In The Falling Light

by John L. Campbell

  rising and rising, I may be sick

  Music plays, a country song fills the basement and she hums along

  using her trowel to seal me in to the tune of a Nashville hick

  She meant nothing, I cry, it was just a fling, sweetheart, don’t do this thing

  I forgive you, she says, and lays two more rows

  I considered taping your mouth and your nose but that would be quick, and I want you to see how the rest of this goes

  Masonry, a skill I did not know she had, close to the top now

  building her wall, my beautiful wife

  so calm and betrayed and utterly mad

  I can’t handle tight spaces, I wail, and she agrees that it’s sad

  All but finished except for one last, a rectangle up near the top,

  but now comes the funnel, greased so they’ll slide and won’t scamper out, ‘cause she knows that they’re fast and opens the boxes, shaking them in

  The moment for rational thought is long past

  Thailand and Texas, Brazil and Belize, ordered from everywhere,

  shipped to the house while I played, while she knew, and came up with a plan and now down they come, spilling into the dark

  Please, please, oh God please

  A hundred, she says as they fall, the big ones, they’re my favorites of all

  Quick and aggressive I learn as they race up my legs, up my chest, running over my face and begin biting while I begin screaming and watch as she sets

  the last brick in its place

  EMBRACING NEPTUNE

  It was supposed to miss. Anything else was unthinkable.

  The government told the public and the press for months that it would be a “close call,” but once they saw impact was inevitable, the authorities scurried off to their holes without warning. What would have been the point? There was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

  Benjamin stood with his cube farm colleagues at the front of their top floor office, watching a wall-mounted flat screen. Video shot from a Navy aircraft over the Atlantic recorded the brilliant sparkle growing larger, filling the screen, then a searing flash and a fiery streak before the screen went to static.

  Everyone felt the building shudder, and a moment later the windows blew in. Men and women in business suits – those who hadn’t been cut down by table-sized blades of flying glass – started screaming and moved as a herd to the elevator lobby. They knocked over cubicle walls, crushed their co-workers underfoot, and crushed a few more against the elevator bank before turning towards the fire exit.

  Benjamin allowed himself to be carried along, the only smiling face in a sea of pale terror.

  In the stairwell, Benjamin broke away from the herd as it poured downstairs, shrieking and tumbling and crashing and breaking bones. From the forty-seventh floor it would take them considerable time to reach the bottom and spill out into the streets of Lower Manhattan, where the doomed from other buildings throughout the financial district would join them, packing streets already choked with abandoned cars.

  Not Benjamin. He headed up.

  Two flights and he was pushing out onto a tar and gravel roof. He ran to the edge, kicking off his shoes, stripping off his suit and hopping to clear his trousers. In moments he was naked, standing at the edge, a twelve inch lip separating him from the drop. Here at the tip of the city he had a clear view all around, and most importantly to the south. Far below was a chorus of honking and screaming, but it was quickly drowned out by a growing whisper, a whisper building into a roar.

  The East River and the Hudson were being sucked into New York Harbor like Colorado white water rapids, and the harbor was being sucked out to sea. Hundreds of ships were carried in the surge, some turning helplessly. A Circle Line boat of sightseers slammed into a freighter and was quickly pulled beneath the surface. To the right, a massive white Carnival cruise ship had become locked against a bigger Royal Caribbean, and they rushed out to sea side by side, paper boats caught in a storm gutter.

  The sharp angle of the asteroid trail hung in the air out over the ocean, sketching a smoky line from the heavens like God’s finger of judgment. Benjamin started to laugh. He had been planning on stepping off a subway platform this afternoon, right in front of the express from Grand Central. This was so much better.

  Within minutes the river bottoms and silt bed of the harbor were exposed, clotted with beached ships and two centuries of human trash, and the raging whisper of the now-vanished rivers was replaced with a rumble. Benjamin wept and smiled at it, a rising dark wall stretching across the horizon, moving fast, pushing the air before it. He stepped into the cold, salty wind and onto the ledge.

  It was impossibly high and climbing still, bluish green and foam crested, and as it neared its rumble made him tremble. The locked pair of cruise ships, small as bathtub toys, appeared to be scaling its vertical wall, and a blue whale tumbled out of its surface, tadpole-sized against its magnitude.

  The impact wave was over a mile high when it hit.

  As it arrived, blotting out the sun, Benjamin tipped his head back and opened his arms wide.

  “Come to Papa.”

  And it did.

  COURAGEOUS LITTLE PHILOMENA’S WONDROUS BAIT

  It was always midnight in Petershead.

  Even before the Thorazine.

  As a well-read resident, Courageous Little Agnes Philomena – ‘Clap’ to her friends – knew about the Before Time. She had learned of it in the library, and that was where she was headed now.

  Three feet tall and bony, Philomena strode with a purpose along the cobbled street, her high, lace-up boots with the pointy little toes Click-Clacking on the stones, her head with the pointy little chin held high, and her hat with the pointy little…well, with the pointy little point pulled firmly over her long red ringlets of hair. Her dress was prison-matron gray, her favorite color, with little black buttons running from hem to throat.

  Click-Clack-Click-Clack, like a drill instructor’s measured gait.

  A pig dressed in bloody butcher’s whites pedaled a bicycle towards her. He rang a little bell on the handlebars as he called to her, the bike wobbling.

  “Salutations, Clap!”

  She smiled with her pointy little teeth and waved. “Greetings, Hamhock.”

  Click-Clack-Click-Clack up the street, past the tailor and the pipe shop and the mummifier. Just beyond was a little shop with a big front window and a shingle hung over the door. It showed a red and white striped candy wrapped in a bow. Philomena stopped to press her pointy little nose against a window pane. Fernando’s Sweets wasn’t open, but even through the gloom within Philomena could make out shelf upon shelf of glass jars, all filled with colorful, delicious, poisonous treats.

  Her tummy growled.

  Maybe she’d stop back by after the library. If Fernando was open for business (he so rarely was, spending most of his time asleep in a coffee can in his office), she’d spend a penny and get her favorite sweet, a Putrid Puscake. Or maybe a chocolate hemlock bar.

  With a little sigh, Philomena pulled her nose from the glass and marched on, Click-Clack.

  Once upon a time it had been Daylight in Petershead, and there had been a family and children’s stories and laughter. She knew this from her reading. Then the Twilight Time crept in (but hadn’t it been there all along, really?) and the laughter turned the same color. Soon Midnight came calling, and it stayed. No more family. No more stories. And the laughter turned black as a witch’s asshole.

  Philomena giggled and covered her mouth. She wasn’t supposed to curse, even in her own mind.

  Click-Clack-Click-Clack, past the burnt church where deformed rats scampered and played and ate one another. Past the bakery and the haberdashery. A cold burst of wind sent dead leaves twirling and skirling down the street, and they danced in a circle around her for a moment as Philomena jumped and clapped her hands before they sailed on their way.

  At the intersection a stoplight blinked red in every direction. Philomen
a dutifully stopped and looked every which way. There were only three cars in Petershead; An old-timey flatbed truck with an OOH-GAH horn, driven by Skeleton Bob; A silver minivan with tinted windows that drove off the Petershead Bridge every day and burst into flames; a shiny white ambulance driven by The Men in White. None were in view, so Philomena crossed the street and started up the hill, Click-Clack.

  Across the lane to her left was a big Victorian house painted purple with white trim, every window glowing with warm candlelight. In a smart little yard out front a plump woman with a gray granny bun tended to a garden of black tulips. She raised one hand, which wore a flower-printed gardening glove.

  “Courageous Little Philomena, how are you dear?”

  “Agnes Philomena.”

  “Of course, dear. Off to the library again?”

  Philomena didn’t break stride. “Of course.”

  The woman tisked. “All that reading will turn your brains to mush. Why not come in for some tea?”

  Philomena waved, keeping to her side of the street. “Not today, Mrs. Caul, thank you anyway.” It paid to be polite to Mrs. Caul. And it paid even better to stay out of Mrs. Caul’s kitchen. Where the knives were. And the pots. And her cellar door.

  The old woman went back to her tulips, and Philomena continued her march up the hill, Click-Clack.

  At the top of the hill, the street turned right. Growing out of the cobblestones, completely disrupting and blocking the road, was the Wiggle Tree, a huge black oak with great spreading boughs, each ending in viney twists, not a leaf upon any of them. They appeared to sway, but due to wind or consciousness was unknown. The Wiggle Tree slept a great deal of the time. Its roots spread out in a riot, buckling the cobblestones and poking out of the ruptured earth, as if it might at any moment decide to go for a walk on some dread business. The only way round the corner was to pass beneath its arms.

  Philomena, wise beyond the ten years she was and would ever be, took a deep breath and sprinted under the tree, pointy little knees and elbows pumping fiercely. In a moment she was past it and round the corner, and she stopped to look back. The tree hadn’t moved. Perhaps it was indeed asleep. Perhaps she was simply too fast for it – she liked to believe that. Or perhaps it was already full.

  In the Before Time, the Wiggle Tree had been green and leafy and happy, and the family often picnicked under its pleasant shade, the children climbing its inviting limbs. These days it liked to snatch up pedestrians and cram them into its toothy black maw.

  Lots of things ate other things in Petershead.

  Past the corner, the upward slope continued, though here the cobbled street was known as Twilliger’s Hill. All along the right shoulder was a tall fence of iron bars with nasty spikes at the top, dark ivy hanging thick upon the rusting metal. Once upon a time this had been a white picket fence, but that was in the Before Time. On the other side was Petershead Cemetery.

  In the Before Time, it had been a lush meadow of soft grass, blueberry bushes and sprawling, shady elms. Wildflowers had grown in spectacular clusters, and the air was always filled with butterflies. A friendly rabbit named Mr. Fobb had lived there in a quaint little blue cottage, tending his vegetable garden.

  Then Midnight came. The flowers and the blueberry bushes and the soft grass had turned black and died, the butterflies started spinning webs and feeding on birds, and the trees turned gnarled, sentient and cruel. Gravestones began sprouting like weeds from the dead ground, old, chipped, weathered things with illegible inscriptions, some with broken angels, some with stone faces frozen in screams, all of them crooked. The crypts and mausoleums grew next, gothic masses of cracked marble and granite, iron doors yawning wide into blackness and cold. The ivy covered them like hair.

  Philomena marched up the long hill Click-Clack-Click-Clack and stopped at the crest, standing before the gates of the cemetery. Here a stone archway stretched over a wide entrance, where a pair of spiked iron gates stood open amid high dead grass. She peered inside.

  Sometimes a Reever or a Five-Legged Bandolino (the ones with eight eyes, not six) could be seen peering out from the dark entrance of a mausoleum, clicking their fangs and drooling their poison, wondering if they could skitter out and snatch up a victim before bursting into flame from the caress of moonlight. There were no such monstrosities lurking around at the moment, though, only Mr. Fobb the friendly rabbit. At present he was upside-down on the face of an old gravestone, an iron spike through his belly, pinning him there. His long ears hung limp on the dead ground, and his arms dangled over his head.

  “Hello, Mr. Fobb,” Philomena called.

  The rabbit’s whisker twitched and he opened one eye. It was bloodshot. “Well, well, how do you do, Clap?”

  “Quite well, thank you. What nailed you to that stone, Mr. Fobb?”

  The rabbit’s left rear paw spasmed. “A Reever. Interrupted my tea. Broke my teapot, sorry to say.”

  Philomena made a sad little huff. “The white one with the little blue flowers? You’ve had that teapot forever!”

  “Yes, yes, a terrible thing.” The rabbit sighed.

  The little girl took another look around the immediate area and stepped closer to the cemetery entrance. “Shall I pull you down?”

  The rabbit waved a panicked paw. “No, no! It’s still close by, I can smell it. I’d hate for it to get you too, dear. They bite, you know.”

  She did indeed know, and had the semi-circular scar on her right calf to prove it. And they didn’t just bite. They ate. But then Philomena could bite as well, as the Reever that gave her the scar quickly learned.

  “Besides, it would just nail me right back up again.” He fingered the spike through his belly and wriggled his pink nose. “Off to the library again? I’d have thought there was nothing left for you to know.”

  Philomena smiled her sharp smile. “Oh, there’s still so much I haven’t learned!”

  “You know about Early Twilight, and the College Girl In The Trunk?”

  “Read that. They never found the body.”

  The rabbit wiggled his nose. “What about the Anonymous Letter Bomb To Golden Books?”

  Philomena smiled. “Of course, Mr. Fobb. Got a junior editor with that one.”

  He gave an experimental tug at the spike. It wasn’t moving. “The Christmas Fire?”

  Nod.

  “The Hit And Run He Thought Was A Dream Because Of The Painkillers And Tequila?”

  Nod.

  “Infant Sister Bathtub Accident?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ve even read all about you. In the Before Time you were very popular, and had dozens of adventures. An entire series.”

  Mr. Fobb sighed and hung limp on his spike. “Yes, those were the days. Before the butterflies became predators and my cottage turned into a crematorium.” As Philomena nodded in sympathy, a black butterfly with lots of eyes floated onto one of the rabbit’s ears. He flicked it off with an annoyed twitch. “What could be left for you to learn?”

  The little girl looked left and right, then in a stage whisper called, “I need to know all about the Crusk.”

  The rabbit sucked a quick hiss of air through his buck teeth, eyes wide. “For mercy’s sake, why?”

  “Because I’m going to catch it.”

  Mr. Fobb clasped his hands to the spike and shuddered. “Oh dear, oh dear! Philomena, you mustn’t even think such a thing!”

  Courageous Little Philomena folded her thin arms across her ten-year-old chest and stuck out her pointy little chin. “Oh, I’m going to do it, Mr. Fobb. The Crusk has eaten far too many children for far too long, and no one does anything about it. So I will. If I don’t, I’ll be the only kid left in Petershead!”

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” the rabbit fretted, fingering the spike.

  Philomena looked up the street. “Well, time for me to go, if you won’t let me pull out the spike, that is.”

  The rabbit’s ears drooped even further than before. “Please reconsider, Clap. I’d just hate to hear that
you’d been eaten too.”

  “Not to worry, Mr. Fobb, I have a plan. Just need to figure out the right bait.” And with that she was off, the rabbit sending her a slow, sad wave, her little boots Click-Clacking over the cobblestone, up to the crest of Twilliger’s Hill.

  Over the hill and just beyond the cemetery, the cobblestones ended in a great roundabout in front of the library. In the center of the circle, rising from an overgrown tangle of black ivy, was a statue of a great, chubby bear with wide eyes and a curious expression. It was heavily stained with pigeon shat. This was, of course, the Butter Bear, once a children’s favorite in the Before Time. Philomena frowned as she walked around the circle, looking at the statue. A shame how that had all turned out. The rampage at the kindergarten picnic, the crazed bear eventually brought down with a bloody rag doll clutched in each paw.

  The library was a gothic manor complete with turrets and gargoyles and high windows of cloudy glass, candlelight glowing from within. The wide stone steps of the entrance were flanked by flickering gaslight poles, and Philomena climbed the stairs between them and pushed through the castle-like double doors.

  The main hall was a vast, cold space that smelled of dust and paper and old leather, and she breathed in the pleasant aroma as her heels echoed across the stone floor, Click-Clack-Click-Clack. The walls were lined with high shelves loaded with books, interspersed with dark archways which led to the special collections rooms. Candles burned in sconces and holders throughout the chamber. This was her temple, for everything that had ever happened or been dreamed was here.

  At the center was a big circular desk with an enormous QUIET sign on it. Behind the desk, a creature with the head and wide yellow teeth of a mule stood eying Philomena with a sour expression. He wore a threadbare green waistcoat from the 19th century. They were the only ones here.

  “Shhhh…!” The librarian held a long finger to his broad lips.