Silverwood

by Betsy Streeter

  Gabriel leaps up, indignant. “Garbage!”

  “You’ve gone too far, Dinkle,” 441 says. “We had an arrangement. It had nothing to do with the Silverwoods. They’re not even supposed to be here. We had created this place, nobody knew about it, everything was going fine. But then you had to get greedy. You and your band of Tromindox friends. It wasn’t enough to create this place, you wanted to destroy the Silverwood clan, too. And my stupid cousins wanted the vaccine. And now look. This whole thing is about to get blasted to hell because of you and your stupidity.”

  The device in Gabriel’s hand buzzes. Not now.

  “Well, we’re here now, so you’ll have to…” Gabriel says.

  “Shut up, Silverwood!” Dinkle yells. “Look, this was your idea, you stupid beast. You wanted the stronghold.”

  “And you wanted the Council and the Silverwoods,” 441 says. “And now look. You’ve got neither.”

  “Am I here?” Gabriel says.

  “Shut up!!” Dinkle and 441 yell simultaneously.

  The device buzzes again. Gabriel glances down. Henry? He spins the wheel on the side up and down with his thumb until the signal comes in.

  Henry is holding a piece of paper. On it is a drawing. He shoves it in close, until it fills the screen.

  It’s a picture of a portal, dropping down a pipe with a pump handle at the top, with one word: NOW.

  Gabriel turns to face 441.

  “Sorry, friend,” Gabriel says to the Tromindox. “I’m afraid this arrangement has to come to an end. I just ask one thing…”

  “What’s that?” 441 asks.

  “When you get back to where you came from, would you eat Dinkle? Please.”

  “What?”

  Gabriel holds his hand straight out over the well, and lets the portal drop. Dinkle runs forward, shoving Gabriel out of the way. He drops to his knees and peers down into the hole, losing hold of the vaccine in the process. The vial shatters on the ground, the medicine soaking into the dirt.

  Gabriel is walking backwards, away from the well. Just a few more feet…

  “Get that portal back, 441,” Dinkle says. “Now.”

  441 does not move. “It’s too late, Dinkle. Too late for you, and too late for us.”

  The projections holding Kate and Helen turn to static, then disappear. The power begins cutting out as the portal falls closer and closer to its destination, sliding down the underground pipe.

  Gabriel moves backward a few more steps.

  Henry’s voice comes through the device in Gabriel’s hand.

  “Now. Run. Now!”

  Gabriel, Kate and Helen run. They run out between the buildings, out of the town, uphill. Anywhere uphill. They don’t look back.

  Dinkle tries to chase Gabriel, but something knocks him to the ground. He stands up and runs forward again, but again he slams into something. What is this barrier? He puts his hands up. He punches it with his fist. Dinkle runs in a wide circle, flailing his fists, unable to get more than about ten feet from the well in any direction.

  Dinkle’s head splits open and bursts into a mass of tentacles. He convulses, then throws himself against the invisible barrier again. His form expands into an enormous mass of claws and tentacles and ragged flesh.

  The Silverwoods see none of this. They run. No one looks back. Just because you can look back, doesn’t mean you should.

  Christopher hits the button again, and again, and again… send, send, send. He sends so hard he doesn’t see the screen light up with an incoming message from Gabriel that can only make it through between his own messages in bits: RUN—TAKE—FIELD—BOOK

  What was that? Is the channel going out? It can’t! Christopher pushes the button again, but the screen goes blank and displays only one word: OVERRIDE. He punches it frantically now. He can’t lose the connection. What if the field hasn’t gone through. He can’t…

  Gabriel has overridden the device. It lights up with a message for Christopher:

  G: RUN GET OUT OF HOTEL

  G: FIELD COLLAPSE

  G: RUN NOW NOW NOW

  Christopher hears a low rumbling sound from outside the hotel. Something coming? What is a field collapse?

  Rosie lowers the camera, Henry looks up from his drawing. “What is it?” they say, together.

  “We have to go,” Christopher says, calmly. Another rumble. “Where is Daniel?”

  “Right here,” Daniel says from the foot of the stairs. “There’s something weird going on outside. You can’t see across the street. It’s all blurry…”

  “Run!” Christopher yells. “It’s the field! The field around the hotel! It’s collapsing…”

  Everyone bolts toward the front door. Through the windows, the view has smeared together, as if there is some kind of warm-weather blizzard in progress. Henry’s feet tangle in the edge of the rug, and he stumbles. “The book!” he yells.

  Daniel spins around. The book. Where is it? He runs back toward the open cabinet in the front room. There it sits, in its customary spot, Bertrand the cat stationed on top of it.

  “Going for another ride, cat,” Daniel says, scooping them both up and running out, knocking over the front table as he goes.

  Henry and Rosie burst out the front door and leap down the steps. Rosie hits the bottom step and crashes forward, as the rumbling builds to a deafening roar. Henry reaches the middle of the street before he realizes Rosie is lying face down.

  Daniel vaults out the door, book and cat under his arm like a running back. Christopher is right behind him. He reaches down, grabs the back of Rosie’s dress, and hauls her forward. The blizzard becomes a blinding flash of light engulfing all of them and the hotel.

  A horrible whooshing sound fills their ears, as if they will be sucked back in. They lie flat in the dust, Daniel’s arm over the book and the cat. Bertrand flattens himself, probably because he can’t breathe under Daniel’s tight grip.

  They squeeze their eyes shut to keep out the swirling dust. Rocks and pieces of debris fly over their bodies. Rosie puts her hands up over her head, her curls filling with dirt. Henry rolls up, bits of rock painfully pelting his back. Bertrand’s claws dig deeper and deeper into the leather cover of The Book of Regrets. Daniel can feel his feet slipping as they all are pulled, slowly, back toward the hotel.

  And then, as suddenly as it came, it is gone. The sound is gone.

  And—the hotel is gone.

  And—Rosie is gone.

  Where Rosie had been, a sweet-looking old lady sits with her knees up.

  “Hello Henry,” the lady says.

  Henry sits up and squints in the sunlight. “Hello? Who are you?”

  “It’s me, Rosie,” Rose says. “Except I go by Rose, now.”

  “Did we just go forward in time?” Henry asks.

  “No, no, you’re right where you were. I’m afraid it’s me who was jumping around.”

  Henry looks at Rose more closely. The curly grey hair, tied back behind her head. The delicate hands. The dark eyes. It’s Rosie, all right.

  “But… what happened to you? Did you just skip your whole life? I hope you didn’t just skip your whole life…”

  “No, I didn’t,” Rose says. “I’ve been here, in Brokeneck, waiting for you, knitting. I hope you’re not angry with me.”

  “Waiting for me? How did you know I was coming here? I didn’t know I was coming here! You lived in the city!”

  Daniel sits up now, and stares at the lady he knows from the diner. The lady who knits, the one with the zombie husband. Rose.

  “Hello Daniel,” Rose says.

  Christopher springs up. “It was you?” he says. He reaches down and takes her hands, lifting her gently to her feet. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Rose says. “A little tired, is all.”

  Rose turns to go. “I really should get back to the diner and resume my knitting.”

  She takes a few steps, but then turns back towards Henry.

  “Henry, can I buy
you a malt?” Rose asks. “We can go to the diner, and I can tell you about how I found you and how I waited for you.”

  “Okay,” Henry says, and hops up to join her.

  The two of them walk together, slowly, down the center of the street toward the Brokeneck Diner.

  “Henry, you’re a very talented young man,” Rose says. “I think you will lead the Guild one day.”

  “Thanks,” Henry says, and smiles.

  Daniel releases his grip on the cat, stands and puts his hands on his hips. Bertrand climbs off the book long enough to rub on Daniel’s legs.

  “That’s all that’s left, cat,” Daniel says, gesturing toward the rubble that had been the Brokeneck Hotel. “Good thing we got you and your book out of there, huh? You’d be a pile of rocks by now.”

  “Rrrrrr myrrrrr,” Bertrand says.

  “Oh my,” a voice says. It’s Mrs. Woods, just one of her now, standing at the exact center of the rubble. She puts her hand up to her face. “My, what a mess.”

  The screaming wind tears at the skin on Helen’s face. She wraps her elbows around a post on the porch of the General Store and hangs on. Her boots slide on the rotten wood underfoot. Pieces of debris fly past her, straight into the middle of the street and down the pipe where her father dropped the portal. Anything too big to go down is pulverized by the wind and sucked in piece by piece.

  She looks out, toward the hills. That’s the only way to escape; they must find a way to get up there—and quickly. That is the only way to escape the monstrous pull of the portal and keep from getting sucked down the drain and into… somewhere they definitely don’t want to go.

  “That way!” Helen can hear her mother screaming, pointing between the buildings. Her voice flies away on the wind but Helen understands the gesture.

  She puts her head down and pulls her way forward, hanging on to the railing and then the wall. She curls the ends of her fingers around the wood shingles and exposed bricks on the outside of the building. Wood peels off and flies away, so Helen puts her faith in the bricks.

  All around her she can see black shapes that resemble torn garbage bags flying toward the well. The Tromindox, with their loose, shape-shifting molecules, don’t stand a chance.

  Something catches Helen’s eye in an upstairs window. She peels her hair out of her eyes. It’s a figure.

  Posey Van Buren looks down at Helen, an expression of panic on her face.

  “Hold on!” Helen yells, even though she knows no one can hear her. She puts her arms up in front of her face and runs for the front door. Her feet slide sideways and pieces of wood and stone pelt her. She finds the stairs and runs up. Chunks of the banister come loose and fly away as she goes.

  When she bursts into the upstairs room, the door swings around and slams into the wall outside. There is no glass left in any of the windows. Posey kneels on the floor next to a man, kind of a pasty sort, with a nasty wound on his head.

  “We’ve got to get out of here! Come with me!” Helen yells.

  “We can’t leave him!” Posey cries. The man tries to get up, but he can’t get any further than his knees.

  Helen recognizes this man. She healed him earlier, sent him back to where he came from. Or, so she thought. Why didn’t he go back like the others? And how has Posey hidden out all this time?

  There’s no time to ask. If they don’t get out, they are all going down the drain.

  Kate appears at the door, runs in and lifts the man’s arm over her shoulder. “Everybody lock elbows!” she yells. Together they stand, in the doorway.

  “Ready?” Kate says.

  They put their heads down and step out the door. The stairway landing almost immediately gives way, swaying and buckling against the back of the building.

  “Stay hooked together!” Kate says. “Our combined weight will make us heavy enough not to get sucked in.”

  They stumble down the rapidly deteriorating stairs. By the time they reach the bottom, they are standing on a pile of wood. The brick walls have not yet disintegrated, but they will soon. Bits of masonry are chipping away from the walls.

  “Up the hill!” Helen yells. No one can hear her.

  Together, like a group of party revelers out too late, the group stumbles upward over the rocks and dust. With each step their feet slide backwards. The man with the bandaged head drops to his knees again, but pushes himself back up. Posey is surprisingly strong for a person who looks like she ought to have been snapped in half by now.

  The wind throws a constant storm of blinding dust into their faces. Plants and even rocks rip out of the ground and careen downhill.

  “We’re too close!” Helen yells. “We’re not going to make it!”

  “Yes, you are!” It’s her dad. Gabriel comes up behind them and wraps his arms around Helen and Kate’s waists, shoving the whole group forward. The ground seems to come apart beneath them, the horrible screaming sound has gotten so loud that Helen’s whole head is ringing…

  And then, quiet.

  Quiet, and floating. And a gurgling sound in Helen’s ears. It’s the sound from her dream. And now, she is moving away from the town. It gets smaller and smaller, just like the farmhouse.

  Everyone lifts up off the ground, in slow motion. It is as if they are flying. Except, they are not flying.

  They are swimming.

  The water flows around them. Helen can see a circle of sunlight up above her. She can’t tell how far away it is. She’s got no air in her lungs. The book in the satchel on her back feels like a dead weight.

  Helen kicks her legs and looks around. Posey floats upward, her tiny frame gracefully arching toward the surface.

  The man with the head wound isn’t quite such a skilled swimmer. He flails around until Gabriel can swim up under his arm and guide him toward the surface.

  Together they all kick, and kick, until it feels as if their lungs will burst. The blob of sun is getting closer, but how close? Where is it? It is impossible to tell. They must keep swimming upward, and hope that it’s not out of their reach.

  Rocks and swaying plants come up to meet them, until finally they reach solid ground and burst through the surface of the lake. Helen crawls forward on her hands and knees, gasping for air. Her knees bang into the rocks; sand fills her boots.

  Posey sits daintily in the shallow water. Gabriel has hoisted head-wound man up and out, and laid him on his back to recover in the mud. Kate pulls out and sits, gulping deep breaths, peeling her white hair off her face.

  A low rumble comes from the center of the lake, like an underground bomb going off. A disturbance in the water forms, a small wave, builds up and expands outward in all directions. It reaches the group; the force of the swell sways them all backward before gently setting them in place again.

  “Thank you Posey, for staying with me,” the head-injury man says.

  “Well I couldn’t very well leave you, Daniel would have never forgiven me.”

  Daniel?

  “I know,” the man says. “I guess we both got in over our heads a little bit, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, we did,” Posey says. “Quite literally.”

  She smiles at him. “Welcome back, Mr. Brush.”

  Clarence the dog lifts himself from his vantage point under the trees, ambles down the bank, and shoves his face into Gabriel’s.

  “Hey, dog,” Gabriel says. “It’s been a while.”

  Gabriel uses the yellow spatula to pry up the corner of a waffle. The center of the waffle stays stuck, so he works his way around and pulls pieces off until he’s assembled a plateful of waffle bits. He burns a finger and sticks it in his mouth.

  “Could you give this thing a little more juice? The waffles are coming out mushy,” he says to his wife.

  Kate lifts her tired body out of a lawn chair. She stretches and steps over the stone foundation of the Brokeneck Hotel. She slides into the driver’s seat of Betty, the blue muscle car, and guns the engine. This sends power to the generator, which in turn keeps the
waffles coming.

  “Thanks,” Gabriel says, handing her the plate of waffle parts and kissing her on the cheek. Kate dumps syrup over the pile. “Okay who wants some waffle?”

  Helen looks up from her reading. “Me,” she says.

  “Me,” Henry says from his perch on a stack of stones that may or may not have been part of the hotel’s lobby fireplace.

  Kate looks toward what used to be the front porch. “Eleanor, really, you don’t need to sweep now.”

  The hologram stops and turns, looks at Kate, and smiles. “I know,” Eleanor says, “it just makes me feel—normal. Keeps me grounded.”

  “Well, no offense but it’s kind of creepy, Mrs. Woods,” Helen says. “Now that there’s no porch to sweep.”

  The Mrs. Woods hologram looks around, and heaves a sigh. “Yes, I suppose it’s not really needed.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Helen mumbles into her book. Kate shoots her daughter a glare.

  “We’ll get you out of there before too long, Eleanor,” Gabriel says, pouring more waffle batter onto the iron. “Promise. We just have to keep you from getting scattered all over the place again.”

  “I know you will,” Mrs. Woods says, and smiles.

  Henry hops down and takes a seat in the folding chair next to his mom. Instinctively Kate puts a hand on the back of the lawn chair so it doesn’t fold up with her son in it.

  “Mom?’’ Henry says.

  “Yeah?” Kate says.

  “Do you think they all went?”

  “They all…?” Kate says.

  “All the Tromindox. Do you think they all went back through the well? In the bottom of the lake?” Henry says.

  “The ones in range did,” Kate says. “There’s no telling if some of them had ventured far enough away to escape.” Kate looks at her son’s face, the concern in his brow and the searching look in his eyes, and she realizes that she needs to be careful now, not to induce nightmares. After all, they have lost the walls around them. Henry is feeling, well, exposed. At the end of the day, he’s just a kid who wants to know if there are monsters under the bed.