by Tim Curran
The last thing she heard was the sound of Ted’s belt against Rachel’s flesh (thwack, thwack, thwack, over and over again) and Rachel screaming, “No, Daddy, no no nooooooooooo!”
Then blackness.
December 3, 1965
Mary wandered along John F. Kennedy Drive, tugging her coat collar tight against the bitter cold and giving the store windows only desultory glances. Although the afternoon was gray and misty, she wore her big tortoise-shell sunglasses.
The street’s Christmas decorations gleamed and twinkled in stark and colorful contrast to the gloomy backdrop of the day. People bustled to and fro, bright packages in their mittened hands, and Mary knew that the crowds would only get thicker, the streets and stores busier, between now and the big day. She looked at the people passing by, at their seemingly happy faces, and felt utterly alone.
Mary knew she should be home doing Friday’s chores—Ted liked the house to be spick and span come the weekend—but the walls had started closing in on her, and she thought if she didn’t get out for a while she would simply suffocate. So she’d thrown on her coat and dashed out the door, turning a deaf ear to the frightened voice in the back of her mind: Ted won’t like coming home to a dirty house, you know. Won’t like it at all. He’d most likely get upset and… well, she knew what would happen then, didn’t she? But that didn’t stop her. Because she was used to it by now. At least, that’s what she tried to tell herself. Used to the pain. The fear. Deep down, she knew that wasn’t true, of course. The real truth was that, sometimes, even fear was not enough to hold back the need to feel free, if only for a little while.
She started to feel dizzy, experienced a light, fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach, like when you floated over a hill in a fast-moving car or plunged headlong toward the earth on a roller coaster. She braced her hand against the wall of a nearby building for support, her head spinning unpleasantly. When a man paused on the sidewalk and inquired in a far-away voice whether she was all right, Mary thought she answered yes, though she couldn’t be sure.
She waited, nauseated, for the vertigo to ebb. It seemed interminable. Finally she gathered herself, took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and resumed her trek down JFK Drive. Or what she had thought was JFK. But when Mary reached the intersection, she saw that she stood on the corner of Keeling Street and Fourth Avenue. She was confused. Fourth Avenue was right where it should be, but how had she gotten off of JFK Drive without being aware of it? Not only that, but she knew this part of town like the back of her hand, and she had never even heard of Keeling Street.
She stopped a young woman passing by with a toddler in tow.
“Excuse me. Isn’t this John F. Kennedy Drive?”
The woman looked at Mary as if she thought she might be joking. Then she asked it out loud. “Are you kidding?”
“Um. No.”
“Don’t they usually wait until someone’s dead before they name a street after them?” the woman asked. The toddler, a little boy, goggled up at Mary.
Mary stared at her. What in the world was this woman talking about?
The woman’s expression went from amused to puzzled, then turned to concern. She searched Mary’s face intently, tried to scan the eyes behind the dark sunglasses, and Mary felt her face flush despite the cold.
“Are you okay, honey?” the woman asked.
“Unee,” the boy echoed.
“I’m fine,” Mary muttered absently. “Thank you.” She turned and stepped off the curb, and jumped at the sound of a blaring horn and screeching tires. She gaped at the wide-eyed man behind the wheel, her legs turning to water. The smell of burnt rubber filled her nostrils. The driver leaned out his window.
“Jeez Louise, lady! Watch where you’re goin’ why dont’cha!”
Mary stepped back up onto the curb and pressed her palm to her heaving chest in an effort to keep her heart from tearing itself loose and jumping out onto the sidewalk. She tried to say she was sorry to the irate man, but her lips couldn’t form the words. He rolled on through the intersection, shaking his head. It was then that she noticed the make and model of the car. It was a white Ford Galaxie 500. She should know: Ted drove the exact same one. Except there on the front quarter panel, where the chrome Galaxie 500 logo should be attached, it said Impel.
Ford Impel?
“Miss, are you sure you’re okay?”
Mary turned and saw the woman with the toddler staring at her. The boy’s mouth formed an O. Mary nodded, looked both ways on Fourth Avenue, then crossed and continued along Keeling Street.
Mary had read the phrase her mind reeled before, but never had she fully grasped it until now. As she walked along a street that should by all rights have been named after their slain president, Mary began searching for other incongruities. It didn’t take long to spot one. In the window of a record shop, an album cover leaned against a portable record player. It showed the rock group, the Beatles, whose music Rachel was absolutely crazy about. Mary enjoyed their music too, though she would never admit it to Ted, a devout George Jones fan. She thought their songs were catchy and clever. She’d become familiar with their faces from the posters in Rachel’s room, and had heard her daughter coo their names enough times, though the only one she could ever remember was Ringo.
The cover in the window was of the band’s new album, Rubber Soul, released that very day. The Fab Four stared at the camera, the album title appearing above their heads in fat orange letters. Except Ringo was missing. In his place stood a young man Mary had never seen before, his hairstyle unlike his band mates’ “mop tops.” It looked more like Elvis’s Pompadour. Their first names had been dashed off next to their faces. His simply said Pete.
Mary frowned at the cover for a long time.
Farther down the street she froze in front of a store called Dave’s Fine Appliances. In the window were a trio of televisions displayed at different levels. All three were tuned to the same station, which showed footage of a man in a spacesuit hopping around on some dusty, desolate surface. A small tinny-sounding speaker was connected to the upper corner of the store’s doorjamb so that passersby could hear, as well as watch, whatever was happening on those screens. Accompanying the footage of the spaceman was the familiar voice of Walter Cronkite:
“And here we see astronaut John Herman, the first man ever to walk on the surface of the moon. These images were captured only minutes after Scorpio Seven’s historic landing four days ago, November twenty-ninth, Nineteen Sixty-five.”
The scene switched to Cronkite himself, seated behind his desk. He was pinching the bridge of his nose, presumably wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. “I never get tired of watching that,” he said.
Mary was stunned.
She whirled around to share her excitement with someone, anyone.
But, of course, these people already knew.
We landed on the moon, she thought, astonished. In this place, anyway. Wherever this place is.
Her eyes were drawn to a man across the street. He was leaning in the open doorway of a building with the uninspiring name PAWN SHOP over the entrance. He was tall, thin, with skin so pale and hair so white/blond that he might have been an albino. He leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed, dressed in ragged blue jeans and a black t-shirt with the word NIRVANA across the chest in bold white letters. The man was completely out of place. Like a clown at a cocktail party. Yet no one else appeared to notice him at all.
He looked straight at her. The corners of his thin lips curled up in a smile, and his hand rose like the head of a cobra from a wicker basket. With a slim index finger he motioned for her to approach him.
She did, feeling almost as if she were floating across Keeling Street. When she stood before him, he said, “Hi, sweetness.”
His irises were so pale blue they looked liked ice chips, and something indefinable moved (writhed?) behind them, stirring within Mary several different emotions at once. One of those stirrings found its insidious way between he
r legs, and Mary was mortified. Even more so when he gave her a knowing smile. Her face burned, and the fire spread down her neck to her torso.
“You looking for something?” His voice was like silk.
“I…that is…” Mary felt the same way she had as a school girl, tongue-tied with one of the cute boys or popular girls. But she was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake. And this man wasn’t even all that attractive. Odd, yes, but certainly not handsome. Still, she couldn’t deny he possessed a kind of…quality. A strange magnetism. She felt that tickle down there again and thought her face would burst into flames at any moment.
“A Christmas gift for the hubby, perhaps?”
Mary gasped, and realized she had not been breathing. She exhaled the word, “Yes,” in a relieved rush of air.
“I think I have just the thing.” He gave her a sly, conspiratorial wink. “C’mon inside.”
He turned and disappeared into the store. Mary followed, or at least started to. She halted just past the threshold, her eyes unable to penetrate the dimness of the interior.
“You’re gonna have to take those shades off, you wanna see,” he called from deeper inside the room.
Mary hesitated.
“It’s okay,” he said. “No judgment here.”
How does he know? she wondered, her heart speeding up.
“I’m psychic,” he said, as if indeed reading her mind.
Mary stayed where she was. She heard boots scuffing against a wooden floor as he moved across the room.
“Actually,” he said, “I’m just not stupid. A woman sporting dark sunglasses on a day like today usually means, one) she’s blind, which you ain’t, two) she’s got one humdinger of a hangover, which could be the case, but my spidey sense tells me otherwise, or three) somebody’s been tuning up on her face. Number three’s my guess.”
Mary reached up and dragged the glasses off her face, revealing what she knew was an unlovely black and purple bruise around her right eye.
“Well now,” the man said, and Mary heard a tightness in his voice, “give the man a cigar.”
He stood behind a long counter in a room shaped like a boxcar. A dusty hardwood floor stretched away toward the rear. The place appeared to be cram-packed with every kind of knick-knack and gewgaw imaginable: antique lamps; clocks (one, a black and white cat whose golf ball eyes swiveled disturbingly back and forth, counting off the seconds); cheap artwork; record players and radios; guitars; various containers; watches and jewelry and pistols (behind a glass case under the counter), and a million sundry other items. On the wall behind the counter, like a formation of soldiers, stood a row of long guns.
“Step right up, little lady,” the pale man invited.
Mary approached the counter.
He bent down and appeared to reach into a section under the counter where a sign that read WE BUY AND SELL leaned against the inside of the glass, obstructing her view. In that moment something told her she should leave. Right then. Get out and retrace her steps back along Keeling Street until it somehow, impossibly, became JFK Drive again. Get to the bus stop. Go home. And try to forget this upside down day ever happened.
Then something else told her no. She had to stay, must stay. It was that same feeling from before, the one that recognized her need to feel free, if only for a while. She didn’t know why this should be, but then she didn’t understand anything anymore.
The man stood up, and on the countertop he placed a simple wooden container the size and shape of a cigar box.
“I think this little item is just what ol’ hubby needs,” he said, smiling.
Mary looked curiously at the box.
“Yes,” the man said, “I do believe it’s just what he deserves.”
Now the man’s expression turned sober. His mouth formed a grim line.
“Now, whatever you do, Mary,” he said. “Don’t touch it.”
“How do you know…” Mary’s voice trailed off, because the pale man had opened the box.
And what was inside was the most terrible thing she had ever seen.
December 25, 1965
Mary set the stack of pancakes down on the kitchen table, then settled herself gingerly onto her chair. Her rear end still stung from Ted’s belt. He’d taken her over his knee the night before because, according to him, Mary had “sassed” him when he came home from Mickey’s Bar, spoiling his Christmas cheer. In truth, all she had done was ask him to take his slushy boots off at the front door so he wouldn’t track the mess inside. It was Friday evening, after all, and she had waxed the floor that day, and cleaned the house within an inch of its life. Mary had made sure to do this every Friday since that particular Friday she visited the pawn shop with the mysterious pale man. Because that day she never got around to cleaning up, and Ted punished her severely for her laziness.
When Mary left the pawn shop that day, the wooden box poking from the top of her purse, she stepped out onto John F. Kennedy Drive. Across the street, Dave’s Fine Appliances was once again the Soap-N-Suds Laundromat. And when she turned around, she wasn’t at all surprised to see no pawn shop there. The entire building, in fact, was just…gone. In its place stood an empty lot. She went directly home and did what the pale man had told her to do.
Then she waited.
In a sudden motion, Ted reached across the table for the bottle of syrup. Rachel, who sat across from Mary, flinched. She did that a lot these days. Mary ate her breakfast silently, each bite slow and deliberate. It was the longest meal of her life.
But finally it was over, and following their tradition, carried over from Ted’s childhood, they all repaired to the living room to gather around the fake tree, drink eggnog, and open their gifts, each in turn. Rachel was first. She received a pair of plaid skirts with complimentary tops, the Beatles’ new Rubber Soul album (this one with Ringo’s face on the cover), and a new record player to spin it on. Rachel squealed with delight over the record, and hugged both her parents. But Mary couldn’t help noticing Rachel’s lip curl in distaste while embracing her dad.
Next it was Mary’s turn. She got a new iron, a Toastmaster toaster—“Maybe now you’ll quit burning it,” Ted told her—and some pots and pans.
“Last but not least,” Mary said, reaching under the tree and retrieving a package wrapped in shiny red paper and topped with a green bow. Ted sat on the sofa, glassy-eyed from the splash of rum he’d added to his eggnog. She placed the present on the coffee table in front of her husband. It was about the size of a cigar box.
Ted gave her a look that contained one part appreciation and two parts warning. “You better not have spent too much on this.”
“No, Ted.” In truth, she hadn’t paid a dime.
Ted’s eyes gazed into hers with dark promise for another few seconds. Then he grinned.
“Well, all right then,” Ted said, and began unwrapping his gift. While he was thus occupied, Mary looked from where she was seated on the floor up at Rachel, who sat on the footstool, her new album on her lap. Rachel looked back at her.
Mary gazed intently at Rachel for a long moment, turned her eyes away and fixed them on Ted’s present, then looked back at her daughter once more. Mary gave a slight nod.
Realization dawned in Rachel’s eyes. Her mouth became a grim line. She nodded back.
She understood. Maybe not everything. But enough.
“What have we here?” Ted said. Before him sat a simple wooden box.
“Merry Christmas, Ted,” said Mary.
Ted opened the box.
“Wha—?”
Mary saw darkness gathering around the box. Heard a rush of air. She flinched when it exploded into splinters as the thing inside it expanded. It was a perfect black circle. A hole. And the light of day in its immediate vicinity was being sucked into it.
So was Ted.
He tried to rise, to tear himself away. But the hole was far too powerful. Far too hungry.
Like a mouth, Mary thought.
She stood up to get a better
look, and from the corner of her eye saw that Rachel was also getting to her feet. They watched.
The noise of air rushing into opening was deafening, like a jet engine, and Mary felt her ears pop.
Ted screamed, but even the sound of that was being sucked down the hole. He braced his hands against the top of the coffee table on either side of the aperture, every muscle in his body straining in an effort to prevent being sucked in like a spider through a vacuum cleaner tube.
When Rachel started to take a step forward, Mary shouted at her to stop. She remembered the pale man saying not to get too close once the box was opened, that the hole was unbiased. Which was why he exhorted her to wrap the box the minute she arrived home with it, and by no means to open it.
The pall of darkness expanded around the hole as Ted battled for his life.
“Mary…please. Help me!” he shrieked, but the words were torn from his lips and swept away. Mary now fought to draw a breath. It was as if she were trying to suck the air into her lungs through a straw. She glanced over and saw that Rachel struggled as well. Her chest was heaving up and down.
The hole widened again, and Ted’s left hand plunged inside. He tumbled into the darkness, but at the last second his right hand caught on the rim. He reached out and clawed at the coffee table, seized its edge. Mary didn’t understand how the table could still be standing there, intact, despite being almost completely breached by the hole. It hurt her mind to look at it.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe, and the scream of rushing air was pressing painfully against her eardrums.
She looked at Rachel. “We’ve got to get out of here!” she yelled. “If we don’t we’re going to suffocate—”
“Mom, look!” Rachel pointed at the hole.
Mary looked. And saw another hand, mottled and gray, reaching out of the hole to grasp Ted’s hand. It was twice a large as Ted’s hand, however, and its fingers—all six of them—were tipped with sharp black claws. It enclosed Ted’s hand, and then dragged it out of sight.
