by Eric Ellert
"Hello," a voice said. Moren waved her hand back and forth in the air as if she was trying to stop a train.
Faudron leaned her head close.
"Moren, I just got in. Everything's going all right."
"That ain't mom."
"You think?" But Faudron wasn't scared; she felt wild and just for fun, she hit the speed dial on her own phone and a voice clicked on the line.
"High Faudron. Are you ok? I'm fine. Moren's here; would you like to say hello?"
Faudron tossed the phone away, not sure if whoever had done this was stupid and could be outsmarted, or mean, and just wanted to scare them.
"What do we do now?" Faudron asked.
"That ain't mom."
"She wasn't at Mt. Sinai, either."
"We could just drive and drive and drive," Moren said. "No, we'll go to Florida, stop at the cottage, daddy'll go there first when he's out of quarantine."
Faudron didn't answer at first; Moren did have feelings; the nice ones weren't really often directed at her, but she did have feelings. "Can I borrow your Schumer card?"
"Yeah, sure," Moren said, getting it out of her wallet, clearly not liking the idea.
"Wait here, better yet, get in the car."
"Stop telling me what to do." But she shook her hands in the air, just after she said it to apologize.
When Faudron got to the phone, she swiped the card through the reader, but it was gummed-up so she dialed *O and tapped in the numbers from the back of the card.
"You have dialed an unassigned access number. Please dial again."
Faudron did it three times but couldn't get in. Moren's card had been cancelled. They wouldn't be able to go far. Eventually, they'd run out of what little cash they had and eventually they'd have to use a toll road, and the Easy Pass eye would scan Moren's card and the engine's ignition would cut out and they'd be stopped.
Faudron leaned on the phone and smiled as she noticed Moren looking over from the car window. They'd lied. It wasn't Faudron's birthday they had to worry about; it was Moren. They'd cut off her card because she wasn't supposed to leave.
Moren snuck up and gave her a little shove. "Something wrong."
"Nothing." Faudron looked around. A big oak with reflectors stood a few feet from the road, a strange driveway into nothing before it, then Faudron realized they'd moved the road to keep people from striking the tree and the driveway had once been the road. "Now that's crazy," she said. "Why didn't they just cut down the tree?"
"Oh, that's Splinter's house. You can just see it if you go past that bush there. I guess he was fond of the tree."
"Oh, yeah." She started to walk towards it, hardly thinking.
"Thank you big sister, I'll be right here by the way if you're concerned."
"OK," Faudron said without looking back.
When Faudron got to the front door she felt herself blush, which was stupid, there was just too much going on. She took a deep breath and knocked on the door. It opened on the second nock.
"Splinter," Faudron said, stepping back. "Your ears."
"Oh," he said, covering the holes where his ears should be. "I'm so sorry. Come in."
Faudron tiptoed inside. On the wall stood the phony fifties tvs like Rau had and more or less the same furnishings.
Splinter walked to a brackish-looking fish tank with eels swimming in the center and pulled two ears out.
"Splinter."
He stuck them on his head. "Sorry, but the eels keep them clean and the water keeps them fresh, well, alive when I'm not wearing them. They itch."
"I just bet."
"You'd like an explanation?"
"Yes," Faudron said.
He sat down, she beside him. "I don't know where to begin, and there is so little I do know. But I know you."
"No you don't," Faudron said.
"Close your eyes. Go on. Remember with me. Did you meet a guy in the park once. He was painting a picture; you were dressed in a skating outfit. It was 1922, maybe 23. Did you walk within ear shot of a musket battle in Austria, in 1600? I was the wounded-soldier who stayed at your farm. Did you?"
Faudron saw all these meetings and others, like dreams in her mind. "Stop it. It's a trick.
"No. There are worlds upon worlds out there, Faudron. Each one has someone who is you in it. Not another you, but you, stretched out, like a shadow in a mirror. You and I were all those people, are all those people, then and right now."
Her head hurt. "Stop. Use words, Talk to me with words." Before he did she had a look inside his mind, at the thoughts just behind speech, the ones people think of but keep hidden as they unconsciously decide how much to say to one another. "You're Rau. You're Rau and you're not even sure you're him. But how?"
"The hole they made in time is sucking people and places and things in and spitting them back out. And no, Rau and I have never met, nor can we. He loves you, you know?"
"And you?"
He thought about it for a moment, took his ears off and put them back in the fish tank. "To tell you the truth, it was a girl who let me paint her picture in 1922."
"And where is she?"
"She died of a fever in 1923, or was it the beginning of 24? It's hard to remember now. And then it was undone by the hole they made in the sky. And then I found myself here with nowhere to go."
"Help us."
"Take a walk down that road before midnight, you'll be dead five minutes after you run out of gas. And no one will know or care. Those green and white pills, I ain't got anymore."
"Bastard." She ran outside.
***
Moren smelled smoke, new smoke. She tapped on the train station's door and tried to peekfixsp? in the chicken-wire covered windows, with the soapy paint job on the French glass, but couldn't see inside.
The front door jumped, the way a door does when someone opens another in the same room, changing the air pressure.
"Who's there?" a voice asked.
"It's Moren."
"No it's not. Don't tease me like that."
Although it was rude, and maybe even dangerous, Moren peeked into the peephole. The eye inside backed off and Moren saw a blond woman standing in a room full of bric-a-brac like a highway Hallmark store.
"You got any cigarettes? My Indian died. He used to go to the reservation for me and get me a crate at a time, at a reasonable mark-up. He was a great man, and in my small way I think I even loved him."
"I've heard that said and I do. But I don't have a match."
"That a trick?"
"No." Moren held out the crushed-up pack she'd found in Faudron's shirt pocket. She had lied; she did have a lighter, but she had to get inside this place. "Just like Everwood."
"People used to say that."
"Can I come in."
The woman paused for a very long time, so long that Moren turned to walk to the car, a creepy, tingling sensation between her shoulder blades. The door creaked open and a hand waived her in. Moren hurried inside and the woman shut the door.
"Please."
"Oh." Moren handed her the pack. "Keep 'em. They're my sisters. She's going to quit tonight anyway."
"Thank you."
The woman held one arm behind her back and managed to light her cigarette with the other.
Antique silver sat in glass-fronted cabinets all along the walls. Modern chochkies like coconut head carvings hung above the cabinets. Candy, cigarettes and soda were offered at a separate cash register in the middle of the store, next to a third kiosk for Lotto.
"You want to see the back? People like to see the back."
"Sure. But you look awfully familiar. Didn't anyone ever tell you that?"
"Not till just." The woman sat on a tall stool behind one of the cash registers, popped the register open and counted out her singles. "Well, go on. It's just in the back, ain't the moon, but it's nice."
Moren didn't really care for this strange woman, but Faudron and Splinter were nearby; she'd be all right. She went through the hippie b
eads into the back room. They'd devoted a larger portion of the old station to this section and it went back and back. All along the walls stood wax figure dioramas like a roadside museum depicting werewolves, horrible werewolves, some turning into people, some tall in evening-where with evil, yellow eyes that gave the illusion that they were alive and watching her.
In the far corner, under layers and layers of dust sat a wax figure of a little girl in one of the overbearing dresses of the eighteenth- century. She sat in front of a player piano. Next to the player piano stood a coin box.
Moren fished around for a quarter, looked back to the doorway, then dropped it in.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourge played and the creepy wax figure moved its arms up and down, sort of in time to the music, turning its head left to right, right to left. Moren almost fell back. She steadied herself on the rope railing and knocked it over. It fell into the girl statue, and the girl statue fell to the floor, sending dust into the air.
Bones stuck out where the figure had broken, and it wasn't a statue at all. She spun around, all of them, now that her senses were heightened with fear, were real.
She ran to the doorway. The woman was still sitting on her stool. For the first time, Moren noticed all the famous paintings stacked along the walls. Others paintings lay behind them, roll upon roll.
She crossed the room, staring at everything in every case. Inside one, sat a stone that looked so familiar.
"The hope diamond," the woman said.
"I don't understand."
"You saw it once on a class trip."
"Did I?" Moren asked.
"Yes you did."
"Let me see your hand?" Moren asked, wondering if all the mysteries in the world were behind her back.
"No, I can't. I really can't." The woman looked as if she'd cry, but she pulled her hand out. It was three times normal size and bloated. "That's from the radiation. They neutroned New York City."
"I heard."
"Lots of cool stuff lying around. But what they didn't tell me is, even if you clean it off really good, it's still irradiated for quite a while."
Moren wiped her hands together.
"Did you touch anything, Moren?"
"No."
"You'll be fine."
"How do you know my name?" Moren asked.
"Because my name is Moren too."
Moren got the dry heaves. She hadn't noticed before, but there was the faint smell of blood in the room. "What do you mean?"
"Picture if you will, a row of yellow, painted-feet on a gray, concrete floor. Half the children step forward; half the children step back."
Moren had to lean on the case. She threw up the bile in her empty stomach. "Stop it, I don't remember."
"I do. I was Mrs. Falkirk's three-year-old daughter and you belonged to Mrs. Fosforo. She was a Nord," she said pointing up with the other hand as she hid the bad one.
"And why are you here?"
"I wanted to see my mom," the woman said.
"No. She's my mom."
"I wouldn't hold it against you," the woman said.
"Hey, Hey," someone shouted from outside. He knocked on the door, then forced it open. Splinter walked in. He scanned the room as if all was clear to him. "You shouldn't have done that."
"It was her quarter," the woman said.
"Ha?"
"Is it true, Splinter?" Moren asked.
"Everybody you meet here's a liar. I wouldn't count on it."
The woman pushed over one of the paintings and spat on it. "Did you tell her about the green and white pills? No. Sweetie they keep you from getting sick from the bad water in this place, but if you stop taking them you die. You can't leave. Sucker."
She turned, revealing all the radiation marks at the back of her neck and the missing hair above it. Blue and red veins pulsed close to the surface where her skin had been singed away. "Not much they can do or will do."
Moren put her hand to her mouth to hold the acid she threw up in. Splinter got Moren to the door.
"Say hello to mom, will you?" the woman asked.
"Splinter, tell me?" Moren asked, when they got outside, the door safely shut behind her.
"Not yet."
Moren backed off, turned away and three up on the station door.
Chapter 11
Faudron came from the back of the station where she'd been trying to open the rear door.
Faudron approached and sat on the hood, not looking at Moren. She got in and as she rolled down the window, not bothering to complain when Moren lit a cigarette she found in the glove compartment. They shared it.
"Bye, Splinter," Faudron said as she rolled up the window, though he knocked on it and tried to open the Lincoln's door.
"Mom's all right. Dad's all right," they both said at once.
Moren giggled and put her hands on Faudron's shoulders. "Can't really hate a sister who can do that."
Moren seemed so happy, so sneakers floating above the ground free and happy, that Faudron didn't want to say a thing to spoil it but she had to. "Mom's still there."
Moren was the little girl again. "I-I know. What can we do? If you could do something, Rau woulda' done it, no."
"I know, still."
She looked back in the direction of the town, nothing of it visible but a big rain cloud with flashes of lightning at the very top and around the sides. The town was surrounded by so many stony valleys, valleys no one had ever walked in, and full of all kinds of secrets, like dark spirits who had fled the halogen lights of the modern world. The air was so fresh here, back there it smelled; it was rotten but it hadn't started out that way and worse or best, she wasn't sure, it had been her parents' town. She'd thought it so cruel to drag people in and keep them there, but it wasn't so. They had sprung from there, monsters born on a ticking clock. She was somehow, supposed to go back.
And destroy it and gloat after it was destroyed.
When they got home, Moren fed the mouse Cornflakes, though she couldn't help staring at it through the glass with horror as it ate. "Hey, Faudron, in town, I've never seen such an ugly bunch of naked people in my life."
"How many have you seen?"
"Just saying, big sister."
Faudron took a deep breath so she wouldn't say all the things she knew she shouldn't say like Moren shouldn't have stayed here alone and she shouldn't have used it as an excuse to skate. Instead, she went to the fishtank and fed the mouse Skittles.
"Where'd you get that thing?" Moren asked, as she tapped the glass.
"Just outside the door. Where you find everything weird around here."
"Can I keep it?" Moren asked.
"I vacuumed up all the mouse poison in the corner last night."
"And the mouse poop? He must have a lot of friends. There was some in that cereal. Hope you didn't have any this morning. I was going to throw it out, eventually."
Faudron felt sick at the thought but wouldn't give Moren the satisfaction. "I heard his friends last night. Why'd mom and dad bring us to this awful place?"
"They had to," Moren said.
"Why?"
"They were born here, but someone was kind-enough not to give them the shots, the room with the yellow feet. But they were born here."
"With Mayor McCheese, the tatoo lady and the nut next door and why is she playing that song over and over?"
"She likes it. I like it," Moren said.
"Wait a minute. Why were they born here? That doesn't make sense. We're not even from this part of the country."
"You know how they take the DNA from the salmon and put it in the tomato so it doesn't freeze?"
"You mean like the tomato that makes French people really angry?" Faudron asked.
"Yeah, that one. You're the tomato and this is the cannery."
"They would have told us. And you're the evil girl from Caprica who kills people," Faudron said.
"Come on." Moren guided Faudron outside. She stopped and picked up a rock from the garden. "You trust me?"
"No. Not ever."
"And your the blond girl on Caprica, that Canadian who blows everybody up." Moren wound up and threw the rock at the window but instead of cracking the pane it bounced off. "They didn't know. Dad never bought a house he didn't check every nail in."
Faudron started to speak but the garbage truck passed. Another truck tried to pass the garbage truck and the garbage truck had to back up. Metal bars and wire mesh were secured to the windows of the passing truck. Animal noises and stink came from the trailer section.
"What did you say?" Moren shouted when the trucks passed.
"Outside people come here?"
They went to the road to get a look at the secured-truck as it made its way east toward the dam. Faudron wondered why this place wasn't all locked-down. And if it was secret, why'd they let outsiders in? No, it made sense, the people who lived here would live in their own filth until they got a disease if left to their own devices.
Dad had hinted to her about tests and experiments he'd undergone, but he'd said it had been Astronaut stuff, not strange and dangerous, just unusual and weird.
"Watch out," Moren said. "I think the lama's going to bite you in the..."
"Ow." Faudron jumped in the air and spun around. The lama might have been human, its face was so expressive.
"(*&(*&(*& malcontents," the lama said.
Faudron wanted to run, dream-like fast, so fast she could hop and skip over the reservoir and make it to the fence and out. She took a breath and laughed. This really would make the French riot. "Moren?"
"Yes, Fau," Moren said in a sing-song voice.
"Come on. Lock the door."
Chapter 12
Faudron slept for an hour and woke up so tired she told herself she was making French toast, dropped two eggs on the pan, washed the eggshells and put them in the recycling bin before she realized what she'd done.
She had the window open a crack and La Vi En Rose played again.
When the record skipped for the second time, Moren bounced down the stairs as if nothing bad had ever happened to her. "Faudron, remember to put the green garbage in the in the blue bin."
"That thing back in the bushes with the stink?"
"We're making dirt," Moren said, quite proud of herself.
