideways into Fellow, who whimpered as I tried to move back to my space. Then we dropped again, into a left turn that dug the edge of the car into my ribs. I moaned with fear, even as deep inside me I felt of rush of something, the speed and the turns igniting my blood with exhilaration. We corkscrewed straight up, and that’s when I began to think that maybe we wouldn’t die. A tunnel approached after two more sickening drops that pushed a maniacal laugh from me, and then we were inside.

  The light didn’t just dim, but vanished entirely. I felt light, as weightless as fog. We had crashed and I was dead, I realized. There could be no other explanation. I tried to touch my face but there was no sensation in my hands. I wiggled my toes but couldn’t feel them either. I consciously tried to breathe in, there was no air.

  An unyielding force pressed upon us, gentle at first and then harder, until pins and needles pricked every inch of my body. Heat bloomed around me like a warming oven, and then a point of light appeared in the distance. It was only then that I realized how fast we were traveling. The light grew exponentially and my head snapped back with an even higher burst of speed. I thought my skin would be flayed from my bones with the passage of air around us.

  There was a vacuum of sound, and I drifted away into an ether devoid of any senses. Then everything rushed back in, slamming me into my body from somewhere far away. I sucked in air through my teeth, which felt recently removed and reinserted, and blinked. My vision swam in layered pools of light and shadow, but I could tell the coaster was still. I rubbed my eyes and felt Fellow touch my arm, his hand barely there.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I think so. I feel like I was taken apart.”

  “That’s because you were,” Ellius murmured. I turned toward him. He was a dark smudge emerging from the car behind us. I focused on him and slowly my vision cleared. I felt an overwhelming sense of vertigo and swallowed down the urge to vomit.

  “Feeling sick?” Ellius asked.

  I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut again. “Yeah, I hate amusement-park rides.”

  “It will pass soon enough. Do you think you can walk?”

  I blinked, looking around for the first time. We were in some sort of hollow. A steep, tall hill rose beside the coaster and ended with a line of trees at its peak some forty feet above us. The ground was grassy, but there was something wrong. All the grass was brown and dead. Not a single green blade could be seen. A layer of fallen leaves shifted in a wind that curled into the hollow and pushed at my back. It was cold. Colder than it should have been in June, much colder. The air bit with a sting that spoke of fall, and when I looked to the sky it was a gun-metal gray, an October sky if there ever was one. It was nearing dark, and after turning in my seat a little more I spotted the sun. It was almost in the same place as when we’d left, just behind a stand of trees, with only a few spokes of light poking through. Something began to dawn on me then, a feeling of unease that spread outward from my center, as if my stomach knew a secret my mind didn’t.

  I shifted in my seat, facing the rear cars, knowing what I’d see because I had seen it once already while looking at the surrounding area. My eyes traced the two lines of the tracks we sat on. They were in even worse disrepair here; rust so thick in some places I was surprised it hadn’t derailed us. The tracks curved away in a loop for a hundred yards and then disappeared beneath a portion of the hill before us. My mind tried to grab hold of the information, but it wouldn’t fit. Each time I blinked I thought I saw a tunnel where we’d exited, but the side of the hill remained solid and whole. The tracks in front of the car shot ahead and also vanished into the bank. Dead grass lay on the tracks as well as a few broken branches and brambles. There was no sign that a ten-car roller-coaster train had just driven over them.

  I turned my head and threw up.

  I felt Fellow’s hand lightly on my back, patting just between the shoulder blades like a mother comforting a sick child. My stomach heaved again, revolted at the impossibility of everything. I could see the short, squatty thing in the tent, could hear it speaking to me in my son’s voice.
I saw the knives hanging by strings, smiling their steel grins. Oh God, I missed my family, my home.

  I wiped my mouth, weak from expelling whiskey onto the dead leaves beside the car. “Where are we?” I asked without looking at Ellius.

  I saw him shift from one foot to the other, debating something. “Let’s get a fire going and we’ll talk. I’m sure you’re cold.”

  “We’re not on Earth, are we?” I asked, the words trying to stick in my throat amongst the phlegm and bile.

  Ellius paused, his head turned so that I could see one deep brown eye studying me. “No, not anymore.”

  Chapter 4

  EverFall

  The fire snapped and bit at the wood inside the small ring of stones. I held my hands out, letting the heat seep into my fingers and touch the bones therein, hoping warmth would soothe the cold that continued to creep beneath my skin. Ellius mixed something together in a wooden bowl with a peeled twig where he sat across the fire, pausing every few minutes to peer into its depths before stirring some more. Fellow rested a few feet away from me, the flames dancing in the twin mirrors of his sunglasses.

  Nothing was said after I climbed from the coaster save Ellius’s warning not to stray too far. He’d disappeared immediately into a nearby copse of trees in search of firewood. Fellow had busied himself with building a ring out of a group of thick, gray stones he found beneath a pile of black leaves. I’d walked out of the hollow and onto a flat plain that extended in every direction. To me it looked like a freshly cut straw field with chaff sticking up almost uniformly as far as I could see. The woods we had arrived in looked to be a half-moon shape, following the depression and then the rise of the hill where the tracks sat. All of the trees were bare, their branches twisting in strange patterns toward the low sky. To me it looked like they’d never had leaves on them at all; they looked dead. The air was full of the withering scents of fall—dry leaves, cold soil, and a promise of winter.

  Ellius returned a half-hour later wearing a brown smock similar to a monk’s robe. A black belt stretched around his middle furthered the similarity. I said nothing at seeing his change of clothes. I suppose I was in mild shock, but I didn’t mind. It was almost comforting not to be alarmed anymore, to feel a bit of numbness surrounding me like a bubble.

  The fire found a knot and sprung it free with a crack. Ellius stopped his stirring, satisfied with the mixture. He stood and walked around the fire to my side, and held the bowl out to me.

  “Drink this, it will help with the sickness and shock you must be feeling.”

  I leaned toward the bowl and looked at the cloudy substance inside before sitting back. “No thanks, I’m fine,” I said.

  “Please, Michael, it will help you focus on what I have to tell you.” The old man’s eyes beseeched me in the firelight.

  I almost slapped the bowl out of his hand, but instead relented and took it from him. The odor wafting off the liquid inside wasn’t as unpleasant as I’d imagined. It held a soft sweetness and a tang of earthy undertones. It smelled a little like Guinness. I put the bowl to my lips and took an experimental sip. It was so cold I thought I’d swallowed liquid nitrogen. It raced down my throat, sucking the heat from inside me. I coughed and sputtered. Fellow had a small smile on his face, and anger immediately flooded my system.

  “You poisoned me,” I said, still coughing.

  Now it was Ellius’s turn to smile. “No, it’s not poison, but the first sip is always a different experience. Try it again, I think you’ll like it.”

  If it was poison, I’d already swallowed it, so there was no harm in having more. Perhaps I’d wake up realizing this was all a nightmare. Perhaps I wouldn’t wake up at all. The lack of fear at the latter thought scared me. I needed to stay alive to find Jane and the kids, I couldn’t be careless anymore. Or maybe the absence of fear was a premonition, a message from the inner eye telling me that they were already gone and the only way I’d ever see them again would be to follow them.

  I put a hand to my eyes, casting the thoughts away, and poured more of the liquid into my mouth. It wasn’t cold anymore, just cool, and this time it tasted like iced tea with a hint of coffee, but sweet. I drank more. The more I swallowed, the more I wanted, until the bowl was straight up and the last of it dripped onto my tongue. I set the bowl down on the log I rested on and stared at Ellius.

  “That was the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

  The smile again, but less this time. “I’m glad I haven’t lost my touch.”

  “What is it?”

  “A blend of tree roots, water, an assortment of other odds and ends. Do you feel okay?”

  I took inventory of myself. The first thing I noticed was the cold was gone; chased away the moment I downed the last swallow. Heat flowed through me now, not uncomfortable, just warmth from within. The unease was also less, not gone entirely, but faded to a manageable level.

  “I feel pretty good,” I said at last.

  “Good.”

  I waited a beat and then leaned forward. “Ellius, I need you to tell me where we are and what this has to do with me and my family.”

  The old man’s head bowed and his naked scalp shone in the firelight. I was just about to say something again when he spoke. “A question of where may be the wrong thing to ask. Inside, outside, around, these are all irrelevant. We are not on Earth anymore, as you have already guessed for yourself, but we are not far. The best way I can explain it is we are on the border of Earth, within it and beside at the same time.”

  I studied him to see if he was lying but saw no sign. “You’re not making any sense. What do you mean, in it and beside it?”

  He sighed and pursed his lips. “Imagine that the Earth is a house, an enormous moving and ever-changing house with the surrounding universe as its walls, roof, and basement. If you can imagine this in your mind, then the place we are now would be the house’s ventilation.”

  “Ventilation?” I asked.

  “Yes. Every house needs airflow—heat in the winter to warm it, windows in the summer to cool. This place provides the Earth with ventilation for balance.”

  “I’m still not following you,” I said. My mind felt clear, but Ellius’s words glanced off it like stones skipped on a pond.

  “Everything must have balance,” he began again, holding his hands out, palms toward the sky. “Without balance a tipping would occur that would destroy the world you know. This place gives balance by leaking through the vents of the world, creating a type of harmony.”

  I rubbed the side of my face and glanced at Fellow, who merely stared into the fire, absorbed by its dancing flames. “So what does this place give off that balances the Earth?” I asked, feeling absurd by even contemplating what the old man said.

  “Evil.”

  I froze and looked at him across the fire. “Evil?”

  He nodded. “There is good and evil in your world, in many forms. There is devastation and rebirth, darkness and light, cruelty and kindness. Good and evil are counterparts on a scale greater than even I understand. They are cogs in a machine so vast it defies the imagination of any mortal being. I don’t pretend to know all the answers or how everything works, but I can tell you this: your world would topple without this place.” Ellius raised his hands with the last words and gestured to the surrounding forest.

  “Where did it come from?” I heard myself ask. I was beginning to feel strangely sleepy, as if I would tip forward at any minute, my head weighted down by the thoughts that spun through it.

  “It has always been here, as long as the Earth existed.”

  “It provides evil ... how?”

  Ellius swallowed, and stirred the fire with a nearby stick. Plumes of smoke and dancing sparks twirled away above our heads. “This place is a realm of forgotten nightmares, of lost things and malignant thoughts. It has changed over time, evolved along with the Earth and its inhabitants.” His eyes flashed up to mine and held them. “This place mirrors your world in some respects, and is utterly a
lien in others. Nothing grows here, nothing can. Everything that would normally live on Earth perishes here. There are things nearby born of the churning void that I will not speak of, and darker forces without will or mind that swallow light only because they exist.”

  My hands trembled and I pressed them together. The heat of the drink still sat inside of me like a softly burning ember, but it did nothing to quell the shiver that ran from the bottom of my spine to my shoulders. “So this is hell,” I said.

  “No, it is not a place of sinners, if that’s what you mean. People are not supposed to come here, but some do.” He paused, a strange look just behind his eyes. “In a basic sense this place is energy, black, cancerous energy, but energy nonetheless. Without it there would be no mass murders or tornadoes. There would be no plagues or disease or famine.”

  “So this place exists to cause pain and suffering?” I asked.

  “Suffering is a by-product of the venting. The Earth must be balanced by good and evil or it will fall, simple as that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘fall’?”

  “It would cease to be, along with this place and the other that provides anything good.”

  I rubbed a hand across my eyebrows and wondered if I’d made a mistake by coming here. Maybe I was still asleep on the kitchen floor. I pinched the back of my hand until a blood blister formed there. I looked down at it, waiting for the pull of consciousness to drag me from my dream. It didn’t come.

  “Why do you do that?” Fellow asked, his shaded eyes looking at the spot I’d pinched.

  “I was hoping this was all a dream.” He looked up at me and I saw his eyebrows draw together. Perhaps he didn’t dream, but I didn’t care enough to ask.

  “I’m sorry, Michael, but you aren’t asleep,” Ellius said.

  “Then what does this have to do with my family? What does it have to do with me?” I asked loudly. My voice rebounded off the forest walls and a flock of black-winged birds exploded from the treetops. Ellius’s face was a rock, immovable and without expression.