Eleanor: A Novel

by Jason Gurley

  Then she remembers Jack, and the colors shrivel into ash and dissipate into the dark.

  No, she thinks. Come back.

  And the colors return, playfully, arcing through her like comets and vapor trails. She feels oddly powerful. Is this a dream? If it isn’t a dream—if it is not a dream, then is she—has she died? She feels—she hesitates to put her feeling into words, but she thinks it, and the darkness surges with colors that overlap and collide and create entire new palettes she has never seen.

  She thinks, I feel like a god.

  But she does not dwell on this, because the image of Jack, helpless in the ocean, rushes back in. She thinks of him there, alone, terrified, unable to find her. She knows Jack well, knows that he will not leave the island without her—but she is no longer there. She wishes that she could tell him, somehow, that she is okay. She knows that she is, even if she doesn’t know where she is. If he knew that she was okay, he could row home without her and not feel the way she knows that he will feel instead—heavy with guilt, frantic, frightened.

  The colors wither into gray and black.

  She does not know how long she has been in the darkness. Time seems not to matter here. There is no here, just Eleanor, just what she has become. She worries for Jack, worries about her mother, her father. She worries about her own body—is it still behind her, suspended in the air between the cliff and the sea? Has she plunged into the water already, an empty shell that sinks under its own weight?

  But the importance of such feelings fades as she inhabits the darkness, and Eleanor begins to understand that the darkness has much to teach her. It is not that she has become something new, she realizes. She has joined with something, and that something is very, very old.

  In the darkness, Eleanor feels peace, feels at home, things she has not felt for years.

  It seems that the darkness, too, has waited for her for a very, very long time.

  She is here, Mea says.

  The darkness says, You did not fail her.

  Together, Mea and the darkness observe Eleanor, transformed, from a great distance. The river moves slowly, carrying Eleanor with it.

  She does not know what has happened, the darkness says. Where she is.

  She is becoming, Mea says. She learns. Watch.

  Far away, an explosion of color flares bright, then dies away. As they watch, it reappears and persists, dancing like a nova in blackest space.

  She deserves an explanation, the darkness says. Perhaps you should go to her now.

  Eleanor feels a change in the darkness, as if something has bumped into her leg beneath the surface of the sea. Her colors fall into shadow again, and she expands herself to fill the dark, so that nothing else can enter. She tests the farthest reaches of her new self, searching for anything unusual, but she encounters nothing, no one.

  And yet she senses that she is no longer alone.

  A tiny tremor moves across her form, as if she were a sea and a ship’s wake had sent a long wave unrolling across her surface.

  Eleanor has not moved. The wave is not hers.

  She waits, hyper-aware, and is rewarded when another wave, slow and languid, passes over her. She imagines two rivers merging into one, their waters mingling, their currents colliding and wrestling for dominance.

  Another wave, and with it, this time, something else.

  Music.

  It sounds like nothing she has ever heard. There are no progressions, no chords. There are no lyrics or discernible tempo. She does not hear it as she would have back in the world—which is how she thinks of her past now, as her time back in the world, as if it were a place where she summered, and now she has returned home.

  Maybe she really is dead.

  The music hums through her shape, chasing the slow wave. It expands within her, thrumming delicately, like a tiny drumbeat. She thinks that this is what it is like for a person to feel music instead of to simply hear it. Her suspicion fades away, overtaken by the beauty of the music that echoes inside her, and colors rise around her like a fountain.

  It occurs to Eleanor that she could remain here, in the dark, as the dark, for a million years, and never learn everything that it has to teach her. She absorbs the dancing music, each tremble and ripple and rise and fall. Music that belongs to someone else, something else.

  But there is more than music. Rather, it is not music at all, but as she takes the vibrations deeply into herself, she discovers that she can parse them, that they have meaning and substance. The music is not music at all.

  The music is language. It is words.

  The other being, or person, or whatever it is, is communicating with her.

  Eleanor relaxes her form, feels herself spread wide and billowy in the dark, fluttering, listening.

  Feeling.

  You have come, the other entity says.

  She entertains those words for a long, long time, until they dissolve into tiny embers, each letter a flash of warmth inside her.

  You.

  have.

  come.

  Three words, and yet if Eleanor had any sense of time left, she might have thought that in the time it took for her to feel them, to understand them, that one million human lifetimes could have begun and ended. She thinks that this must have been what the astronauts experienced when they orbited the moon, sinking into their own darkness, removed from the sight of Earth, their words disappearing into the void, absent any reply.

  Eleanor considers her reply for eons, plenty of time for millions more lifetimes to come and go, but before she understands how to speak it, the other entity speaks again. Its words wash over Eleanor, and she takes them in slowly.

  You must have questions, the Other says.

  Eleanor does, and she speaks, and feels a beautiful melody escape her and recede into the distant dark like a ribbon. It is not unlike watching a rainbow take flight, lifting from the earth into the sky. She watches her reply grow thin and small, traversing an enormous gulf of black space—her sense of scale changes in an instant, and Eleanor no longer feels as though she is one with the darkness. She feels like a solar system in a galaxy full of solar systems, in a universe full of galaxies, in a multiverse replete with universes. Her reply travels six hundred thousand million trillion miles, and there, so far away in the dark, Eleanor sees her reply—her own wave of music, a single word—travel over another shape.

  The Other.

  Mea feels Eleanor speak to her, and vibrates happily to hear the girl’s voice for the first time.

  Yes, Eleanor says.

  Mea says, Ask. I will answer.

  Eleanor, on the far side of the river, tiny in the darkness, listens. Before she can reply, Mea adds, I do not know all things.

  That was my first question, Eleanor says.

  What was your first question? Mea asks.

  The girl hesitates, and then says, I was going to ask if you are—if you are a god.

  Mea says, You may still ask.

  No, Eleanor says. That’s okay. I don’t need to.

  Why not? Mea asks.

  If you were a god, you would know all things.

  Do you believe in gods? Mea returns.

  That’s a very human question, Eleanor says.

  You are a very human girl.

  I don’t seem to be. Not anymore.

  This is temporary, Mea says. For a time.

  If I’m human, what are you?

  I am—other. I watch.

  Other, Eleanor says. Like the checkbox on a form.

  Mea is confused. The girl must feel this, because she explains.

  Like when you have to fill out a survey, Eleanor says. It asks what your race is, and you can check Caucasian or Pacific… something—whatever it is. Islander. Pacific Islander. There’s always a little box that says ‘Other,’ with a blank next to it. I always wondered what went there. But now I know what goes there. You go there.

  I am Other, Mea says, still confused.

  Eleanor is silent for a long time, an
d then says, Where are we? Is it a place?

  It is called the rift, Mea says.

  What is it? Eleanor asks. Am I dead?

  You are very much alive, Mea says. The rift is not an afterlife.

  Then how did I get here?

  Mea says, You always asked so many questions. You still do.

  Across the river, Eleanor flares purple, and then a deep, muddled brown, as if declaring her confusion.

  The darkness whispers to Mea. You have frightened her.

  I didn’t do anything, Mea protests.

  You are too familiar, the darkness says. Calm her. Ease her.

  Mea says to Eleanor, I don’t understand. You’re afraid.

  Where am I? How did I get here? Eleanor demands, and her voice is urgent, and breaks over Mea like a wave over a sea wall.

  Don’t be afraid, Mea cautions. You will not come to any harm here.

  ANSWER MY QUESTIONS, Eleanor thunders, and Mea flinches. WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS?

  It is too late, the darkness says to Mea.

  Wait, Mea says. No.

  But it is too late. The seams unravel, and far across the river, the membrane opens.

  Eleanor is frightened, and angry, and shouts her words at the Other. But the Other just seems confused, childlike, and Eleanor feels more anger at this than at its resistance to her questions. She wants to scream at it—why bring me into this place if you don’t know what you’re doing—but before she can speak, the darkness around her begins to tear. She can feel it withdrawing from her, pulling out of her lungs and escaping her mouth like a long, curling worm, and she would vomit if she could, except that something strange has begun to happen, something terrifying, and she stares in horror.

  The darkness thins and becomes wispy, and through it Eleanor can see—she can see water far below her, dark and glinting with pale light, and in an instant the blackness releases her, expels her from the rift, and Eleanor falls through the hole in the darkness, and plummets into the sea.

  She crashes into the water. It folds over her, consumes her, and it is nothing like the gentle, warm dark of the rift. The water is black and icy, and she feels it invade her open mouth, screams to keep her lungs from filling. She plunges below the surface. Her eyes are open, but she can see almost nothing. The ocean is black and blue and freezing and deep—

  —and then she hits bottom.

  She wonders at the texture beneath her feet. It is not sand or rock, but it crinkles like a skin, and she can feel something firm and unyielding beneath it, as if she is standing inside a plastic bag that rests on a spongy table.

  It’s no use dwelling on it. She plants her feet on that firm surface beneath the plastic, and pushes off with all her might.

  She doesn’t have much strength to spare. Her limbs feel rubbery, as if they’ve been asleep and are only just waking up. Her arms and legs feel oversized and heavy. Her head weighs her down, and she struggles to keep herself upright. She surges upward through the black sea like a dumb giant, and breaks through the surface, which is wrong, the surface should be farther away than this, the bottom of the sea cannot be so close to the top of the sea, not out here in the ocean—

  Eleanor gasps and coughs. Her hair is wet and stuck to her skin, her face, and there is so much of it. She swipes at it, and blinks at the sky, and her feet find the bottom at the same time. She does not have to tread water. This frightens her, dislocates her. Above her there are clouds, charcoal-black.

  Something falls over her face, and she shrieks and bats at it, but it sags over her like a blanket. She can feel something wafting around her feet, and she panics and flails about, but the thing only seems to cling to her more closely.

  In the barest hint of light she catches a glimpse of the thing, like a glistening dark shadow swallowing her up, and she recognizes it.

  It’s a tarpaulin.

  A swimming pool cover.

  Eleanor has fallen out of the sky over Huffnagle into a swimming pool in somebody’s back yard.

  She fights the tarp back with her fists, but struggling only seems to wrap it more tightly around her.

  I’m on top of it, I fell into it—

  It blots out the sky, and she cannot find the tarp’s edges. Her feet tangle in it, and she loses her footing, and she sinks into the water. The bottom isn’t there—she knows it must be, and then her shoulders bump into it, and she realizes that she has no sense of direction anymore, that down has become up, and as she wrestles with the plastic sheet, she feels the little air in her lungs burn away, and then her lungs themselves burn, and she thinks to herself that she is fourteen years old and is going to die because of a piece of plastic, she thinks that this must be what a dolphin feels when it inhales a plastic six-pack ring, and then that’s all the thought she has time for, she has to breathe, she has to, she has to open her mouth, she can’t breathe, she has to breathe, she can’t breathe she has to she has to to breathe breathe she to has breathe has to—

  She opens her eyes in the mud. She is face-down, her cheek squelching in the muck. It gets in her eye, in her mouth. She feels it clogging her nostrils. She wants to dig the mud out of her nose, wipe it out of her eye, but there’s something else not right, something—

  Something grabs her and flips her over, and she can feel the mud like a swamp beneath her head, and her eyes flutter, and she sees raindrops spiking down at her from the darkness above.

  Something immensely heavy falls on her chest, and she thinks, dimly, I should push that off there, but she can’t seem to work her body just yet. She feels like a piece of driftwood that someone is about to whittle into a totem. The pressure on her chest recedes, but comes back immediately, harder, and she feels like her sternum is going to splinter, like her lungs will be pulped, her heart crushed into mulch, and then her eyes fly open wide, and she feels the sea rising within her, angry, violent, and she snaps forward at the waist, and the water explodes from her mouth, and then she can take a breath, so she does, but the breath only stirs more of the ocean inside her lungs, and she vomits, twice, three times, and then she sags forward, coughing, and someone is there, supporting her, holding her up. A strong hand pounds on her back, right between her shoulder blades.

  A voice says, “Oh, thank god, thank god.”

  A different one—a man, his voice right beside her ear—says, “You’re all right, you’re okay. Take it easy. Just breathe. One, two. One, two.”

  The man’s cheek is scratchy, and his voice is throaty and old, and she leans against him, no strength in her limbs.

  Her hair falls in knotted wet ropes down her back. It’s heavy, and tugs at her head, and she can feel the ends of her hair slap against the small of her back. She becomes aware that she is naked and barefoot. Rain falls on her—bitterly cold rain—and she shivers. The rain smacks against the plastic tarp that almost did her in. It’s crumpled on the ground beside her, one half drifting lazily on the surface of the pool.

  “You called nine-one-one,” the man says to someone else.

  A woman’s voice, behind him: “Edna did.”

  Farther away, a second woman: “I did, they’re coming.”

  The man holding her wears striped pajama pants that cling to him. He is shirtless, and rain collects in the gray hair on his chest.

  “Where—” Eleanor says, and then she coughs again, and more water comes up.

  “Easy,” the man says, thumping her soundly on the back again. “You’re safe. You’re okay.”

  She coughs and coughs, and when she can breathe again, her lungs feel as if they’ve been scoured with steel wool. Her throat is raw. Her chest aches with each breath, and she wonders if the man broke her ribs while trying to save her.

  “Where am I?” she rasps.

  The first woman comes closer, holding a housecoat close to her throat, as if to ward off the rain. “You fell into our pool,” she says. “How did that happen?”

  Eleanor coughs again, and shakes her head.

  “Get her a towel or so
mething, will you?” the old man chides. “Thing’s shivering like a banshee.”

  He’s right. Her body is waking up, and every sense comes into sharp focus. The rain is a thousand little needles jabbing at her skin. Her eyes burn from the chlorine in the pool. She can smell the man’s aftershave, and it almost makes her sick.

  She leans forward again, and he pats the back of her head. He reminds her of her Grandpa Hob, a little. She rests her cheek on his shoulder and closes her eyes. The calm sea of the rift feels unreal now, a dream that happened a billion years ago and has worn thin. She feels a little like something that it coughed up. She feels like she has just been born.

  The woman bundles Eleanor up in a bathrobe, and she and the old man help her to her feet. Her knees are weak, and her legs tingle as her nerve endings spark to life. Each step is rubbery, and she does not trust her feet. They are cold, and in the porch light she thinks they look almost blue. They seem to bow away from her each time she sinks her weight onto them. The old man and the old woman bear most of her weight, and she fumbles weakly at the earth with her toes.

  “Careful,” the old man cautions, helping her up the porch steps.

  She begins to shake.

  Lightning scratches across the clouds, and a moment later thunder booms overhead.

  “Just in time,” the woman says. “You don’t want to be in the pool when that happens.”

  At the top of the steps, the man passes Eleanor over to the woman and says, “I’m going to take care of that tarp,” and then he’s back out in the dark.

  The woman closes the porch door behind him.

  “I’ve got some of our granddaughter’s clothes in the bathroom,” she says. “What are you doing, running around naked at three in the morning in December? You’re apt to kill yourself that way.”

  “December?” Eleanor asks.

  Eleanor comes alive in the shower. She stands beneath the water for half an hour, steam rising around her as her pale white skin slowly turns pink again. The bar of green soap smells like fertilizer, but gets most of the mud off. The old woman sits on the toilet lid on the other side of the shower curtain, humming a song that Eleanor doesn’t recognize. She can tell that the old woman would like to talk, and she knows that when she finishes in the shower there will probably be questions, and it will be worse when the paramedics arrive.