The Suburb Beyond the Stars

by M. T. Anderson

  “I can’t remember anything,” he admitted. “I can’t …”

  Gregory asked, “Are you sure that there weren’t houses there? I think there were a few in those Haunted Hunting Grounds.”

  “That’s what I remember,” said Kalgrash. “But I can’t remember the name of the road.”

  Brian didn’t think they were right. He really didn’t. He recalled — or did he? — a sea of lilies of the valley. Or one. At least one lily of the valley. Near a concrete foundation. Had that house been built yet? Or just the foundation? He couldn’t fix it in his mind.

  “The one on top of the mountain, I remember,” said Brian. “That one was way up there. I know there weren’t any houses.”

  “Are you sure?” said Gregory. “Didn’t we sleep on someone’s porch up there? When we escaped from Snarth? That ogre with the strong sense of smell?”

  “No,” said Brian. “We slept on … I think it was a construction site. They must have just started to build things then. I bet we can find it, though. If we just go straight up the side of the mountain. I bet we can still find that one. It’s clearer than the others.”

  “Okay,” said Gregory.

  Kalgrash nodded. “Let’s go,” he said.

  They began walking toward the mountain, and whatever awaited them there.

  EIGHTEEN

  They did not make it far. As they passed along the streets toward the mountain, the houses became more derelict. The doors were open. Cars were haphazard. A sofa had been dragged out and savaged. Fluff from its innards blew down the driveway, tickling the tar, and scummed up a drain.

  Gregory looked impossibly grim. His mouth was flat and his eyes tracked suspiciously from one side to the other.

  Kalgrash, too, seemed distracted. “Do you think I need a plume on this helmet?” he murmured to Brian. “I think that would look great. The cherry on the cupcake, you know?”

  Looking around the haunted neighborhood, Brian asked, “Where are the people?”

  “Go in and look,” said Kalgrash.

  “We don’t need to,” said Gregory. “You tell us.”

  “They start by making forts. They’re scared. They make forts and hide themselves in their furniture. You know, stacks of pillows. Or they topple over the sofa and then haul a love seat on top of it. And they hide there, just crouching there, without any food or water, just them hiding and getting hungrier and weirder. As I said, if you’re a troll, it doesn’t really make sense to try to coax them out. Frightened people find that kind of talk unconvincing, coming from trolls. And so they stick closer and closer to one spot. And then finally, after some days, they just lie down wherever they are and stop saying anything. They start to get absorbed, like those kids back there.”

  Gregory put his hand over his mouth and did not take it away.

  “You haven’t answered a person’s questions about plumes,” said Kalgrash, but no one was in the mood to discuss his helm.

  The enormity of their task weighed on them. This was no Game played for a forgotten race. It was humanity’s problem now, and Gregory and Brian were the only ones who knew about it, and there was no adult to intervene or protect.

  Brian could understand why people hid in their houses, why they lurked beneath their love seats, gripped what they knew, and tried to forget.

  And Gregory, beside him, peered from side to side, and wished to reach the basements of the mountain as quickly as possible, and find Prudence and Snig, and hand the whole awful mess off to them so it would no longer be his responsibility. He walked ahead of the others, wary, surveying windows.

  The houses they passed began to get stranger, distorted. Brian and Gregory stopped and stared. “It gets weirder,” Kalgrash explained, “the closer you get to the center. They’ve had longer to be absorbed.”

  The houses billowed. They did not seem to be solid. Their proportions were odd, stretched thin, warped, and their windows shuddered like bubbles.

  Another street along, whole walls fluctuated and breathed. In their midst were lumps — humans caught up in the flesh of the place, dreaming away while the houses slowly ballooned and exhaled.

  The boys and the troll pressed on.

  It was clear to Brian, to Gregory, that everything was being prepared for occupation by the Thusser. These were Thusser houses now, spreading out long bat wings to meet one another, growing nests in their depths where the Thusser might curl in time spent immobile. The yards themselves trembled.

  Brian was astounded. Gregory was too horrified to make cheap jokes. Kalgrash had seen it before, but remained reverently silent now in the face of the disaster.

  A few more streets along, they saw the center of the maelstrom — the door into the Thusser world, ready to open. The lawns were yanked like emerald sheets, rucked up into a vortex. The sails of nearby houses rippled in otherworldly winds. Slowly, everything tended toward that tight, churning point at the center of the whirlpool of earth — a green, suffocated spot.

  “Let’s go into the center of it,” said Gregory.

  “That would be a really bad idea,” Kalgrash warned.

  Gregory’s voice was dead, somehow pallid. He said, “It would be great to go in there. Just to see.”

  “No,” said Kalgrash. “It would be kind of awful and you wouldn’t live. You’d be pulled apart or something and you’d come out the other end all scissored up.”

  Gregory didn’t heed the troll. He began walking toward the center of the whirlpool. He moved like a dreamer. As he walked, the ground got spongier. His sneakers sank.

  “No!” said Brian. “Don’t, Gregory! Come on!”

  Gregory didn’t pay any attention to his friend. He walked onward, unresponsive.

  “Oh well,” said Kalgrash, leaning on his battle-ax. “We tried our hardest.”

  Brian didn’t think they’d tried at all. He ran toward his friend, yelling at him to stop. The dirt beneath his feet was soft and yielding. The air was thin, and a strong gust blew him back.

  Gregory was walking in a spiral, following the long, galactic arms of the maelstrom.

  Brian saw that as Gregory got closer to the center, to the hole into the Thusser world, he walked faster and faster — impossibly fast.

  Brian ran straight toward him, ignoring the ridges beneath his feet.

  He didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Gregory was whirring along — sleepwalking — racing.

  Brian realized: Gregory was sped up. As he approached the Thusser world, time was changing. The closer Gregory got to the portal, the faster he’d go.

  Brian ran as fast as he could — straight toward Gregory — ignoring the spiral — his feet pounding on the squish of alien loam.

  Still, he wasn’t gaining on Gregory … no faster … Brian hurled himself forward….

  And he realized, suddenly, that though it seemed to him like he was making a straight line for Gregory, he, too, was following the spiral. Straight had somehow become profoundly curved.

  He didn’t know what to do. Gregory, taking little, dazed steps, was flying along like a dizzy hero in a silent film. Brian himself was running as fast as possible and — there came Kalgrash’s voice — drooling slow from a block away — unintelligibly slow.

  So Brian hurled himself sideways. He began to jolt to one side, instead of running straight toward Gregory. He hurled himself again and again to the right, though it seemed like he was at an angle from his friend.

  He stumbled. Flew — felt static — jumped up — collapsed — rose — hurled himself.

  He was doing it. He was making it sideways through the spirals.

  Kalgrash was frozen, leaping, far behind him.

  Gregory was almost at the eye. The lawns folded and creased into the hungry gate, the mouth of the other world.

  Brian hurled himself sideways once again. He was only inches from Gregory. He reached out to grab him, time stretching impossibly — going faster for his fingers, for his wrist, for his elbow, itching, up the arm. His hand whapped backward
as if blown by water, events moving too quickly for Brian to control the muscles.

  Brian tried again to reach for Gregory.

  He couldn’t jam his hand against the flow of time.

  He tried again.

  And Gregory, in his trance, got closer to the gateway that would tear him apart.

  NINETEEN

  As they approached the center of the maelstrom, the gate to another world, wind roared down the arms of the spiral. At this point, the grassy ground was so soft that Gregory sank ankle deep at every step, swaying. A few more feet and he’d be at the point where the ground collapsed into the tunnel that led to the Thusser world.

  Brian tried again to grab Gregory’s shoulder. His hand tingled with the interference of time and was knocked back once more. Brian could tell that what seemed straight toward Gregory was not straight at all.

  Brian tried to throw himself sideways again. This time, the jolt as he passed from time-slip to time-slip was ferocious, and he felt sick as his own blood jammed and thinned in circulation.

  But he was parallel with Gregory now. Gregory was exactly one cycle faster and closer than Brian.

  Brian stuck out his arm. It refracted, appearing in a different spot in the air than he expected.

  He withdrew it.

  Gregory seemed like he was in a trance. He walked without even noticing Brian’s attempts to save him.

  Brian saw what he had to do. Instead of trying to pull Gregory back, he had to block Gregory and push him.

  Brian calculated the direction in which time was bending his limbs. He thrust his arm sideways again, adjusting for the distortion.

  It appeared in front of Gregory, bent impossibly by time and shifting space. Brian’s calculations were correct. Gregory stumbled against the hand. His stumble, given his supernatural speed, was comedic. He fell, knees up. Looked around. Saw the hole into another world only a couple of feet away. It burned green, as if nauseated by its swallowing.

  Brian had withdrawn his arm. It was too dangerous to leave it going faster than his body. It was turning purple, falling asleep. He yelled, as quickly he could, “Gregory comebackit’sdangerouscomebackherecomebacknow!”

  Gregory seemed to have woken up. He glanced in terror at the hole into the other world. He began crab-crawling backward, like a nature film sped up.

  Brian watched Gregory try to move straight away from the hole in the earth. In fact, he moved on a curve, space being bent into a spiral.

  The two of them trod the path backward. They passed houses swaying in the interdimensional breeze. The ground got harder. Trees bobbed. Alien things were wound in their branches — things that had already slithered over from beyond. Dark little eyes watched the boys fight the breeze. Tiny little claws stitched their way along the bark.

  Another ten minutes, and the distortions in time and space had slowed. The boys no longer had to struggle to figure out which way they were walking.

  They were just crossing a lawn near a weird, shuddering house.

  “That was really kind of funny,” said Kalgrash. “I mean, the way you looked all fast like that.”

  “What happened?” said Brian. “You could’ve been lost forever.”

  “Thanks. I know that,” said Gregory. “I was just asking what —”

  “Something … I don’t know what.” Gregory hesitated, trying to think back to why he’d made a run for the portal. “It wasn’t my idea,” he finished peevishly.

  “We’re all confused,” said Brian.

  “Some of us are more confused than others,” said Kalgrash, raising his eyebrows.

  Gregory shot him an irritable look. “At least I know where my house is.”

  “At least if I see time’s giant, gaping nostril, I don’t run and dive into it.”

  “Let’s keep going,” said Brian. The last thing he wanted was to take sides on this one. “We have to get away from the suburb by the time darkness falls, remember.”

  Kalgrash grumbled, “I hope there’s some smiting soon.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Gregory. “There will be.”

  Fifteen minutes later, houses were settling down again. The alien elements — the weird membranous architecture of the Thusser — were diminishing, and walls were staying put. Carefully, Brian, Gregory, and Kalgrash moved away from the center of the development.

  They were having a hard time, however, heading straight for the mountain. First, it was not always visible. Second, the streets never seemed to go exactly the way they wanted them to. Third, the sun was starting to set.

  “It seems like it should still be morning,” said Gregory.

  Brian said, “I don’t get it exactly. If time is slowed down in here, the days should seem longer, but instead they go really quick.”

  And indeed, though the kids were just getting hungry for lunch, and it was summer, when the days should be long, evening was falling. The boys and the troll walked along streets bronzed with low-slanted light. Trees cast shadows of trunks askance across clapboards. Cars were rolling back into the neighborhood, nosing toward their homes. People strolled down their driveways, their business suits blistered with mud from their day’s hypnotic snooze.

  No one seemed to notice a troll begirt like a conquistador, strolling down their street. A cat even came up to him and scampered along gleefully by his ankles.

  “The place doesn’t look so menacing, now,” said Kalgrash. He waved at a drugged-looking financial planner who was pulling elfin circulars out of his mailbox.

  “Except,” Gregory pointed out, “sundown is when we have to be out or the Thusser try to kill us in earnest.”

  “We’ve got to get to the mountain by then,” Brian said. “Let’s walk faster.”

  They did, Kalgrash’s armor clanking.

  “So,” Kalgrash said, “the Thusser are cheating. Breaking the Rules.”

  “That’s what we think,” said Brian.

  “The Norumbegans will be angry. If only we could find some way to tell them.”

  “There must be a way,” said Brian. “Isn’t there? Prudence never told me … I should have studied all of this harder. Here we are, and I don’t know hardly anything about spells or magic.”

  “How is it coming along, the Game?” the troll asked. “I mean, it’s yours, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” said Gregory. “It’s his.” Gregory didn’t sound very happy about that.

  Kalgrash said, “Well, he won. That’s all I mean.”

  Gregory explained, “I let him win.”

  Brian felt a little flare of anger. But he didn’t want to be a jerk to Gregory when Gregory was already depressed for having lost, so he didn’t say anything.

  He just said, “My round was going to be a mystery. I love mystery books, so it was going to be a whole thing with detectives and mobsters. And then the players would find out that the mobsters were mythological, and they’d have to put together clues. I worked out all these clues. I guess it won’t happen now, though.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “The Thusser are breaking the Rules,” Brian insisted. “It’s not going to matter anymore, what I made up.”

  “You were really excited about running the Game.”

  Gregory said, “Of course, he was.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Brian. “Awful things are happening to people here. Much worse than the Game. I can’t believe the Norumbegans would risk everything like they did….”

  “You can still be proud of what you were going to do,” said Kalgrash. “You won, kiddo!”

  “We both won,” said Gregory. “I mean, not technically, but we agreed that Brian had to win.”

  “He won,” Kalgrash insisted.

  “I just,” Brian confided, “I just … I pictured what it would be like to set up a session of the Game, and then I hoped that the Norumbegan player would win, and that the Norumbegans would return. I imagined them coming back from the other world — all of them shining, like we’ve seen them. They’re all dressed c
ool, and they just look … well, you know, you’ve seen them. And I pictured them coming back, and thanking us for saving their kingdom for them. And then maybe we’d meet the other people who’ve arranged the Game over the years. And maybe we could see the City of Gargoyles when it was full of people instead of ghosts. We could visit it whenever we wanted, and there’d be this whole secret world…. And now, you know — none of that.”

  Kalgrash didn’t say anything. He nodded sympathetically, and his armor quietly clanked.

  “But like I said. It doesn’t matter. All these people are trapped here now. They don’t even know what’s happening to them.”

  Gregory said, “They don’t even know there’s a flipping troll walking by right in front of them.”

  “Do you see?” said Kalgrash. “I’m waving like the Queen of England. Cup hand … turn at the wrist … turn at the wrist … turn at the wrist….”

  They walked down the middle of the road. The streets were golden now. The first lights were coming on in houses where families sat down to dinner, or watched television, or performed the quiet deeds of evening. The ovals of glass in front doors hovered above lawns, lit and frosted. Behind the glass, distorted figures took off their shoes.

  “It looks beautiful,” said Kalgrash.

  “Except,” said Gregory, “if I may repeat myself, sunset equals death.”

  “Oh,” said Kalgrash bashfully. “Death. I forgot.”

  Brian said, “Somehow I’ll feel safer once we’re in the caverns.”

  “Righto,” said Kalgrash. “Under the mountain. We want to get to the mountain.”

  “Duh,” said Gregory, somewhat unhelpfully.

  “So it would probably be bad if we were back where we started.” Kalgrash pointed. “At the house with the guy hiding in his floor.”

  There it was. Right down the street.

  The boys stared in surprise.

  Brian whispered, “We must have been turned around when we were at the center of the development. We ended up coming back sideways instead of going straight toward the mountain.”

  “These stupid roads,” Gregory muttered. “They never go straight.”