by Brian Hodge
“What?”
“On the bottom. Look.”
The jar was empty, with a hole in the tin lid. Silently, he gave it back to her.
She unscrewed the lid, examined it. “Damn.”
“A lightning bug that can bust through a tin jar lid. Not possible.”
“You do have your pompous side, Doctor.”
“I know my science! And I know that this hole was not, repeat not, made by any insect known to man.”
“I know what I saw. I can’t explain it but it wasn’t any hallucination. Hell, look at Loi. Your wife’s lying in a hospital bed because of this—”
“You’re assuming that a strange sound and… lightning bugs… are related? That’s more than a supposition, that’s a leap of faith.”
“Everything strange that happened out there in the last twenty-four hours is related!”
“What makes you say that?”
“The screaming in the mound, the injury to your wife, my experience, your experience—they’ve all happened within a few hours, and inside the same square-mile area. Of course they’re related.”
He felt sweat gathering under his arms. Acid twisted his stomach.
“You look sick, Doctor.”
“Call me Brian. I’m just—”
“You’re scared. Like me.”
“I’m scared.”
“It’s time to tell me all about it.”
He recounted his whole story.
“I saw those damn cars, too! I even touched one!”
“If this was real—” He fell silent. He had just realized something appalling. “Dear God.”
“What?”
“You say you ran through the field behind the judge’s place, and you were covered with them?”
“Totally. They were even in my mouth.”
It was incredible. That image—that dream image—must be real. “I saw you. I thought you were part of my nightmare—a burning woman. I often dream about people burning.”
A prickling sensation told her that goose bumps were rising on her arms.
He was hunched, staring at his food. “You’re trembling,” she said. She held out her hand.
Silently, he nodded.
When he didn’t take the offered hand, she withdrew it. She had only wanted to comfort him. “I think maybe that creepy judge is breeding some kind of tropical insect,” she said at last. “They came out of a hole in his yard. Probably wants to drive people off his land.”
“What about your theory that it’s all related? How does Loi’s injury fit in? And what about me?”
“Well, I’m a reporter. I’ll do a little research. A lot of research. But you’re a scientist. What’s your considered opinion?”
“I can’t even begin to formulate one. Except that I have a sense it’s all very dangerous.”
“That I know.”
2
Brian went out and located his truck, then drove home and fell into a deep, empty sleep. He awoke at noon and rushed off to the hospital, angry with himself that he hadn’t been there the moment visiting hours began.
On the way down to Ludlum he pushed the truck through seventy. When he saw the low, white buildings of the hospital complex, he felt the muscles of his neck stiffen, felt his breath tighten in his chest. He was a man capable of intense passion, he’d always known that. But Loi’s combination of beauty, vulnerability and determination had moved him very deeply. He had loved Mary and he always would, but this was deep, too, this was valid, too. Loi deserved every bit of love and loyalty he could offer.
He drove up to the big parking lot, got out and hurried through the heat waves rising from the tarmac. Grasshoppers ratcheted in the wide lawns that surrounded the buildings, and a gopher moved stealthily toward a shrub.
Brian went through the revolving doors, listened to his own shoes rattling on the linoleum floor of the lobby.
Loi was on the second floor, housed in a private room because of the need for absolute rest. When he appeared, a smile danced onto her face. “You are late coming.”
“I overslept.”
“You look tired.”
“Nightmares.”
She reached out, drew him close, kissed him. “I am feeling much better. When the doctor saw me, he was pleased.”
“I’m glad.”
“What were your nightmares? Do you want to tell?”
He didn’t want to worry her. “Just the usual,” he said. “Screaming.”
She nodded. “You need me home.”
“Yeah.”
There was at this moment an opportunity to say something about Ellen. “I sleepwalked.”
“Oh. That is demons, make us do that.”
“There’s also a scientific explanation. Sleepwalking’s well understood. It’s a stress reaction.”
“I gave you this stress, husband. I cannot apologize enough.”
“An accident did it, Loi, not you. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I never should have let you get back out of the truck. I should have taken you straight home at the first sign of danger.”
“What happened to me, Brian?”
“My best guess is that rocks grinding together created some sort of electrostatic field that set up the vibrations.”
“I heard screaming also, Brian. I heard that poor woman!”
He took her hands, kissed them. She was so precious, so sensitive. “It could be that the geologist was right. Some sort of earth movement created the screaming sounds, too.”
“But you don’t believe it?”
He shook his head. He didn’t know what to believe.
“You know, you and I have a real problem. Because I want to know what happened to me, and I don’t. Dr. Gidumal says I must have been hit. But it didn’t happen.”
Now was perhaps the time to bring up a rather delicate subject. “Did you fall, perhaps?”
She looked at him steadily. “I did not.”
“Loi, if you did, I won’t be angry. I’m not like the people from your country, I don’t treasure the child more than the mother. I treasure you both.” He moved closer to her, drinking her in, smelling the soft fragrance of her hair. He embraced her.
“Brian, I didn’t fall. I—maybe all the running. But that noise, Brian, it hurt! It hurt right in the middle of my womb!”
He remembered exactly how it had felt. “It hurt me, too, honey. And I have to admit to you, I don’t know what it was all about.”
Normally he told Loi everything. Normally he shared every detail of his life. But he did not share the terrible story Ellen Maas had told, and most certainly didn’t tell Loi about his own bizarre experience. Those stories would scare her—they’d scare anybody—and he wasn’t about to take that risk.
“I wish we were home in bed together,” she whispered.
“Me too, Loi.” He closed his eyes and felt her softness beneath his hands, and dreamed.
But visiting hours ended, and he finally had to go.
After he left her and got in his truck, he made a turn that he’d never expected to make again. He drove over to the campus, into the heart of his past.
Ludlum University was lavishly kept, rich with a hundred years of endowments and, more recently, a substantial amount of Defense Department funding. It wasn’t large. Like Rockefeller University in Manhattan, it was highly regarded for its science programs. People came to Ludlum for physics and math.
It consisted of- a cluster of red brick Victorian buildings, with a smattering of more modern structures on the outskirts of the campus.
He told himself that he’d come here for the peaceful drive, for the shade and the quiet.
And he knew that wasn’t true. He’d come here because he was a worried, confused and very frightened man, and this was where he’d done his best mental work and solved his most challenging problems.
None of them had been as thorny as this one, though. None of them had even approached it.
For some time he drove along the quiet streets. There were few students about this
time of year, giving the place an air of abandonment. The ancient oaks and maples spread their shade on the lawns and over the roads, and beds of flowers bobbed in the warm summer breeze.
He did not intend to drive past the physics building, where his lab and research facility had been. There was a very good reason for his reluctance, one that went beyond grief.
He was a man touched deeply by the mystery of time. His equations told him that the past was still there, frozen in memory, awaiting only the magic touch of physics to be restored to a sort of flickering life.
Perhaps the deepest reason that he had been unable to continue without Mary was that he thought—knew—that their time together still existed somewhere, a bud that was closed forever, and yet in some way alive. Just the right particle, aimed in just the right direction, might light it briefly in the magic space of the mind, making her laugh again, lift her eyes to him again.
With the equipment they had been building, it might have been possible to shine a light into the past. Remotely possible. Not to go back—that could never happen. But to look back, yes.
With twenty or so years of effort, he could perhaps have created such a light.
So he’d quit.
And maybe for that reason it would still be too painful to return to the building itself, to face the old places, the echoes. But he knew that he had to return to science, in order to solve the mystery that had ensnared him.
Which discipline, though? Geology, to explain the earth sounds that hurt Loi? Entomology, to identify Ellen’s insects? Psychology, to heal his own mind?
Or was this a problem of physics? His mind was too well disciplined to allow speculation based on insufficient data, but it was also true that the manipulation of time could theoretically lead to some very strange derangements of reality.
His own equations had, in fact, suggested dangers—some of them profoundly serious.
What if there were parallel worlds, living by other laws, harsher worlds, perhaps… and what if somebody made a light and shone it pastward…but aimed it wrong and tore the fabric of present reality instead?
His work had been classified, his work had been dangerous, his work had been full of unknowns.
It had also ended—hadn’t it?
He didn’t intend to go in, but he decided to at least pass the old building…and—when he saw it—to stop in front.
The Physics Department was housed in a great Gothic pile with the crenellated roofline of a castle. Its tall, peaked windows seemed to glower down at Brian as he parked the truck.
For fifteen minutes he sat and watched. A couple of grad students strolled up the walk and went in the big double doors.
After a time he saw a figure at one of the downstairs windows, looking out at him. It was a man wearing glasses. Maybe it was the chief of security, Bill Merriman. He’d have cause to be concerned about a strange truck stopped in front of a building where classified work was being done.
The last thing he wanted right now was an encounter with an old friend like Bill. Brian started his truck and drove home.
After he’d parked the truck he went into the trailer, made himself a ham sandwich, then spent the afternoon treating some of his older trees for borers.
When night came, he thought to call Loi, but he was afraid that he’d wake her up. No matter how optimistic she’d been, he knew that she needed lots of rest.
For dinner he threw some Lean Cuisine into the microwave, and ate it with a Coke. No more beer.
All afternoon, he’d been hoping that some good ideas would slip into his mind. In the old days he’d hiked the Jumpers to get ideas. Anything diverting helped, even a shower.
Tarring borer holes hadn’t helped. Sitting here eating his grim little supper certainly wouldn’t.
He needed somebody to talk to, somebody intelligent, who could at least pretend to follow his discourse.
Ellen Maas.
He didn’t actually know Ellen’s number, of course, but the phone book was only fourteen pages long. “Maas, Ellen, Box 358, Oscola,” and a number.
Just as he was about to dial, it rang. He snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Are you eating dinner?”
A thrill of happiness went through him. “Loi, hi.”
“I want to know what you’re eating. I’m concerned about you.”
“I had Lean Cuisine. How about you?”
“Corn on the cob, roast pork. I ate gratefully.”
“In other words, it was lousy.”
“Not entirely perfect.”
“Inedible.”
“Yeah, but I got it down. I am having strong lonely feelings now, Brian.”
“I miss you, too. I was just thinking about calling you.”
“I am worried that you need me.”
“I need you. But not sick. I need you well.”
This brought a silence. Again he was bothered that he hadn’t told her what had happened. It was eerie to conceal something of such importance from her, and distanced him from her in a way he didn’t like at all.
“I am feeling very much love now, Brian.”
“Me too. But I also want you to sleep. I don’t want you to worry. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Brian, I called three times this afternoon and you weren’t there.”
“Oh, Loi, I was out doing those old trees. You remember, the borers?”
“Oh, yeah, of course. I’m glad that you keep busy.”
“I’m fine and I love you and I want you to go to sleep right now.”
“OK, husband.”
She hung up. He looked at the phone in his hand. Dare he call Ellen and discuss temporal refraction and the instability of the reality constant? Poor woman, he didn’t want to torment her like that.
Maybe it would be best to leave Ellen out of it. He could go over to the hospital in the morning and talk to Loi instead. She’d listen eagerly, even if she didn’t understand.
But he didn’t need a sounding board, he needed a foil. Ellen was a bright, sophisticated and—above all—reasonably well-educated person.
More importantly, she was involved in the secret.
He called her—and got her answering machine. He left a brief message, hoped it wasn’t too terse. He wasn’t an answering machine person.
He went out onto the small porch that overlooked the driveway and the barnyard.
The whippoorwills were thick tonight, their voices echoing in the woods. He’d always found their call the most beautiful next to that of the loon, and he stood for a time listening.
The moon rose in silence, and the evening star followed the sun westward.
Until deep night, he was fine.
Then he began to pace the trailer’s few small rooms. He turned on all the lights and locked the door. He would have turned on the air-conditioning, but something made him prefer to hear the night. Katydids argued, the whippoorwills continued their gentle talk, and the night wind hissed in the pines.
He found himself listening. But for what?
Maybe Ellen was out doing research.
Would she be fool enough to return at night to the scene of her experience? No, surely not.
He watched the news at eleven, then went to bed. That night he had more dreams, terrible dreams. In them he was being dragged toward the judge’s house, toward the open door, and there were huge shapes inside that radiated malevolence like a foul purple gas.
3
Ellen began work at once. Unlike Brian, she was not hampered by excessive respect for something as cumbersome as the scientific method.
She proceeded efficiently. On the Times she’d learned effective investigative techniques. The first thing she’d learned was that clams stay open until they perceive a threat. So she didn’t question anybody directly. She resisted the temptation to pressure the old judge.
She spent most of a day just nosing around Oscola—and finding it a good deal more interesting than she’d thought. Towns reflect the deep nature of their people, especially old
ones where certain small, critical things have become important. A wonderful old neon sign is not changed simply because the shop joins a chain. The tobacconist keeps stocking Borkum Riff even when he has few customers left for it, because of the atmosphere its familiar aroma gives his store. The druggist reupholsters the stools at his soda fountain in red marbleized vinyl because they’ve been like that for sixty years.
A town full of people with such sensibilities becomes in time fertile ground for an astute investigator, revealing things about itself at every turn.
At their worst the people of Oscola were narrow and prejudiced. They suffered most of the weaknesses of the self-involved.
But they also had good in them. They worked and did not steal. Generally, they were not violent. They knew beauty when they saw it, and that was reflected in the appearance of their town.
Essential to Oscola’s beauty was the fact that it was so taken for granted by the townsfolk. It wasn’t a model town, it wasn’t a toy. It was just itself, and she found that she liked that about it.
Walking slowly down Main Street, passing Fisk’s Garage with its splashy new collection of all-terrain vehicles and Mode O’Day with the latest tangerine pants suit in the window, she noticed a sense of emptiness even greater than usual.
At one o’clock the Mills Café had six customers. Usually, Betty Mills had easily twenty people in for hamburgers and fried chicken, and her mouth-watering meatloaf from yesteryear.
Maybe Ellen wasn’t the only one who’d encountered the damned bugs.
The one person who knew what was happening behind the scenes in Oscola was Mr. Handy, who’d been the tobacconist for nearly forty years. When she’d first gone in the place she’d been tempted to buy cigars, but Mr. Handy was too nice to tease, and it would have shocked him deeply.
As she entered the store he pulled down her usual carton of Salems.
“Mr. Handy, what’re those meetings at the judge’s place? The ones that happen late at night?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Oh, but he would. Mr. Handy was no liar. She could tell by the look that came into his face. “Come on, I’m curious. Maybe there’s something in it for me.”
“Don’t put anything about that in the paper!”
