Land Beyond Summer

by Brad Linaweaver

  “Your parents probably think they’ll inherit a tidy sum for having put up with me for all these years. Even your father has wit enough to know that I make money when the market goes down as well as when it goes up. I pay attention. I never wasted my money on frivolities, or used children as an excuse to spend and spend. Our extended family isn’t all that large, you know, and I’ve made more than enough to guarantee everyone a good life. Ha. No one gets a dime except the two of you!”

  Fay’s body went as taut as if a string had pulled it. Clive shook his head as if he’d been slapped. Appreciating the reaction, Grandfather continued: “The reading of the will won’t concern you. It will appear that I’ve lost all my money except for a pitiful amount tied up in endless probate. The real fortune was converted into gold some time ago. Half is already gone. I needed to buy certain books and certain paraphernalia from odd corners of the world where money is never taken seriously if it comes in paper. The other half of the fortune is well hidden and will become available as you need it to perform certain tasks for me on earth.” He raised his head from them, and blinked as though coming out of a trance. “Of course, any earthly agents would do for certain requirements…” And then he noticed them again.

  His claw-like hands reached out and grabbed each of them by the wrist, shaking them with surprising strength. “You are unusual for a brother and sister. Sure, you fight about little things, as all siblings do. You blame each other over stupid nonsense that no one notices except you. But when it really counts, you stick together, which is more than your parents will ever do. You are strong, both of you. I need that … love.”

  After he released them, they continued holding their arms as if still in his clutches. “Now,” he said, “I want you to promise that you will keep secret what I’m about to tell you. If you don’t, I’ll drown you in the middle of this lake and no one will ever know.” He let them think about his threat before mentioning, in a more normal tone of voice, that they could speak again.

  Clive had sufficient confidence in Fay’s ability in water that he didn’t believe for one second that he could drown her. He was more worried that if an insane person came up short of magical powers, he might make do with a gun or knife; and the jacket Grandfather was wearing was bulky enough to conceal lots of trouble. He also worried that Fay might choose this awkward moment for an inconvenient display of principle.

  He need not have worried. She answered first, without hesitation. “I promise,” she said while crossing her fingers inside the pocket of her jeans. Clive was so surprised at the words coming out of her mouth that she had to nudge him with her elbow to suggest it was his turn. He promised, too.

  Grandfather seemed completely indifferent to whether or not the young Gurneys were being sincere. Their words were enough. Patting them on their heads, he said, “My little lambs.”

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  The Land Beyond Summer is posted for entertainment purposes only and no part of it may be crossposted to any other datafile base, conference, news group, email list, or website without written permission of Pulpless.Comtm.

  Copyright © 1996 by Brad Linaweaver. All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER TWO

  GOBLIN DREAMS

  That day in the boat on Pine Lake seemed to go on forever. Grandfather talked to them until the sun was behind the trees. Everything was bathed in red light, casting a sanguinary pall over the scene. Grandfather looked scarier than ever, as if his whole body had become a statement in blood.

  Clive and Fay hung on his every word, not out of interest but from the greater force of fear. Concentration did them little good, however, as Grandfather began using unfamiliar terminology; and his sentences became convoluted and impossible to follow. Clive glanced over to see if Fay understood what was said (despite her younger age, she had a bigger vocabulary than her brother) but it was soon apparent that she was as confused as he.

  The sentences became more intricate and bizarre, clearly plundered from the storehouse of some alien tongue. The words sort of crawled over the young, captive audience, like bugs, and only a few had enough semblance to English for them to get inside the ears and brains.

  Grandfather didn’t seem to care whether he was understood or not. He was making some kind of prepared speech, addressing someone or something not immediately present. Although Clive had given up trying to make sense out of what sounded to him like gibberish, Fay was sure that it must be a foreign language. She could tell Spanish when she heard it. From movies and TV, she had some idea of the sounds of German and French. Finally she joined her brother in surrender. This was nothing like any other language; perhaps it was a dead language, or something Grandfather was simply making up.

  Suddenly it was all over. They listened to silence, broken only by their breathing, the lapping of the water and the creaking of the boat. A fish splashed off somewhere to the left, and Clive smelled something real bad.

  Clive was first to break the spell: “Was that, like, Latin you were doing just then?” Fay glanced over with a flash of respect showing in her eyes. He’d at least tried to figure it out. Sometimes Clive surprised her.

  “What woud you know about Latin?” answered the old man, mockingly. “You go to an Episcopal Church!” If he bothered listening to himself he might have laughed, but Grandfather didn’t listen to anybody.

  “All you need to know, children,” he went on, “is that I’ve given you something today. Something in the way of a small power that you will inherit sooner than you think … when the house is yours.”

  “You’re leaving us your house?” exclaimed Clive in a voice far too loud.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. But I wasn’t referring to my house just then. I meant your parents’ house.” They stared at him. He continued: “You’ll have your parents’ house after they’re … divorced.”

  “That’s a lie!” cried Fay, getting to her feet even though she knew that you’re not supposed to stand up in a boat. Clive was surprised that Grandfather didn’t tell her to sit down, but he just watched her with those terribly cold eyes of his.

  “Poor, deluded child,” he said, “don’t you realize how inevitable it all is? Your mother is easily hurt. Your father is easily frustrated. When you’re dealing with weak people, it’s only a matter of time. They would have separated a long time ago if I hadn’t saved them with money. That’s the only glue holding them together! I had to pay if I wanted you with me today.”

  This was turning into the most perfectly terrible day that Fay had ever experienced. She didn’t think she could hate anyone in the whole universe more than she hated her grandparent right then. Looking at Clive, she didn’t notice any change in his composure. Maybe he was hiding his emotions.

  Grandfather’s withered lips moved in his scarecrow head, vomiting forth more insincerity: “I sympathize with you. You want to think that the two of you are the reason they stay together. Offspring always have an inflated opinion of themselves. And when your parents break up, you’ll blame yourselves. How ridiculous. Then you’ll go off with your mother, and you’ll see your father on weekends. Of course there will be the same tension between them after the divorce that you feel now. And guess what happens after the divorce? They’ll find new people to fall in love with, and you’ll hate the new people as much as you hate me!”

  The scarecrow stopped talking. The sun had finished setting while he was speaking. They couldn’t see the features of his face, but only the outline of his head against the darkening sky.

  Leaning forward, his dark head was very close as he whispered: “Don’t worry. None of what I just described will really happen to you. To the world at large, your parents will remain married; but they won’t be real people. They will be objects placed in your control. They will move and walk and talk, but they won’t be alive. You’ll have two parental units, forged in magic and placed at your disposal, to carry out your every command. Why,
it’s every kid’s dream!”

  “No way!” said Fay. Her nightmare for years had been waking up to find that her parents had become zombies! When she’d had her first slumber party, as young as seven years old, all the little girls had tried to scare each other with ghost stories. The oldest girl had told the rest all about zombies, dwelling on an old movie where a maid was forced to comb the hair of her zombie mistress over and over and over.

  Fay could still make out her brother’s face in the thickening gloom. On this lake, the dark fell as swiftly as the dropping of a curtain. He was smiling! For the first time, Grandfather had gotten through to him with venemous offers of role reversals and blank checks. Seized by contrary impulses to laugh or scream, Fay decided to do neither. After all, the situation wasn’t as bad as it seemed. She’d discovered that her grandfather was insane. This was tragic to be sure, and perhaps she and Clive were in danger in the dark on a cold lake with the man, but none of that plumbed the abyss of dread that would open up if one word of this nonsense proved to be true. Surely Clive didn’t believe it. She decided that she must be misinterpreting her brother’s expression. The smile was not from desire for power, but his way of dealing with the same fact that was tormenting her: Granddad was a bowl of granola.

  The annoying thing about crazy people, of course, is the way they seem to know exactly what you’re thinking when they are the subject of your reflections. “You don’t believe me,” he said again. There were no eyes to be seen in the silhouette of his head so they couldn’t tell where he was looking. “By this time, one year from now, you’ll know better. It’s summer now. When summer comes again, then you’ll see.”

  Dropping the oars back into the water, he resumed rowing and kept talking, as if to himself. “There will be dreams. Then, after I die, on the coldest day we’ve had this whole century, the dreams will get worse. I won’t haunt you — well, just enough so that you won’t forget. The boy will hardly notice because that’s the way of boys. But the girl will suffer. She’ll feel every portion. I’ll like that. And then … and then …” It was like a stuck record until he shouted:

  “WHEN THE DREAMS COME TRUE, YOU’LL KNOW!” ***

  “This is what he promised, isn’t it?” asked Clive, staring at the awful wallpaper. “Did you dream about the nursery?”

  Fay touched the wall and said, “My dreams have been a lot worse than this.” She worried that even admitting that much out loud might be a kind of invitation for bigger and better nightmares.

  “Maybe we should tell Mom and Dad everything,” said Clive. Fay shook her head doubtfully. She had learned from bitter experience that adults had a strange way of pretending that bad things didn’t really happen. The greater the unpleasantness concerning a family member, the more likely the denial. Clive and Fay had decided not to tell about the day on the lake because they weren’t sure they could convince Mom of her father’s mental state; and worse, they weren’t at all sure how she would take it should they succeed in making her believe.

  Besides, Fay’s trust in her parents had been shrinking lately, especially after Dad threatened to let Kitnip die if the vet bills went any higher for a urinary tract infection, and Mom reluctantly backed him up. (Fortunately, the last treatment had been sufficient.) Clive had never really believed they would let Kitnip die. He thought they were just complaining, but Fay had believed. Even though he was older, there was something more trusting about Clive.

  “They’ll have to believe us now,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” she said.

  Their discussion was interrupted by Dad returning to the nursery. He walked straight over to Clive, grabbed him and threw him against the wall. Dad had never done anything like that before to either of them, but here he was, manhandling his son in front of his daughter. If anything, Fay was more shocked to be witnessing the violence than Clive was to be experiencing it.

  Even before he started screaming that he’d had enough of Clive’s practical jokes, Fay had an inkling of what was going on. Earlier, Dad had believed what he saw and heard in the nursery, just as they had. For one brief moment, Mom had believed it, too, right before she ran out of the room. The Gurney family was united in the recognition that they were victims of a curse from beyond the grave.

  But legal adults, with taxes and bills to pay, cannot keep a belief in their heads for very long. They’d made themselves forget the driveway and the phone. Adults spend so much time telling each other what the world is not like, and what life can never be, that when something really strange happens they have to pretend it didn’t happen. They have to blame someone or something normal for their problems, because extraordinary events make them feel like children again.

  And one thing Clive and Fay had learned early on, the same as all “good kids,” is never to make their parents feel like children. Not if they can help it. That’s what Fay was thinking as Dad started to hit Clive about the head. Suddenly there was a shriek. Fay realized the shriek had come from her.

  Fay shouted something. She wasn’t sure about the words but her meaning was clear enough. She was begging Dad to stop. But it was like screaming into a vacuum. She watched what was going on with a queer feeling of disinterest. It was like watching television. She could imagine what had happened: Mom had convinced Dad that what both of them knew to be true couldn’t have happened, and therefore it must be one of Clive’s “stupid practical jokes.” Fay had warned Clive for years to cut out such stuff. He’d finally stopped, but the damage was already done. Now Dad was taking out all his bottled up frustration on his son. Then Mom could blame Dad for it afterwards, even though she might have pushed him in the direction of blaming his son. And it would be one more reason for the divorce, helping to make the prophecy come true.

  These dark thoughts multiplied as quickly as cancer cells until Fay had a tumor of anger in her chest to match the scene she was watching. She felt her emotions with an explosion of violence, coming over her like a tidal wave, filling her lungs so that she couldn’t breathe. She had to do something! Without thinking, she ran forward, an ungainly whirl of arms and legs, trying to pull Dad away. He didn’t turn his anger on her, so focused was he on Clive, but neither did he notice her. She could have been a vagrant breeze or a mosquito for all the good she did.

  As if one unbroken motion, she was still moving. But now she was running until she was outside, and still running, headed for the woods. The dog and cat were playing in the side yard as she ran past. Since the pets had grown up together, as puppy and kitten, it wasn’t surprising that they got along as well as they did. Fay wondered, in passing, why people couldn’t be as reasonable as animals.

  Wolf, for this was the name Clive had given the medium-sized German shepherd, looked up from the cat (whose name was Kitnip, given by Fay). The cat’s paws were resting on the dog’s nose, claws tactfully withdrawn. Playfully, she grabbed at Wolf’s silver-grey head with her black paws as the dog pulled away to see what was happening with Fay. Wolf followed Fay into the woods. Kitnip rolled over, stretched, and found something better to do.

  So upset was Fay that she didn’t notice the dog close behind her. She was making a lot of noise as she crashed through bushes, oblivious to the danger of low hanging branches. She was wearing shorts and cut herself several times, on both arms and legs, but was too upset to notice.

  She hadn’t gone very far before she tripped over a large, gnarled root, and hurt herself in the fall. Turning to rub her injured ankle, she noticed Wolf for the first time. She was glad he was there. Rubbing him on his shaggy neck helped calm her down — and helped her to ignore the pain. After a minute of this, she resumed normal breathing; rolling over on her side convinced the dog that all was well and it was time to play again.

  “You’re a good boy,” she said to the eager red tongue licking her face. “I haven’t broken my glasses so I don’t need you knocking them off.” Rubbing the dog behind the ears, and then under his neck, she managed to calm herself down.

 
She was very tired, feeling as if she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since the summer began. Normally the extra activity of running and especially swimming would be more than adequate to provide her with uncounted hours of untroubled rest. But this summer had marked the onslought of her bad dreams. Sometimes they would relent, and she’d start to relax again, but they would lie in wait for her and when her guard was down they’d return, more vivid and disturbing than ever.

  Exhaustion stole over her and she let herself think that perhaps the woods might be a safe place to take a nap, away from the family, away from Clive’s suffering and the crazy wallpaper and everything else. In a moment, she was asleep.

  A new dream was waiting for her. She had felt herself walking along a path in the previous ones. She would stop or get off the path when she saw something interesting. This time she seemed to be drifting through the air. She could see her body down below, where she was sleeping on the ground. Except that the trees around her seemed strangely shaped, and were very odd colors for trees — black and purple.

  A yellow fog rose up from the ground, as quickly as a thought, and covered everything. She became aware of box-like shapes suspended in space between her and the fog. These objects turned slightly, as if in a breeze, except there was no breeze.

  As she floated closer, she could make out that the boxes were not solids as she had first assumed. They were cages. Two of them were nearly touching, and as they continued to turn she was able to see the prisoners: Mom and Dad!

  There was something different about them. She noticed a quality that reminded her of the time when they still cared about each other. Fay wanted to weep, but she wasn’t sure this second body of hers, this dream body, could cry. Nor could she speak or call out to them.

  But there was one sensation she could feel. It suddenly became cold — colder than all the snow and ice of the arctic and antarctic combined. The edges of her dream shivered and the yellow fog turned into ice crystals. The cages were covered with frost, turning from blue to white. Then they exploded into a million pieces!