by Paul Finch
After minutes, hours, or perhaps at the very end of time itself, I shook myself from the fugue and asked Kristina, who was still sitting nearby, "When do we go to the meeting place?"
Kristina looked at me askance. "At dusk," she said. "So pretty soon."
I glanced at a window and was shocked to find the sky beginning to bruise. Had I really been inside my own head for that long?
"It's about a mile up one of the hunting paths in the hills," Kristina continued. "But are you sure you want to? I think you might be sick."
I assured Kristina that I'd be fine. I told her I occasionally experienced panic attacks-not a lie, actually-and that it just took me a while to regain my composure after I'd suffered one. I knew very well that what had happened to me in the basement couldn't be chalked up to misfiring neurons or chemical imbalances, though. Like the objects in Dale Schwartz's 'museum', the helmets radiated an uncanny otherness so powerful that it warped the fabric of thought. These were not simple Halloween masks. They were something else entirely.
Before long, Kristina's father descended into the basement with a large, empty velvet sack and returned with it bulging full. As he passed, I could sense the 'heads' in the bag, gazing at me with their pointed eyes.
"Time to go," Kristina's grandmother called out, spurring us into action. Mr. Pittlebach led the way and was already out the door, traipsing up a gentle, forested hill behind the Pittlebachs' house. Kristina and I followed, with her mother and grandmother lagging behind.
While we walked, Kristina asked me about my last book, about the death rituals I'd witnessed. She wanted to know if there really were places where corpses served as bird food, where people danced with the deceased, where the bereaved amputated their own fingers to more physically approximate the loss of a loved one. I said yes, and that I'd even watched a young boy raised from his grave.
Kristina nodded. "I saw something like that once, when I was really little. A kid forgot his mask."
"And what happened to him?" I asked.
Kristina shrugged. I wasn't sure whether she didn't remember, didn't know, or didn't want to tell me. We walked on, in silence.
With Kristina ensconced in quiet contemplation, I sensed an opening.
"So what are the heads?" I asked. "The masks?"
Kristina stopped and turned to look for her mother and grandmother. Softly, in the near darkness, she said, "Depends on what you're willing to believe, I guess."
"What do you believe?"
Softer yet, "That in the right time and place anything is possible, though most things are inconceivable due to the complexity and magnitude of their horror."
I smiled, but I doubted that Kristina could have seen me. She'd quoted from my book. I'd been referring to the varied and innumerable ways we could die. I didn't think she'd meant it in quite the same way.
"Why did you ask me to come here?" I pressed. "I don't get the sense that your fellow townsfolk are too eager to share their traditions."
Kristina shrugged again. Such a teenager.
"I think someone like you should see it. I think someone like you might understand. People think nothing happens here. People think this is one of America's many buttholes. But it's so much stranger than that. I think everyone should know."
Hometown pride. Who would've guessed?
I reached out and squeezed Kristina's arm. She jumped away, as though shocked.
Huffing, her mother and grandmother caught up to us and we continued stumbling onward.
After close to half an hour of hiking under night's silken fabric, I saw a bright light flickering within the dense forest.
"We're meeting the rest of the citizens of Marrowvale out here?" I asked. "Sort of a town festival with a bonfire and hotdogs? Something like that?"
Kristina's voice dropped into a deeper register. "Yeah," she breathed. "Something like that."
We broke through a copse of trees and entered a field strewn with boulders the size and shape of which I'd never experienced. Each boulder stood twenty or thirty feet high and had been chiselled into complex star shapes that resembled goliath anemones and sea urchins. Near the centre of the cluster of boulders raged a fire and around the fire gathered the people of Marrowvale, all of whom had already donned their 'heads'. Everyone stood silent and motionless and I shuddered at the spectacle.
Kristina motioned to an alcove in one of the megaliths. "You should probably wait here," she whispered. "Try to stay out of sight. Some of our neighbours don't know that I invited you to the meeting place and they might not like it."
My throat tightened. "I'm a shadow," I said, probably even less convincing to Kristina than to myself. I crawled into the alcove and gave Kristina a thumbs up. Satisfied, she strode to the circled townsfolk and received a helmet from a person I assumed was her father. When her mother and grandmother passed by, the older lady paused for a moment. She glanced at my hiding spot and said, very casually, "If I were you, I'd sneak off now. They'll know you're here, and they won't allow it. They don't have a head for you and yours isn't going to be good enough." Then away she puttered.
I crouched between the star-megalith's legs and waited, fearful in the way of a child hopelessly lost in a department store. More people arrived. The air gained a serrated chill. I counted the number congregated before me. Thirty-three. The exact population of Marrowvale.
And so it began.
When the last straggler arrived and slid a 'head' over his own, the townspeople aligned themselves into a large triangle, with each side comprised of eleven individuals. Then they did nothing. They stood in the field, their fire roaring without purpose, and did nothing.
But something was happening all the same.
The air in the field suddenly grew indescribably cold and sharp. It tore at my lungs and shredded my nostrils as I breathed in. Even having lived through a handful of tornado touchdowns, I'd never felt air so hostile, so bent on eradicating me from the inside out. I brought a hand to my face and found blood leaking from my nose. At the same time the air was gaining malicious sentience, a wide dark line appeared, floating, behind the triangulated people of Marrowvale, as though a strip of reality itself had been cleanly sheared away with a razor.
I stared at the dark line, blood now flowing freely from my nose, and began to seriously consider Kristina's grandmother's advice. This wasn't a place I should be. This wasn't a place anyone but the people of Marrowvale should be-and perhaps not even them.
The dark line didn't undulate or widen or even suck us all into oblivion. It simply waited, like me, like the townspeople. Frozen. Neither alive nor dead.
I began to climb out of my alcove, blood dripping onto my jacket, my shirt. A wave of nausea pounded my abdomen and white dots spotted my vision. The air grew even colder. The thought 'absolute zero' flitted around my mind.
The old lady had been right. Kristina was young, hopeful. She thought she might be able to let the outside world break into her town. Her grandmother knew better. I had to flee.
I took one last look at the dark line hovering over the good citizens of Marrowvale and what I saw set me running from the field. Somehow, from within the line were emerging long, whip-like arms the same odd colour and hue as the helmets. These arms ended in perfectly human hands that held out to the masked people of Marrowvale an assortment of unnameable and unclassifiable objects. Treats.
As soon as I gazed upon those spindly arms stretching out from the line, the hands so bizarrely human yet clearly not, I turned to the forest and sprinted. I wasn't a journalist or a travel writer then. I was a human fighting to remain human.
Though my thoughts came fuzzy and my vision still popped with bright dots, I managed to follow the path we'd taken to reach the field. I fell over stumps and roots, skinning my hands, bruising my knees, but the farther I crept from the dark line in the forest, the warmer the air became and the more alive I felt.
I arrived in the Pittlebachs' backyard exhausted and near the verge of collapse. My nose had stopped bleeding, so I felt s
ure that I could drive, that I could make my getaway. I dragged myself to the rental car and blasted away from Marrowvale. I drove for hours; I drove until my eyes drooped and I nearly ran off the road.
When I finally stopped at a large, well-lit chain motel, I asked the desk attendant where I was.
"Almost in Pittsburgh," she said. "Just ten miles out. Where are you coming from?"
I considered telling her. I considered asking her if she knew about Marrowvale. I considered not speaking at all.
"Nowhere you've ever heard of," I said, and paid for a room.
SCRAPING BY
Gary Fry
"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" Phil asked his wife, but knew she'd have to be. He'd used all his annual leave during the house move and couldn't push his luck further at the bank.
"I'll be fine," said Beatrice, with that doped look in her eyes, the one induced by her medication. She was seated at their kitchen table, where they'd just enjoyed breakfast together. "You go and earn us some pennies. I'll keep on top of things here."
He certainly needed to get their finances back in order. Upping their mortgage by £50,000 had been risky, particularly in the current economic climate, and they must now start paying it off. But this was the first time he'd be leaving Beatrice alone in their new home and he couldn't help wondering how she'd fill her time. Following the trauma of miscarriage a year ago, she hadn't felt like returning to her job in advertising and perhaps never would.
Phil stepped across to kiss her and then, before finding another reason to dally, exited the property, summoning his ageing car to life with a single squeeze of its key fob. But before climbing inside, he hesitated and looked around. It was a cool day, and the street-a long cul-de-sac boasting fresh tarmac-was deserted. Before the credit crunch's impact on the housing market, this estate had been developed as a desirable location for people with middle-income salaries, unafraid to fully commit them. But look at it now: all except one of the twenty houses was vacant, featureless windows overlooking empty driveways.
It was dispiriting; life should have been different here. As soon as the properties had hit the market, he and Beatrice, recently married, had put down a non-returnable deposit. Phil's wife had been pregnant, and living in his previous home-a cramped terrace in one of Leeds's less prosperous areas-would have been impractical. As well as their own security, there'd been their imminent child's future to consider. And so, at his wife's eager insistence, Phil had arranged a mortgage from the bank at which he worked, one calculated on his salary alone (even though Beatrice had been in employment at the time). Then, just before the meltdown of so many global financial institutions, they'd moved in.
A month later, his wife had miscarried.
Phil climbed inside the car, struggling not to dwell on tragic events during the last year: that frightening journey to hospital, its challenging aftermath (especially Beatrice's depression), and the stressful house move to which they'd been committed. Matters had improved since his wife had received medication and counselling, but now Phil had also begun to struggle, strain from all the support he'd provided taking its toll. He felt tired a lot of the time and presently suffered a urinary problem, which might even be related to early-onset diabetes. He had a doctor's appointment in a few days to discuss blood-test results.
"Christ," he muttered, steering his car along the empty street to a junction leading into one of the city's finer districts. "Can anything else go wrong?"
And as if in pernicious response, an emergency light came on in his dashboard, alerting him to a fault with his car's engine.
****
His overflow tank needed topping up with coolant, but Lord knew where the leak might be. It could be a minor problem like a split pipe or rusted radiator, but if it was anything to do with his central engine-the head-gasket or cylinder head-he was screwed. With only a single salary coming into the household, he and Beatrice could just get by, but that was without factoring in unpredictable expenses.
Parking behind the branch of the bank at which he'd worked for over a decade, Phil recalled a vow he'd made as a younger man: never live the way many of his clients did. His role as a loan approver had put him off ever borrowing more money than was sensible. But the bank, during its credit-crazed days, had insisted on promoting such business, and he'd had to toe the institutional line, handing many customers more than enough rope to hang themselves, as well as their pitiable dependents.
Phil was scared about living close to financial oblivion, even though he'd once been caught in the same game. As little as five years ago, he'd wanted everything-a fine house, happy wife, and healthy family-and had since striven to achieve all three. But what had this cost him?
He spent most of his first day back in the office readjusting to its usual repetitive tasks. In truth, it was a relief to escape recent stresses-Beatrice's unpredictable behaviour-while tackling, with some kind of Schadenfreude, other people's difficulties. That morning a woman sought a loan to pay off an unfavourable one she'd acquired before her poor credit rating had been erased by a clever broker. After lunch a man asked if it was possible to add the cost of a new car to his mortgage. Phil held back protest in both cases, ticking relevant boxes to make sure his implacable institution achieved the business it craved.
Phil would never use his own property as collateral. He considered a secure home the hub around which everything else revolved. He owed a few thousand on credit cards but had made sure that these were covered by insurance and wouldn't impact on his material assets. Even his ageing car was protected by a payment protection scheme and, in the event of any financial crisis, couldn't be repossessed.
After finishing work and leaving without speaking to colleagues, he ignited his hatchback and listened to its gurgling engine. "You and me both, buddy," he said, adjusting his posture to prevent the seatbelt from pressing against his bladder. He'd had a good day, taking fewer than ten visits to the lavatory, but his kidneys were always unpredictable. He avoided diuretic substances like tea, coffee and soft drinks, even though he often felt grouchy without caffeine.
Easing out of the car park, he began heading home, to Beatrice with all her inevitable problems. He'd held off calling her today because he hadn't wanted to fuss. His wife believed she was recovering, after months spent in a very dark place. Phil wasn't sure this recovery was genuine but had decided, mainly because of his own failing health, to see what might happen if he backed off. It was a risky move but he'd had little choice in the matter, much the way that committing to their mortgage after paying a deposit had been less problematic than pulling out of the deal.
Forty minutes later, after negotiating Leeds's typically fretful rush hour, he was back in his new neighbourhood, again observing all its empty properties. He'd been unsure whether moving here would be good for Beatrice. He thought the quiet would help her to avoid further blows to her confidence, but might a lack of social contact drive her deeper into herself?
It all seemed too difficult to figure out, and as Phil exited the car, his attention was distracted by someone at an upstairs window of one of the houses opposite his own. After looking directly that way, however, he saw this bone-white shape for what it was: just the rising moon's reflection, an incomplete visage grinning at the glass.
After entering he found Beatrice in the kitchen, sitting in the same chair she'd occupied that morning, as if all she'd done since then was stare at the wall, hands set palm-down on the table top. No placemats were set, let alone food waiting upon them, but that was fine. Phil had got used to providing for himself, mainly because his wife had rarely had an appetite lately.
"Hi," he said, stepping towards her with unease in his gut, as if something had reached down and tweaked his innards. "I've had a few more problems with the car, I'm afraid. I think there's a leak somewhere."
He kissed her forehead but then moved away, to close the curtains against the dark. He thought he saw something thin moving on their back lawn, but after squinting he noticed
nothing untoward, only a few shadows writhing in the breeze-troubled hedge standing between their garden and that of their non-existent neighbours.
"Maybe it's come out in sympathy with you," Beatrice said, and for a foolish moment Phil thought she'd just referred to the insubstantial figure he'd imagined outside their home. But then he made the more obvious connection.
"Oh yeah," he said, his bladder feeling heavy again. "We both have failing waterworks, man and machine."
She smiled as he turned her way and he was happy to observe that. Maybe she'd had a good day here alone, after all. And he was about to ask how she'd passed her time when she volunteered the information.
"I went into the garden today. Pruned some roses. Removed many other dead plants. It looks nice now. You'll be able to see tomorrow, once it's daylight."
Phil looked forward to that, despite not caring for his wife's use of the word 'dead'. It had sounded toxic somehow, like secretions produced by some spiteful reptile. He was relieved not to have to pursue associated issues, including his imminent doctor's appointment and other medical matters.
Their son had been four months shy of birth when his heart had stopped beating and Beatrice had delivered him shockingly still. That had been all of it. No amount of post-event analysis had altered this fact. They'd had to meet it face-on, playing blink with its unflinching glare. It had been a terrible episode, but there was nothing either of them could do.
"I look forward to seeing what you've done in the morning," said Phil, trying to keep unhappiness out of his voice. He occasionally lost control of his emotions and she'd reciprocate, and before they knew it, they sat together in abject silence, listening to the world dying. That was not the way to make progress; they must remain positive, keeping their minds on opportunities.
That was when Beatrice spoke again.
"I'm certain I saw someone move at one of the upstairs windows of the house opposite ours. You know the one. There's a large tree in the front garden concealing most of it."