I know she was there. I remember eyes, just like Mary did, like everyone does, the twin blue beacons marking the photonic shockwaves of charged particles as they propagated through the dielectric substance of her body, shining with the peculiar light of the furnace that burned within her. I remember her talking to me, but I can't remember what she said.
I awoke, rested. I had slept for nearly five days. Mail had piled up in the box. Mr. Jenkins had sent people to look for me, because I hadn't missed a day in seven years of teaching, much to the disappointment of my students. I explored my home like a stranger. Someone had done the dusting and the dishes were stacked up neatly. Odessa? If so, she did a better job with her chores than she had before had run away.
I sat down at our kitchen table with its hideous tablecloth. If you've ever had a child, you'll know how I was able to simultaneously love and hate something like this. Odessa spied the tablecloth at a bazaar when she was ten and fell in love with it. It is an affront to anyone who has any opinions about anything, with its cartoonishly drawn nursery rhyme characters garishly acting out their fables. They are miscolored, with skin tones in bright primary colors, and some of them have extra limbs. Snow White looked more like Vishnu. I loved it though, because she loved it. It's one of the few possessions we kept with us every time we moved. There was a folded piece of paper atop it that read "Mom".
I opened it. In Odessa's bold, clear hand was written:
Mom,
I hope you're feeling better. I'm sorry for what Matty did. Please don't try to find me again. You've raised me to make my own decisions. Please respect this one.
Love always,
Odessa.
I was going to crumple it, but I couldn't. I thought of another note she'd written for me, when she was just a little girl. I had always tried to include a note with her lunch, and one day she returned the favor.
YOU’RE
THE ONE
THAT HELPED
ME GROW.
And it included a stick figure, me, patting a smiling flower, her, on its head, beneath a sun that was also smiling. She must have been only five or six when she wrote that. When had it been? 1938? '39? Before the world went mad, at any rate. I still have it, pinned up in my office, though the paper is now brittle and yellowed. I thought back to those days, and wondered if we could ever recover that kind of relationship. I wondered if I'd ever see her again.
5 - Back to school
I returned to work the next day. I found Miss Reed in the ladies washroom and we agreed to meet after school to discuss matters further.
Our rendezvous took place beneath the bleachers. Two older students were sneaking sips from a flask on the opposite end of the field. They froze in surprise, then relaxed and continued what they were about when they saw we weren't there for them, moving their party only a token distance away.
"I need your help to find Odessa," I began. "I can't do it without you. I don't know that world." I had returned to the Echthros Club during the day, but found it no more remarkable than any other business is outside the normal hours of its operation.
She smiled the way people do when you're kissing their ass. But she was fundamentally decent and fundamentally nice, so she didn't make too big a deal about it.
"What were you really doing at the club?" I asked her. "In light of later events, I can't believe it was for the music."
"Scouting," she answered. She opened her purse and Squeakers jumped out and perched on her palm. She started feeding him crumbs of something. "We don't think anyone on the other side knows my face, so I got picked to go in. We didn't expect to find Odessa there. I knew you were looking for her, and I couldn't think of any way you'd believe me, so I fudged the truth just a bit."
"Okay," I said. Then, "Do you always bring your mouse to school?"
"Of course. Where else would I keep him?"
I shrugged. This certainly wasn't the strangest thing I had encountered that week.
"What did you learn in the club?"
"They outnumber us many times over. We think they have a definite leader, but we don't know his identity. He could be a minor player concealing his level of involvement, or he might be a mastermind, calling the shots completely from the shadows. His public face is the woman I killed. She goes by the name Matryoshka."
I frowned. I might be Russian, but at least I wasn't a stereotype. What was her animal companion, a bear in a ushanka? I said as much to Mary, who replied, "She's her own companion. Like her name, she keeps her soul in a smaller version of herself. I don't think she's really dead. Not for long, anyway. She'll come back in a smaller version."
I had noticed something else, too. "You said 'we'? You're not alone in this?"
She shook her head. "I'm part of a group of like-minded individuals. We're willing to fight for our cause. If you like, I can introduce you to some of them."
"I think I would like that."
She smiled, apparently honestly pleased. "We're convening tonight. I'll bring it up and see what they say."
We said our goodbyes. I walked over to the far side of the bleachers and grabbed the flask from one of the startled seniors. "Mister Talbot, Mister Bates, I'll see you gentlemen in detention."
The pair stomped off. I took a slug from the confiscated flask and watched Mary walking back to her car, and I wondered at what she represented.
6 - The glob
I won't bore you with the details, primarily because I didn't have any myself at that point. Mary called me from the phone within the house to tell me that her friends (allies? Coven? I never did learn the precise nature of their relationship) were dead when she got there. I told her in no uncertain terms to get out of the goddamn house and wait for me to get there.
She was crying, but not hysterical when I arrived at the development. The place didn't look remarkable. From the outside, it could have been anyone's home. The rear bedroom could have belonged to Odessa.
"Are you okay with this?" I asked.
She sniffled and nodded. "They don't even look like people any more. It doesn't feel real."
So we entered the house through the front door. I pushed it open with a heavy flashlight that we didn't need, as the electricity worked just fine.
"They're in the kitchen," she said, "at the table."
The decor in the room was mid-20th century old lady. I wondered at the character of the women who had lived here. Old women. Sisters, I guessed, but unless Mary told me, I would probably never know for sure.
We could see them from the threshold. Skeletonized perfectly, killed in the middle of afternoon tea. The bone was far brighter and whiter than normal human bone. One of the skeletons still held her teacup halfway to her mouth.
I wondered what could do this. I know how Mary would answer. Magic. Bah. Magic is a cheat. Magic is what you say when you don't have the answers and you're tired of looking. Calling it magic is giving up. I know no god but science, and with sufficient understanding of the laws that govern nature, we will bring it to heel.
I examined them more closely. "Mary, fetch me that magnifying glass off the hutch, please."
She handed it to me, then, after a moment, asked, “Lorraine, what is Odessa?"
"She's my daughter," I answered. The connective tissue was gone, but the bones had been in some way fused, allowing them to maintain the pose they held in death. Interesting. Doubtless painful, also.
"You know what I mean. They talk about her like she's some kind of golem."
"A golem?" I looked in the teacup one of the skeletons was holding. Nothing but ashes within.
“What, am I a rabbi now?”
"Stop. Can you give me a straight answer about this?"
"All right. I built her. You know that, or you guessed that by now. I'm still her mother. She is my daughter and it doesn't matter that she is the fruit of my mind rather than of my loins. You’re familiar with Mary Shelley?"
She shook her head. "Just with what everybody knows. Frankenstein."
"
There is a cypher hidden within her personal journals. I’m not certain she ever intended it to be decoded. It may have been her way of whistling in the dark. I cracked the code. It was difficult, but she had no way of anticipating the development of the Enigma machines and how sophisticated their descendants would be in 1955. It details a number of techniques, some already in the mainstream, some fantastically esoteric, that, when combined, and coupled with an energy source of sufficient power, would allow the animation of lifeless matter." Ah, what was this? I picked up a bead of gelatin from the table with my tweezers.
As I examined my find, I continued with my story. "I don't believe she developed the techniques, but rather discovered them from an earlier source, just as I did. I'm not even certain that she put them into practice, though, but instead used them as the framework for a speculative work of fiction. I suspect she must have performed some experimentation, or otherwise had a very good understanding of the principles involved, because she painted a remarkably accurate picture of the outcome.
"The atomic bomb had not yet been created, but the research that would allow it had been performed. The power of the atom was now viable, and so I assembled the components and brought my daughter into this world."
"So, what you're saying is, Odessa is...an Atomic Frankenstein?"
"No! That's not it at all!" I harrumphed, "And Frankenstein was the scientist. I thought you taught English."
"Yeah, but composition, not literature. Conjunctions."
I shrugged. "Odessa is superior in almost every way compared to baseline humanity, but the world is still recovering from the last attempt to engineer a master race, and I had no desire to subject it to another. We came to America so she could learn to be human before she learned to be superhuman. She is fertile, and she will breed true. Given a partner, she could be mother to a new race of beings like herself."
This had led to some unusual conversations over the past several years: "Clean your room or I won't build you a boyfriend."
I prodded the gelatin. Inert. Was this some kind of assassination tool that would clean up after itself after it had eliminated its target? Or did it simply have a greatly accelerated life cycle and had starved down to nothingness in the time elapsed between consuming the women and our arrival? I suspected that it could grow without limit given sufficient food sources. With enough people to consume, this glob would girdle the globe.
"Are you done here?" Mary asked.
"Yes. Just let me get this sample stowed safely. I want to look at it more closely at home."
Mary nodded as I transferred the globule to a test tube and stoppered it up tightly.
Sometimes, after a catastrophe, there is a tendency to relive the moments leading up to it, as if it is a mathematical equation that is somehow solvable, and if you can find the proper variables, you can calculate a different outcome. So many sleepless nights pondering my situation with Odessa has taught me better. And I think Mary was a dead woman the moment she stepped in that house.
The blob creature fell upon her as she exited through the front entrance. At first I thought someone was playing a joke: the child's prank, where a bucket full of water is balanced atop the door, and spills its contents on the first unfortunate to open it. My students played that trick on me once. But as she began dissolving, clothing, skin and muscle all melting away, like wax in a sudden inferno, the true horror became apparent. In my memories, it stretches on for hours, but in reality, it was merely moments. She turned towards me ponderously, with something almost like serenity, her head tilted slightly as if she couldn't understand what was happening. How could she? Her brain was melting. I could see it.
Squeakers, her little mouse familiar, was spared the initial deluge by virtue of his location in her purse. He jumped to the floor and tried to rid himself of the goo, shaking himself like a dog shaking itself dry, but the creature was all around him, and nothing moves the blob. He met the same fate as his mistress. I survived the Russian Revolution and two world wars; I still think that mouse skeleton, frozen up on two legs, is the saddest thing I've ever seen.
Instinctively, I ran towards them, and I likely would have died, had Matryoshka not been there. I don't know if she employed some method of concealing or transporting herself, but all of a sudden she was just there. The world became dim again as she restrained me with her shackles of shadow.
I fell prone on the floor, with a perfect view of Mary's remains. Matryoshka hovered in the periphery of my vision, but even from this vantage point I could see that her stature was much diminished. She knelt down to whisper something in my ear. "Magic," she said, voice lyrical with music and mockery.
She rose, turned away from me. "A condition of your creature's continued cooperation is your continued life. And so you will live to see our victory."
There was a period of discontinuity with my consciousness. When I awoke, Matryoshka was gone and the sun was setting behind Mary's skeleton. Its shadow was reaching towards me. I was still paralyzed and I felt that I would go mad if that shadow touched me.
I felt another presence behind me, in that house of the dead. "I never meant for this to happen," she said
I tried to turn to see her, but couldn't. I didn't have to. I saw her clearly in my mind's eye. Tawny hair longer than before, blue eyes closed, her back against the wall, her hands up around her knees. She spoke and my heart ached to hear her voice. "The umbra magicks will subside soon, mom. Don't worry. I'll be here with you as long as you need me."
She slipped her hand into mine. How many times had I done the same to her? I remembered other notes she had written for me ("You are my Sun!" "You put my heart together!") and my eyes filled with tears.
"Mother, if you could only see the things I've seen. Then you'd know that our way is the right way."
My tongue was as paralyzed as the rest of me, so I could not reply. I'm not sure that I wanted to. I know that Odessa is more intelligent than I am. She may be among the smartest beings on the planet. What if she's right? I put that thought aside. Raw intelligence is only part of the equation. She lacks experience, maturity, the understanding and caution that come from dealing with the consequences of bad decisions. No, I would not substitute her judgment for mine in this.
"Okay, mom," she said after a time. "I can see you'll be able to move soon, so I'm going before you're tempted to chase me. Please let this be. Don't come back to the Echthros Club. I'll be home when I'm ready."
She leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. "I love you."
Then I heard the sound of her footsteps retreating in the distance. Though I could move soon, it was a long time before I was ready. I couldn't take Mary with me, so I gathered up Squeakers instead, to remember her. Then I left that place and never returned.
7 – Halloween, again
As far as the rest of the world was concerned, both Mary and I died that day. It was time to stop being the concerned mother, the stern schoolmarm. If I wanted to rescue Odessa, I would have to become again the woman who commanded the thunders of heaven, mimicked the earthquake, and mocked the invisible world with its own shadows.
I vanished from the world, locking myself into a fallout shelter. It had been my laboratory once upon a time, and it became one again. I entered it in the end of September and did not come out until Halloween night. Anyone who had seen me go in would not have recognized the woman who emerged.
I cleaned myself in the emergency shower. I dressed slowly. I loaded some of the equipment into the bench seat beside me and packed the rest in the trunk. I left my home at seven PM, and began the slow drive to the Echthros Club. Plenty of time.
I had only a quarter tank of gas, which is when I usually fill up, but if I survived, I could refill on the return trip. If not, well, then, I guess I had saved two dollars.
"Play a Simple Melody" was on the radio when I pulled into the lot. I've always enjoyed that song. I waited for it to end before turning off the engine.
The lot was nearly empty. The signboard outside
read "Closed for a Private Party". I tried the door, but it was locked. I lowered my goggles and cut through the bar with an oxyacetylene torch. I thought I would be losing my element of surprise, but they must be so intent on their ritual that they didn't notice me. So I strolled right on in to the club.
And here we are. I walked in, followed by three simple automata, cylinders on tank treads, topped with radar dishes. Nothing on the order of Odessa; she would always be my great work, but I didn't have time to make another Odessa. Nor, in light of recent developments, was I convinced that doing so would be particularly prudent.
They had the dance floor cleared out and their gibberish sigils squiggled on the floor. I've never seen such an assortment of...monsters, for lack of a better word. A brain in a jar, probably salvaged from some long dead Nazi, cradled in the arms of a beatnik gorilla, a fish-man and his gator, two werewolves (I have no idea which one was the master and which the companion. Maybe they took turns), a maniacal dummy sitting on the knee of a man who was very clearly dead, and several small humanoids, goblins maybe, with their fairy companions. And Odessa. And Matryoshka.
I didn't see Odessa's biker boyfriend anywhere. That made me a happy mommy.
Odessa was the first to notice me. I felt a small surge of pride. I was carrying a small projector, which I set down on a table near the entrance. She tried to shoo me away with her eyes, but it was a little late for that. Matryoshka saw the gesture and followed it to me.
Her little doll mouth made its little smile again. "Ah, the High Priestess of High Modernism." That was a clever bit of wordplay. I wouldn't have thought she was familiar with that phrase. I wonder if she learned it from Odessa. "Are you here to show us some slides from your vacation?"
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