Aberrations of Reality

by Aaron J. French

  “Really? This park? Where? I want to see one!”

  “All right. Follow me.”

  I got up and started walking away from the bench.

  The boy followed. The park abutted some dense patch of wilderness to the north. Pines and maples and filigrees of spruce spreading out on the opposite side of the chain-link fence. At one place, a section of the fence was missing.

  “Mom says not to go in there because of poison ivy.”

  “But that’s where the ghosts are,” I said. “Don’t you want to see the ghosts?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Don’t worry about poison ivy. I promise we’ll keep clear of it.”

  “Okay.”

  We passed through the missing section and stepped into the shade of the trees. A variety of small woodland creatures accompanied our progress. Squirrels raced down trunks, birds flew in the branches, bugs and slugs inched along in the dirt. For the most part it was dark, though the sun shone through the canopy occasionally. In a clearing we came upon an enormous tree stump sticking out of the ground.

  “It’s huge!” the boy exclaimed. “Any idea how old it is?”

  I shook my head. “I imagine ages. My father used to bring me here when I was about your age, just before he died. He said the tree was magic.”

  “And is it—magic, I mean?”

  “I thought so as a boy, but after he died and I started growing older, I stopped thinking so. Now I’m beginning to wonder again.”

  We approached the massive trunk which sprung up from the soil like a geyser of gnarled bark. Intricate rings and patterns looped across its front and knobs of old dead branches protruded like octopus tentacles. About six feet up, directly in the center, was a hollow in the tree, a hole of extreme blackness.

  “In that hollow is where the ghosts live,” I said. “I know because I once followed one at the park, and it led me here. I saw its silken transparent body slip right into that hole and vanish.”

  “Cool.” The boy stood right underneath it, staring up. “Maybe if I crawl in there, I’ll get to see my dad again.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Will you give me a boost?”

  I got down on my knees and intertwined my fingers. The boy grabbed a thick branch and then positioned one of his small feet in my hands. He pulled himself up while I boosted.

  “Wow, I can see in there!” His pale legs and red tennis shoes stuck out of the trunk. “It’s so dark!”

  “Do you see any ghosts?”

  A pause. “Not yet.”

  “Maybe you have to get closer.”

  “I think so.” Kicking his legs out, he slid himself further into the hole and disappeared.

  “What do you see now?”

  “I’m really far in. It just keeps going and going. I think there’s someone down here.”

  “Is it a ghost?”

  “I’m not sure. I can’t see anything. But I hear someone.”

  “Try.”

  After a while, he said—very faintly—“He’s glowing. And he’s got wings. And when he opens his hands, there are eyeballs in the middle of his palms.”

  That was all. He didn’t speak again.

  I called for the boy repeatedly but got no response. I waited for him to come back out. For hours I stood waiting. My heart thundered in my chest until eventually the sun began to sink in the sky.

  Darkness encroached through the trees. Stars alighted in the branches. Crickets buzzed and fireflies danced in the air.

  I called one last time.

  Nothing.

  The hollow in the trunk seemed to be mocking me. Finally it became so dark that I was forced to head back to the park and then to my car and then to my apartment. I stood gazing wistfully out the window at the luminous city.

  I never went to the park again.

  Never met that boy again, either.

  PHASE 4: ASCENSION

  A strange meteorological occurrence was taking place. To the south the sky was black, a heavy blanket of storm clouds stacked into menacing rows. To the west the clouds were fluffy and white, and patches of clear blue sky shone through. The sun was setting there, creating a magical mix of reds, oranges, and yellows. Rain came down hard, each drop reflecting the sunlight so that glimmering diamonds seemed to be falling.

  I was sitting at a bus stop at Central and 33rd Street beneath a metal awning, admiring the beautiful sky. The deluge had washed out the roads with sheets of murky water. Cars and trucks roared past, flinging wetness from their tires. A haze hung in the air, a misty grayness caused by the swirling water vapors. There had been no sign of the bus yet.

  The man sitting beside me was smoking a cigarette. “Fine weather we’re having!” he yelled over the din. “I was in the navy so I’m used to hurricanes—this ain’t nuthin’!”

  He sort of yee-hawed and took off his baseball cap, which was drenched with rain. His head was small, pea-shaped, and balding, with a few strands of brown hair above the ears. His eyes were small and thin, the kind that never looked you straight on.

  He’s a rodent, I thought, like one of those talking creatures from a Disney cartoon. I wonder if he has any cheese in his pockets?

  I laughed outright and audibly, a big belly laugh. The thought of the man storing cheese in his pockets was ridiculous. The rodent returned the cap to his head, concealing baldness, and smoked his cigarette, staring up the street for the bus.

  A young couple came dashing out of the rain to stand under the awning. They took a look at me, at the other man, and then faced each other. Before long they were kissing.

  What might have been an awkward situation was mitigated by the presence of the rain. It somehow washed all traces of anxiety from the earth. There was only the enigmatic blue patches to the west, shot through with colors, and that horrid cloud-beast approaching from the south.

  While the couple kissed and the man smoked and the rain slapped against the pavement, my eyes turned skyward to where the colors and the clouds seemed to mix together in a vast stew. The air was sweet-smelling of dampness and weather, and the tops of buildings loomed against a backdrop of heavenly lights. Eventually the rain died down to a drizzle, allowing those stranded at the bus stop to peek their heads out and utter disagreeably, “Come on. Where is it?”

  Now that the haze of precipitation had lessened, I could see the bands of setting sunlight and the last wispy clouds more clearly. These clouds did strange things. As they were layered, they also moved at different speeds and in different directions. Some slowly; some quickly. This gave the sky the appearance of shifting.

  More harried civilians emerged out of the dying storm, bedraggled and soaking wet, like the survivors of a great disaster. Ten in all waited for the bus, growing more antsy by the minute.

  I had noticed something. Directly across the street, erected before some buildings, was a peculiar streetlight. Behind it in the sky, the sunset, the patches of blue, those white clouds, and the swirls of red and orange merged together. Odd how pigeons remained active over on that side, as if the lingering sunlight protected them from the storm; one of them landed straight on top of the streetlight and began nuzzling its feathers.

  I watched. A sort of fuzzy outline stood out around the bird. I concentrated on this outline and it grew. Then it expanded around the pole itself and down to the pavement.

  Before long I could see this fuzziness around the buildings and then around the moving cars. Pretty to look at, I thought. But I don’t understand.

  The glowing outline burned white-hot around the streetlight. It traveled down the edges of the pole. The more I focused on it, the more it grew. Then, for one blinding flash, it became affixed to everything in my field of vision. It blazed off passing cars and stood tall upon every building.

  The world is on fire…

  I suddenly remembered the people sitting close by and turned to look at them. But of course they had seen nothing. They were either staring up the road hoping for the bus, talking on their cell pho
nes, or listening to music on their iPods.

  No one can see it but me, I thought. What everyone else sees isn’t really there. Well it is, but it’s not all that is there.

  I abruptly stood up from the bench. I’d had a revelation, not only a thought, but an experience. I felt it in my mind, body, and soul. It was a warm feeling, a state of clarity, of joy and understanding. No longer would I be prisoner to the veil of this world. I had seen beyond it.

  The rain started up again and was met with groans of complaint. The great black cloud-beast was arriving from the south, bringing with it a promise of destruction. Nature’s unbridled, indifferent fury.

  Just then the large city bus appeared, its square front like an abstract human head. It was down the street but approaching fast, bringing the worst of the storm with it.

  As it pulled to a stop before the curb, I stepped into the street behind it. The others remained unaware of me as they filed onto the bus. The rain turned on heavily, covering everything with noise and white haze.

  I stayed behind in the street, pounded by rain, as the bus pulled back into traffic. I held my arms out at my sides, a small black dot in the downpour. The bus merged with the other lights and continued north to where the sky was relatively clear.

  I turned my eyes upward, relishing the slap of rain against my face. It felt like I was being unmade in it. Each sharp stab of each raindrop that struck me broke off a layer of material armor. I could actually feel it breaking away, and I imagined a pile of it lying around my feet.

  Cars passed through me. I was now as transparent as a window in the night. The lower half of my body flickered and then vanished completely. A burning white-hot glow replaced it and then the same thing happened to my upper half.

  I’m going home, I thought.

  Soon there was nothing left of me save a fuzzy white outline, which itself eventually vanished in the immense roaring rain.

  {(CALIFORNIA SEA + COSMIC MAN) - HUMANKIND} + ANADYR, RUSSIA = APOCALYPSE

  PROLOGUE

  California, USA

  Summer, Sunday

  July 12, 2020

  4:00:01 PM

  The stone was small and stuck in the sand among the colorful multitude of shells and pebbles. A crab side-walked through a graveyard of dead crustaceans a few inches to the left of it, pulling something along in its claws.

  The ocean made a crashing noise and suddenly a swelling plane of saltwater flooded the beach, washing out the graveyard and the crab, leaving the small stone smooth and unpolished, untouched. As the wave receded, Jeremy reached down and plucked the stone from the sand.

  A normal looking thing, very similar to the flat stones his mom collected and called sand dollars, but much smaller, darker. There was a sign or symbol in the center, something he could barely make out. Like the letter D written calligraphically.

  He held it up to the sun, furthering his investigations. Beautiful: the sun streamed through and made it glow. Not like other stones. Special.

  A wave glided up the shore, broken shells and stones battering against Jeremy’s bare feet. Securing the stone within his closed fingers, he turned and headed back up the beach, toward safety and the hotter, drier sand.

  He scanned the area, looking for his mom. He found a few random beach-goers piddling through the sand, and a few wading in the water farther down. But the place was uncharacteristically empty.

  He was having trouble remembering from which direction he had come. Wasn’t his fault. He was only nine. He couldn’t be expected to keep track of the crazy business grownups called the “real world.” He’d gotten himself turned around. The nifty stone he’d seen glinting in the waves from a distance had so arrested his attention that he had forgotten everything else.

  And now Mom was not around. At least there were only two ways to go: left or right. He closed his eyes, eventually made his decision, and started walking up the beach.

  But soon he was all alone which wasn’t good, because it meant he had definitely gone the wrong way. All that was here was sand, surf, shells, dead crabs, birds, and scrub grass. He looked over his shoulder, wondering if his mom and their white sheet, red umbrella, and ice chest filled with untold goodies lay back in that direction. He simply couldn’t recall, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of it.

  He blew a sigh. “Fuck a duck,” he muttered, something he had heard Mom say when she got angry.

  He would just have to turn around and go back; he didn’t have any other choice. But as he spun on his heels, the smooth stone vibrated in his hand, giving him an electric shock. “Yowza!” he cried, reflexively flinging the stone across the beach. He rubbed his palm, fighting tears. Now what was that all about?

  He considered leaving it—stupid old thing shocking him like that—but he’d come all this way for it, and it was extremely pretty and magical-appearing. Even now, where it sat isolated on the beach, it reflected the overhead sun gloriously, twinkling like a diamond, the sand beneath it seeming to ripple.

  Without warning, it turned on end and began rolling down the beach toward the sea.

  Jeremy blinked. He knew the stone was magical.

  Laughing, he came galumphing down the shore, arms flailing at his sides, the patter of sea water tickling his chest as waves broke. The stone had not slowed, nor stopped, and still it rolled like a wheel through the waves; any second it would be claimed by the ocean.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Jeremy said, and dove for the stone, getting his fingers around it just as the largest wave smashed down, sucking both boy and stone down into its yawning gulf. He held tight, not letting go, and the stone likewise refused to lax. Jeremy was taken down into the sea.

  ONE

  Anadyr, Russia

  Late Winter, Monday

  March 13, 2023

  12:00:01 AM

  The grayish blue water moved like soup, sloshing beneath the dark, rumbling cloud-infused sky, the cold air swirling above it, coming down from the glaciers and shelves of ice higher up in the Shchuchy Mountain Range, where snowfall ever gleamed like white china.

  Farther away from shore, the Anadyr Valley and its weave of plateaus, rivers, wetlands, and estuaries slumbered soundlessly under the cloudy black sky. Nothing but cold, dry wind blew, moving across the mountainous tundra to the north. Sprinkles of snow glittered, falling in a light shower, hanging in the air like a slightly imperceptible curtain.

  Nearer down, along the harbor, the rectangular symmetrical Russian buildings of Anadyr also slumbered as their flat blue, yellow, and red rooftops slowly gathered snow. Several street lights glared through the darkness, and the lone statue of Lenin erected before the Anadyr Child Creativity Palace watched everything with a hard, steady gaze.

  Along the wharfs and docks, among the many fishing boats swaying on the waters, and the many other, disused beached vessels, now rotting from the inside out, sat Ivan alone on the dock in front of one of the fisheries, smoking his pipe and looking at the sky.

  He was wrapped, in usual fashion, by the fibrous fabric of his heavy coat, feet shod in big black boots, wearing his furry Ushanka with the ears folded back; a pint of vodka sat on the dock by his feet. The smoke of his pipe lifted gently, wavering snakelike before his cool blue eyes, his tough round nose, and square chin. He wasn’t thinking much; mostly of the day’s catch and what tomorrow’s haul could bring.

  Through the gloom he spotted Luka, also clad in his heavy coat, moving, hunched, up the boards of the dock. When he saw Ivan, he nodded and sat on the bench beside him. After exchanging a proper greeting—both men knew each other well, having worked in the boatyards together since their youth—Ivan took a sip of vodka and passed it to Luka, who, grinning through full beard and stained yellow teeth, accepted greedily. They sat for a while, getting drunk. Ivan shared his pipe.

  As the sky grew darker, permeated by both the dense cloud cover and deepening night, a spot of light stood directly over the waters of the Bearing Straight. Ivan noticed it first, then pointed it out to his fri
end. A perfectly roundish white-gold sphere, stuck in the clouds, but no: the more they watched, the more it appeared to swell… approaching… drawing closer to the Earth.

  Whatever panic the two men might have normally experienced was compromised by their drunken state. Laughing hoarsely and speaking to each other in Russian, they speculated on the nature of the descending ball of light. Ivan said meteor; Luka said UFO; Ivan said airplane crash; Luka said United States armed nuclear warhead. Both men burst out laughing.

  But after a time their revelry was replaced by a form of awe. Spellbound, they watched the ball of light descend, swelling until it was a finger’s length in the sky. The light barreled through the clouds, seeming to burn them away as it dove toward the sea. Larger and larger, and then it nearly filled the sky, blotting out the surrounding landscape, flashing so intensely that the two men cried out, ducking eyes into elbows.

  The ball of light landed in the Bearing Straight with a tremendous splash and a boom that rumbled the ground beneath Anadyr. The wood planks of the dock rattled like skeletal teeth. The water sizzled with heat. This went on for several seconds, then returned to silence.

  When Ivan looked up he saw a column of stony-looking light rise from the water where the impact had occurred. This light streamed up and up, vanishing back into the clouds above, permeating the surface around it, staining the sea with gold. Shapes moved within the light: lions, crabs, fishes, bulls, even a set of balancing scales.

  Ivan slapped at his friend’s arm. Luka, in the middle of taking a pull of vodka, spilled the liquor down his chin, coughing. What the hell did Ivan think he was doing? But Ivan ignored the question, instead grabbing Luka by the face and pointing his eyes toward the column of light. Look at that, you damn old man.

  Luka started to make a whining noise. Ivan looked out across the water, and now his heart began to double-beat and he felt a giant panic in his veins. Something similar to the backside of a whale had surfaced beneath the light and the play of zodiacal images. At first he thought it was a whale, but then realized it was too big. As it rose out of the water, he saw it was composed of some strange array of colors—gaseous white, orange, brown, red—and it resembled the shape of a planet.