The Edge of Over There

by Shawn Smucker

She stared at the ladder that led down into the darkness.

  “Keep going down,” Mr. Henry said. “And you’ll find it leads you home.”

  Abra took one step down and stopped. “You’re going to have to go first,” she said. “I’d rather not leave with you two standing there staring at me.”

  Mr. Henry gave a small, gentle laugh. “Can you pull the trapdoor down behind you when you go?” he asked. “We can’t be leaving doors open. Goodness knows there are too many open doors as it is.”

  Abra nodded. Mr. Henry looked at her for a moment as if checking for something in her face, something that needed to be there. He seemed to find it because he smiled again.

  “I’ll see you soon,” he said.

  He turned away and walked out of the room, and Ruby followed, looking over her shoulder.

  Then they were gone.

  Abra’s feet dangled down into the darkness, and it reminded her of the darkness in the forest that lined the dirt road that went into the city, or the darkness in the prison room when she had confronted Beatrice. She realized she wasn’t afraid of the darkness anymore. She had been in it enough times to know that darkness is nothing but fear, and fear is nothing if you go straight through it.

  Fear always comes with a door, a door that leads straight through.

  A breeze blew through a window barely opened, and Abra could smell the sweet scent of azaleas and summer dirt and blue sky. She could smell the tall trees and the fallen needles and could hear insects chirping and squeaking and buzzing. She thought it was a good thing to be alive, to be there in that room, that city. She thought about the Edge of Over There, and the water, and what the telescope had shown her Over There, and she knew she would be ready to go when it was her time, but for now she was content to be Abra Miller, and to follow the path in front of her.

  She stood up, not because she was scared but because she wanted to see something. The house was quiet and heavy, like the feeling that settles in after a sigh. She walked quickly to the front door and opened it and looked down the road, south, away from the graveyard. She found what she was looking for.

  Mr. Henry and Ruby walked side by side down the sidewalk. He was large and imposing, scary with his shiny head and his tattoos. He had somehow pulled out a change of clothes, so he wasn’t covered in blood anymore, but he was still rather scary.

  Beside him, Ruby was tiny and fragile, like a flower that had recently blossomed. She looked up at him, but he didn’t return her gaze. After she looked away from him, he looked down at her, and they walked on.

  44

  ABRA CLIMBED DOWN THE LADDER, and when she was all the way in the hole, she pulled the trapdoor down, closed it. It latched into place. There was no going back out. She took another step down, another rung, and found the darkness peaceful, almost comforting. She stopped for a moment and wondered where she was. She thought there were a lot of places on earth that weren’t really on earth, a lot of passageways and corridors that could take us beyond what we know, into the margins. She took another step down, and another.

  The rungs under her feet broke, and she dangled by her hands, grunting with the effort it took to hold on. The rungs her hands held splintered and she fell back, felt like she was spinning, and she still clung to a broken rung in her hand. Everything went black.

  When she opened her eyes, she was on the floor of her bedroom, and instead of a ladder rung she was clutching her sword. In the other hand, she held tight to Mr. Henry’s letter. In front of her was the atlas opened to the city of New Orleans, and the name of the city was circled in red.

  Abra stood and took a deep breath. She hid the sword between her mattress and the box spring, and relief rose inside of her when she turned away from it. There was a weight to it that would not show up on any scale.

  She walked down the stairs, holding her breath as she went, dreading her mother’s response. She heard her little brother playing. It was a normal sound, an everyday sound—it was not the sound of buildings falling or angels crashing together. It wasn’t the sound of the faraway water or the particular sound made when the leaves from the Tree of Life died and were swept away. No, it was an ordinary sound, and it was beautiful.

  “Look at you! You’re a mess!” Abra’s mother said to him as Abra came around the corner, into the kitchen.

  When her mother saw her, her eyes went wide, and the dishrag she held in her hands fell lifelessly to the floor. Her mother slowly raised her hands to her face and covered everything but her eyes, which were already welling with tears.

  “Oh my,” she said through her fingers, and everything was in those two words, everything in the world.

  “Mom,” Abra said, standing completely still. “I’m sorry.”

  Her mother walked quickly across the kitchen and hugged her and picked her up in the hug, and they wept and held each other. Her brother started laughing, so Abra went to him and pinched his cheeks and kissed his face through her own tears. She handed Mr. Henry’s letter to her mother.

  “Oh my,” her mother said before she even opened it, and she had to sit in one of the kitchen chairs or she would have fallen over. And there was everything in those two words, everything all over again, except a different kind of everything, and Abra suddenly realized that her mother knew much more about all of this than she had ever let on.

  “Abra,” she said, pulling a chair over beside her. “We need to talk.”

  45

  Samuel

  WHEN IT SNOWS IN DEEN, when it really snows, and you’re sitting beside a farmhouse window looking out over empty fields, the snow is everything. There is nothing else in the world but those swirling flakes, the tinny sound of them against the glass, the gusts that rattle the panes. When it snows in Deen, I can hardly imagine anything more beautiful.

  I stare out the window as the weight of Mr. Henry’s story sinks in. We sat there for days, never leaving, barely sleeping. He talked long into the night, and only occasionally did I interrupt him with a question or a comment.

  Have you ever done that? Have you ever stepped out of your life for days at a time to listen to one single story? Maybe read a book without stopping? When you come back out of it, when you return to life from the midst of that story, you are a transformed being. You will never be quite the same again, no matter how hard you try to return to your old self. Stories will do that if we let them. They’ll work their way inside, to the deepest parts, and they’ll live there, and they’ll change us.

  Mr. Henry stares at me as he finishes his story.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” I say. “Why did Mrs. Miller have to talk to Abra?”

  He holds up a finger, asking me to wait, searches through his pockets, and pulls out a small black book. He clears his throat and reads from it.

  “When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.”

  “Angels married women?” I ask. “And had children?”

  Mr. Henry sighs. “I still don’t like it when you use that word. But yes, it’s true. We’re not all feathers and light, as you and your kind seem to think.”

  I clear my throat and stare down at the table. A realization enters my mind, something that makes everything else fit together. Yet I cannot say it out loud. I look up at Mr. Henry, and he nods.

  “So you were the uncle in New Orleans?”

  He nods.

  “And if you and Mrs. Miller were brother and sister . . . ” My voice trails off.

  He nods, content to wait while I connect the dots.

  “So . . . Mrs. Miller was one of you?”

  �
�At least partially so.” He stares at me as if I still haven’t quite gotten all of it. “Many years ago,” he says slowly, “two young girls wandered into the valley from the surrounding mountains. Their parents were never identified. They were adopted by a kind woman. They grew up in Deen.”

  In the silence I can hear the snow tinging against the windows.

  “They raised families here in Deen,” he says.

  “And one of them was Abra’s mother?” I ask.

  He nods.

  “And the other one was . . . ” My words freeze in place because I know. A strange sense of urgency rises up inside of me, a combination of realization and denial.

  “The other girl was my mother,” I say.

  He stares at me, waiting.

  “So my mother . . .” I begin, then stop again. My words are coming in fits and starts, unable to keep up with the new information.

  “Yes?”

  “My mother was one of you too. That’s why she was speaking with Tennin and Mrs. Miller about the Tree of Life.”

  Mr. Henry nods. “Your mother’s mother was entirely human,” he says. “But your mother’s father . . . Well, he was not.”

  There is a moment in time when all the gears to a problem begin clicking together, when all the bolts slide the right way and the cogs begin to turn and it all ends in a realization too stunning for words. But I manage to speak again, even when I don’t think I can.

  “So, the pool Abra looked into was right. My mother knew the tree would be struck by lightning, didn’t she?” Tears gather in the corners of my eyes. “And she took my place.”

  Mr. Henry sighs. “The vision I told you about, the one Abra saw in the clear pool on the plain of stone, was true. Tennin was here when you were a child. He warned your mother that you would die in a tree struck by lightning.”

  He pauses.

  “But these are all other stories, ones we do not currently have the time to tell or explore further.”

  “We’re out of time?” I ask, not sure how that could possibly be. “We’ve spent days on this story. What’s a few more?”

  “I haven’t come here simply to tell you stories, Samuel,” he says.

  I look up at him, and because of how he said my name, I don’t want to know why he’s here anymore, because I can tell he’s about to say something I don’t want to hear. But he tells me anyway.

  “You’re dying, Samuel.”

  He lets the words sink in. I think of the Tree and the water and Over There. I think of the city and the door in the crypt and the shimmering fruit. I feel like I’m on the edge of the greatest adventure of all.

  “But that’s not everything, is it?” I ask. “You need me for something.”

  He smiles. “Yes, of course.”

  I wait for him to say what it is, what mission brought him into my kitchen. I wait in the silence of that snowy day, but when he doesn’t say anything, I have to ask.

  “What is it? What do you need me to do?”

  He looks surprised that I don’t already know, that I have not somehow deciphered my mission from his days-long story, and he chuckles to himself, whispering things that sound like words, exclamations. He shakes his head and laughs, and his laugh fills me with an anticipation I have never felt before. It’s like the feeling you get on the last day of winter, or when you first wake up on your birthday.

  Finally, he comes out and says it.

  “The sword has come to you for a reason. We need your help to kill the Last Tree.”

  Samuel

  I WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD, and because I was crouched down in left field, picking at random blades of grass and not paying attention, I didn’t notice the darkness gathering in the west. My father signed me up for baseball every year, even though I wasn’t very interested in a game that seemed to be made up mostly of standing around and waiting, and on that particular day I was feeling happy the season was almost over. I stared at a small ant pile and poked at it, spreading panic. The ants dashed here and there, trying to rebuild what I had brushed away in an instant.

  I heard the faint sound of distant thunder.

  It would be remembered as the summer of storms. Nearly every week, massive dark clouds rumbled down over the western mountain range and drenched the valley. The fields outside of town were green from all the rain, and the creeks were muddy and full, bulging at the seams.

  While I heard the distant thunder, it wasn’t enough to get my attention, and I continued tormenting the ants. I glanced up at the parking lot and noticed that my mother wasn’t there yet, which was unusual because she almost always came to pick me up well before practice was over. She normally parked up from third base and sat on the hood of the car, her feet on the bumper, until I saw her and waved. Then she’d get out a book and read until practice was over.

  I had never had to wait for her before.

  I heard a loud ping come from home plate, and I looked at the batter, maybe 150 feet away. It was Stony DeWitt, the biggest kid on the team, and he slammed a screamer that was rising, sailing over my head. I left the ants to recover what they had lost and started running back, back, back. The rest of the kids shouted at me to hurry. We grew tired of Stony hitting home runs every time he was up to bat, and we roared with delight whenever we could get him out.

  The ball traced an arc over my head, bounced, and rolled to the short outfield fence. Beyond the fence was the town of Deen, Pennsylvania, which was nothing more than the intersection of two roads.

  I reached for the ball, and the instant I touched it—the very instant, I tell you—lightning struck, and it was so close that the thunder clapped at the same time. It scared me and I dropped the ball. There are times in those kinds of storms when you begin to feel that there is no safe place, that the lightning will strike anywhere, that you have a target on your back and it’s just a matter of time.

  My breath caught in my throat and I scrambled after the ball, my insides jumping every which way. I turned to run toward the safety of the infield, but I realized the baseball diamond was empty. The lightning had scattered the kids to their parents’ cars. Even Mr. Pelle, my baseball coach, who smoked the delicious-smelling pipe full of cherry tobacco, was running up the small hill to the parking lot, one hand holding a rubber home plate over his head, the other dragging a large red canvas equipment bag behind him. He stopped long enough to drop everything and cup his hands around his mouth.

  “Go into the store!” he shouted, waving me off. “Get inside!”

  My eyes scanned the parking lot again, the one that ran along the baseball field, but my mom still wasn’t there. I turned and ran back to the chain-link fence, climbed over it, and raced toward the edge of town, only a few hundred yards away. Heavy drops hit the ground all around me. There were large amounts of time between the drops, and I could hear each individual one collide with the ground. When they hit my baseball cap or my arms they seemed far larger than normal, the size of marbles that exploded into patches of water wherever they landed.

  I ran for Mr. Pelle’s antique store, which was right at the intersection. I had made it into the parking lot by the time the next lightning missile struck, and this time I not only heard the crash but felt the sizzle in the air, the electric pulse spreading outward. The air woke up, like a viper sensing a small mouse dropped into its cage.

  The rain turned into a constant sheet of water, and I felt like I was trying to breathe underwater. The air was lost, taken over by the downpour. There was no space between drops anymore. Everything, including me, was soaked in seconds. Water dripped from the brim of my ball cap, and my shirt clung to me, suddenly heavy, like a second skin.

  On one side of Pelle’s Antiques was Uncle Sal’s pizza, and the smell of delicious cheese and pepperoni came at me through the rain. I ran into the small alley between Uncle Sal’s and Pelle’s, through the small waterfall tumbling out from the gutters where the rain already overflowed. I pushed open the heavy brown steel door and vanished into the stockroom of Pelle’s Antiqu
es.

  The door slammed behind me, and I went from a white-gray day full of the sound of pounding rain and splitting thunder to shadows and quiet and the smells of old cedarwood, dust, and paint. I stopped inside the door as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Outside, when the rain was coming down through that July day, the falling water had felt almost warm, but in the air-conditioned back room of the antique store, the water spread a chill over my body, and I crossed my arms, clutching my baseball glove as if it might bring me some warmth.

  The rain made a distant rushing sound on the roof, and as I meandered through the irregular rows of furniture, I wondered again why my mother had been late, and where she was, and who would take me home. I passed high-backed armchairs standing upside down on barn-door tables, and under them were old windows without any glass panes. There were desks and side tables and large hutches. Wardrobes stood closed and ominous, daring me to open them. Lamps of every shape and size filled in the gaps: tall, skinny ones and short, fat ones, lamps with shades and lamps without shades, some with small white bulbs perched at the top like crystal balls, others with empty sockets.

  I stopped in front of an old mirror framed in black, twisting metal, and I stared at my reflection in the peeling surface. I was a skinny kid and, being soaked through, looked even thinner than usual. I’m sure I didn’t look as old as I wanted to look. My brown eyes were still the eyes of a child. I spent most of my childhood wanting to be bigger, stronger, older.

  I heard voices in the prep room. It was the space between the large storage room and the sales floor, where Mr. Pelle stained and repaired and prepared one piece of furniture at a time before taking it to the store out front with the big glass windows that looked out onto Route 126. It was unusual for anyone besides Mr. Pelle or his family to be in that middle room.

  I moved to the door. I could hear my own heart thumping in my ears, and my breath seemed suddenly loud. My sneakers, waterlogged, squeaked with each step.

  But as I got to the swinging door, it was already leaning open a few inches. Outside, another lightning strike sent thunder through Deen. The sound of the rain was a constant hum, but the voices were loud. I peered through the crack in the door.