Through Shattered Glass

by David B. Silva

  And I never looked back.

  It was several weeks later, when I was reading the paper, that I came across an article with a slug that read simply enough: MAN FOUND DEAD IN CELLAR. It was about Jeffries. When the mail had begun to pile up in his box, his delivery man notified the authorities. They ended up breaking into the house, and after a thorough search upstairs, they made their way downstairs to the cellar.

  Jeffries was found lying at the back of a small room, the floor covered with shards of broken glass. They were still trying to determine his age and how long it had been since someone had last seen him, because the man they found at the back of that room looked as if he might have died of malnutrition. There was plenty of food in the cupboards in the kitchen, and authorities were speculating that he had somehow gotten himself downstairs and was unable to get back up again. After all, the article mentioned, he appeared to be well over one hundred years old.

  I took the article with me the next time I went to visit my mother. She was fighting a cold that day, and she was still in bed, so I pulled a chair up and read her the entire piece. At the end, I told her that this Mr. Jeffries was the same man who had emptied her.

  How much of what I told her, she actually absorbed, I guess I'll never know. But when she didn't react, not even with a blink or an attempt to raise a hand, I found myself leaning over her, screaming with a rage that seemed as if it had been boiling at the bottom of a volcano for centuries.

  A nurse came rushing in before I could do anything crazy. She pulled me away, and scolded me as if I were a little boy who had gotten into a scuffle out on the playground during recess. As she hovered over my mother, making sure I hadn't hurt her, I backed into the wall and suddenly became aware of what I had nearly done.

  I had nearly struck her. I had wanted to strike her. I had wanted to knock her on the side of the head until she understood that Jeffries was dead and that I had helped make that decision for him.

  I had wanted to hurt her.

  Oh, my God.

  It was the anger.

  I didn't know why I would have walked out of Jeffries cellar with his anger and only the anger. Maybe I hadn't been as susceptible to the other emotions. Maybe the anger was far more potent. Or maybe this was as much my anger as it was his.

  I just didn't know.

  All I knew was that it was my anger now, and I could feel whatever was left of it still churning inside me.

  The Hollow

  That day, that mystical day when the warm winds of fantasy first whispered secrets in Michael Carpenter's ears, had been long overdue. It was a summer day, parched and windless and climbing toward the low one hundreds. The kind of day a rabid dog might feel just right about. The kind of day twelve-year-old Michael had spent a lifetime waiting for.

  Using a stick of driftwood he had snatched up from the dry, rocky bed of Moss Creek, Michael macheted his way through a field of knee-high grass, looking to kick-up a pheasant or a coyote pup or some such thing. Anything to change the dull routine that shadowed the town of Appleton every January 1st like a dark thundercloud and stayed uninvited all-year round, reminding, always reminding the townspeople that their lives were insipid little lives. He marched helter-skelter through the grass with no particular destination in mind, stopping on occasion and looking back at the serpentine path he had left in his wake, a path that led back home, back to where Cheryl-the-babysitter sat entranced by All My Children or General Hospital or whatever other strip of celluloid nonsense occupied the airwaves at the moment, then he would swallow his loneliness down and turn away again. Off to the wonders of the world, even though in all his summer days of searching he had yet to stumble across anything he could possibly call a wonder.

  But this was a different summer day, a new summer day.

  In his wandering, his searching for marvels, he came upon a lonely oak which guarded a field of grass as a scarecrow might guard acres of corn. As tall as old Mister Potter's barn, the oak reached skyward on the strength of four arms. The frayed end of a thick cord rope dangled from one arm and Michael knew a swing had once swayed from the mighty branch, swayed with the laughter of summer children and autumn winds. Through the mesh of tiny leaves, the sun slithered and seeped until it fell across his face in a web of spider-lines. And he decided the little bit of shade wasn't all that bad an idea about then.

  He slid down the lumpy trunk of the great oak until his butt rested comfortably in the soft, dusty dirt.

  If cousin Brian were there, they would tell jokes about school and Buddy Markham and maybe even Cheryl-the-babysitter. And they would laugh out loud before their eyes would meet and suddenly, like two dogs face-to-face in a stand-off, they would each grow perfectly still until one of them couldn't hold it any longer and he would snicker and instantly a wrestling match would break out. Clouds of dirt would fly then, drifting back to earth, back to their squeals of laughter. And it wouldn't seem so hot.

  And it wouldn't seem so lonely.

  If Brian were there.

  Michael sighed.

  Then, as he watched a black ant scurrying madly about, herky-jerky here and there, something long and thin and alive soft-slithered out of the hollow of the great oak, floated over the loose dirt and in a blink, sucked the frantic ant from the face of the earth.

  Michael Carpenter's eyes nearly exploded from their sockets.

  The long, slender something – it was surely alive – slithered back into the hidden safety of the old oak hollow.

  And Michael listened as the world suddenly held its breath, hushed by the wonder of what it had seen, waiting expectantly for what would happen next.

  "God, did you see that?" he shouted. "Did you see that?"

  He was on his feet, staring at the dark hollow of the tree, keeping a safe distance in case the adventurous tentacle – it was a tentacle, wasn't it? like the wiggly arm of an octopus? – might dare to snake out into the sunlight again.

  "Did you see that?"

  It was something incredible, something so wondrous that the town of Appleton would just have to come alive again. Appleton would just have to stir awake from its Rip Van Winkle slumber now. And all because of him. All because Michael Carpenter was in the right place at the right time and had witnessed the weedy arm gobbling up a no-good black ant.

  He held tight to the stick of driftwood as he stepped within an arm's length of the hollow. It was dark inside, and quiet.

  "I know you're in there," he said, giving the trunk a whack with his stick. "I saw you gobble that ant."

  Yes, I'm here.

  He heard the words in his head. The something was talking to him, talking right inside his head like his very own thoughts did. Like it was right there inside his head with him, filling up the weird furrowed canals of his brain.

  "Come out," he said. "I want to see what you look like."

  But his head was quiet.

  "I won't tell anyone, I promise." As if it made a difference, as if a promise made to a something, would otherwise have to be kept, he crossed his fingers behind his back. "Please?"

  The raw tip of a tentacle reached cautiously from the darkness. Pink and moist and looking as if a finger-touch would sink deep into its flesh, the tentacle arched skyward, allowing a line of squirming feelers to sniff the air.

  Michael moved back a step.

  "Come on," he said. "I won't hurt you."

  Then another tentacle ventured forth.

  And another.

  And another.

  Until there were six in all, six long slender arms that reached and probed from a strangely-formed body with two dark eyes and a mouth lined with rows of teeth, like the shark-mouth he had seen on television once.

  "Wow!" he shouted, feeling his heart pounding against his chest. And he took another retreating step.

  The thing—now that he had seen all of it, it wasn't any longer a something, it was a thing—seemed bothered by the sunlight. Translucent inner lids, like crocodile eyes, opened and closed with a slow, purposef
ul motion. And it stared with a wonder of its own at the young boy before finally extending a single tentacle in Michael's direction.

  The pink flesh wrapped itself harmlessly around his finger, feeling like the soft belly of a snake.

  "That tickles," he said with a smile.

  Then, as if hurt by the comment, the probing tentacle unwound itself from his tiny index finger, and raised a cloud of dust as it fell back to the ground and slithered away.

  "I'm sorry."

  Huge eyes blinked as if they didn't understand.

  "I didn't mean to scare you."

  It's hot, the thing said in his head. And it waddled back into the shade of the hollow, back so far in the darkness that nothing was left to be seen. As if there had never been a thing at all.

  "Go on, take a look," Michael told her. "It's there, honest it is."

  Cheryl-the-babysitter was kneeling before the hollow of the oak. She had fussed about coming all the way out to the great tree, complaining that she would miss the end of General Hospital. But he had insisted. Even after she had accused him of being a liar, of having an overactive imagination, he had insisted that she come, and he had taken her by the hand and dragged her away from the RCA. After all, she was the babysitter, she was being paid to look after him, wasn't she?"

  "I don't see anything," she insisted, whisking a fallen strand of hair back behind her ear. "If you're lying to me, Michael Carpenter, I'll lock you in your bedroom for a week. I swear I will."

  "It's there." This wasn't one of his made-up stories. Not like the tale about a man with a mask and long knife that he had seen slipping through the back bedroom window. No, this wasn't anything like that. This was real. "It had six arms with little feelers on the bottom that wiggled and squirmed like white baby worms."

  "That's sick," she said, and she started to rise. But before she could, a soft, pink tentacle slithered out from the dark hollow and wrapped itself around her ankle.

  "I told you," Michael shouted. "I told you!"

  Then a second tentacle wrapped itself around her other ankle. And while

  Michael was feeling so happy about the sudden appearance, so happy that he wouldn't be thought a liar, the other tentacles were suddenly all there, wrapping around Cheryl-the-babysitter, choking off gurgling screams before they even had a chance to leave her throat.

  "No!" Michael screamed. "You're not supposed to do that!" He tried.

  He tried to keep the from pulling Cheryl-the-babysitter into the hollow, into the dark of the hollow where no one would ever hear from her again. But the thing was stronger than him. And it had six arms instead of only two. And ... and it was hungry.

  That's what it told him. Hungry, it said in his head.

  Michael fell to his knees and watched in silence until the dust had settled again. Hungry kept sounding in his head. Just hungry. His eyes followed the tiny drops of moisture leading a path back to the hollow, a thin crust of dirt floating innocently atop the moist redness.

  "No!" he screamed, but the scream was trapped somewhere inside his head, trapped with his understanding of what had happened. "You weren't supposed to do that."

  Then everything was suddenly too quiet.

  Michael wiped away the tears that had stained his face. He looked over his shoulder, back at the path that led home, wondering if he should follow it, wondering if Cheryl-the-babysitter would still be there watching the last of General Hospital, wondering if there was the slightest chance it had all been a nightmare.

  But he knew better.

  Appleton was still asleep back there, minus Cheryl-the-babysitter, but still yawning at its own apathy just the same, as if nothing had ever happened. Nothing at all.

  But something had happened.

  Things had changed.

  Everything had changed.

  And Michael had to tell someone. He couldn't simply keep it a secret. Even though he had discovered the even though he had practically fed Cheryl-the-babysitter to it, he couldn't keep what had happened a secret. No, that wouldn't do at all.

  Not at all.

  He had to tell someone.

  Oh God, he had to tell someone.

  "In there," he said, pointing an uncertain finger. "Back where it's dark like the bottom of Spinner's Pond. Back inside where your eyes can't see nothing."

  "You sure?" Brian asked. He knelt in the dirt, trying to see into the darkness without venturing too near the hollow. He wanted to believe, Michael could see that he wanted to believe. Even though he was a year older than Michael, he was hoping that there really was a hiding in the old oak, still munching on Cheryl-the-babysitter. "Don't look like there's enough room in there for a whole body. You really sure?"

  "Room enough," Michael said.

  Then, in a soft-whisper, a slender pink arm of the thing was there, wrapping itself around cousin Brian like they were long-lost friends, and dragging him screaming back into the hollow.

  Michael's muscles locked when he tried to move. He wanted to cup his hands over his ears, wanted to shut-out the high-pitched screams that were calling his name, screaming for him to do something about the hungry. But what could he do? It had so many arms, was so much stronger than his twelve-year-old body.

  And then he remembered the stick of driftwood he had snatched from the bed of Moss Creek.

  And the stick was suddenly in his hand.

  And with all his strength, he let the stick fall against the soft pink flesh of the

  ... again

  ... and again

  ... and again

  until the had disappeared into the darkness of the hollow, disappeared with cousin Brian under arm, back into the world of the old oak where no one would ever know what it had done.

  No one but Michael.

  Then the stick slipped from his fingers, falling lifeless to the ground, lifeless like cousin Brian must be, lifeless like Cheryl-the-babysitter must be.

  All because the thing was hungry.

  And he cried.

  He studied the trail left by the dragging, and the bright red moisture which spotted the ground, and the redness which coated the end of the stick. And he cried because they were both dead now, because what had begun as such a special day had ended so terribly wrong.

  It wasn't supposed to be hungry.

  It was supposed to be friendly, just friendly.

  That's all.

  She stood behind him, his mother did, holding him by the shoulders as he stared through seemingly lifeless eyes at the flashing blue and red lights.

  It was dusk now, the sun was sinking beyond the line of distant oak trees which lined Spinner's Pond. The evening air was quickly cooling down the town of Appleton.

  Cousin Brian and Cheryl-the-babysitter had been taken away in black, zippered bags. Michael's mother had held her hands over his eyes when the bodies had spilled out from the hollow, but he'd already known what they would look like.

  "Just playing," he had answered when someone asked how he had found the bodies. He didn't tell them about the thing. They wouldn't have believed him anyway. It was the sort of thing adults wouldn't believe if it came from the mouth of a young boy. And he was only twelve, old enough now that he shouldn't be making up stories. Even when they showed him the murder weapon, a big old stick of driftwood all wrapped in plastic, he didn't tell them about the Though he thought the stick looked familiar, thought he could almost feel it in his hands as it came crashing down against the soft pink flesh of ...

  (cousin Brian's skull?)

  (Cheryl-the-babysitter's chubby face?) ... the thing.

  But there was nothing to say, nothing he could add. Enough rumors were already spreading through the town about the drifter that had been seen sleeping under the great oak the night before, the drifter that maybe stopped just long enough to stuff cousin Brian and Cheryl-the-babysitter into the hollow before moving along again.

  There was nothing he could add to that.

  Nothing he wanted to add.

  There was only one thin
g that really mattered now. Something wondrous had finally happened to the sleepy-eyed town of Appleton. Something the townsfolk would be talking about for years to come. And if Michael Carpenter could only tell the truth, it might keep the good folks of Appleton talking forever more. But it was their secret, just between the two of them – Michael and the thing. Because they had both known that morning that Appleton needed a little excitement if it was ever to shake loose from its Rip Van Winkle slumber.

  And now sleepy-eyed Appleton was as wide awake as ever.

  Nothing As It Seems

  1.

  Will Cassidy doesn't talk about it anymore. Neither does his daughter, Chantal, who was eleven when it happened and is almost twenty-eight today. In fact, no one in Kingston Mills talks about it. But that doesn't make it any less their history.

  2.

  For six weeks after Will Cassidy's eleven-year-old daughter Chantal had turned up missing, life had been a walk-through, a dreamlike, timeless state of drinking coffee to stay awake, of adrenaline pumping every time the phone rang, of trying to find an answer to the one question everyone was asking: How could this be happening in Kingston Mills?

  Chantal's disappearance wasn't the first, though she was the second youngest, right after Bobby Cutler, who was only nine when he vanished. The very first person to disappear was Elmo Stanton, 67, who lived in a small one-bedroom apartment that sat over the Mills Hardware store on Main Street. Elmo had owned and operated the store for a good many years, as had his father before him and his grandfather before that. The Stantons had been one of the first settlers in Kingston Mills.

  He had lost his wife to congestive heart failure three years before his disappearance, and though you could still find him at the Community Center on Bingo Night or at the hardware store during working hours, you didn't see as much of him around town as you once did. That was why it wasn't until midday on a Monday, when the store still hadn't opened, that someone finally became worried and a search was begun.