The trees were well over thirty feet tall, each with a thick trunk resembling that of a cactus, only black. The branches of each tree were obscured by heavy onion layers of bleak blue leaves that collectively blossomed outward to form human faces, each turning upward to stare at him through milky eyes containing no pupils, each face twisted into a tight, pinched expression of concentrated grief. As the wind passed through the trees, the faces opened their mouths and moaned; deeply, steadily, mournfully: the sound of cumulative anguish.
The young man felt tears welling in his eyes, and wished he could say something to ease their pain. After all, he recognized every face.
A strong gust of wind howled, snatching the balloon from within the ring of keening trees and hurtling it into the gale. It bounced across the night sky, turning, dipping, rising, caught in the thermals. It ebbed across roads, spun down streets, and arced over buildings, its cast-off rope whipping back and forth as it was tossed into the pocket of a wind that pulled it down until the tip of the rope touched the sidewalk. It scooted along until it reached an old but noble-looking house where a single dim light burned in the downstairs window. The balloon moved with great care, positioning itself so that the young man was given a clear look inside the window.
Murky light from a glowing street lamp snaked across the darkness to press against the glass. The light bled into the room, across a kitchen table, and glinted off the rim of a glass held by a man whose once-powerful body had lost its commanding posture under the weight of compiling years; he was now overweight from too many beers, over-tense from too many worries, and overworked far too long without a reprieve. Whenever this man spoke, his eyes never had you; this much the young man watching from the balloon recalled with morbid clarity. His father’s eyes were every lonely journey the young man had ever taken, every unloved place he’d ever visited, every sting of guilt he’d ever felt; he stared into his father’s eyes that never had you, eyes that only brushed by once, softly, like a cattail or a ghost, then fell shyly toward the ground in some inner contemplation too sad to be touched by a tender thought or the delicate brush of another’s care. You’d think God had forgotten his name.
Albert lifted the glass to his mouth. The cool water felt good going down, washing away the remnant of the bad dream. He drained the glass, sighed, then went to the sink for a refill. He was thinking about his days as a child, about the afternoons now forgotten by everyone but him, afternoons when he’d go to the movies for a nickel and popcorn was only a penny. He thought about how he used to take his son to the movies all the time when his son was still a boy, how much fun they always had, and Albert longed for the chance to do something like that again, something that would put a bright smile on his son’s face and make himself feel less of a failure. His son was now a great success, and Albert was still what he’d always been, a factory stooge, a worker on the line. He tried to remember how long it had been since he and his son had last spoken. Seemed a damn shame, it did, the way they never talked anymore, and his son living just the other side of town. Why hadn’t the boy called in so long?
Albert stood at the sink listening to the sounds of his wife sleeping. Janice snored loudly, and though it used to get on Albert’s nerves, he now found the sound comforting. He didn’t know how he’d be able to face the rest of his life if she weren’t by his side. She was a marvel to him. After all the mistakes he’d made – and, God, he’d made a lot, no arguing that – her respect and love for him never lessened.
Albert raised the glass to his lips and found that he was smiling.
The balloon rose higher, then, toward a window on the second floor, giving the young man a chance to look in on the sleeping form of his mother, and smile; even from outside, he could hear her snoring. Sawing logs like a lumberjack, his father used to say.
The keening trees had perfectly captured the faces of his parents, as well as the others.
The young man reached out his hand but stopped just short of placing it against the glass. Would it do any good if you knew how sorry I am?
As if in answer, the wind kicked up once again and the balloon was swept away, up and over the house. It rode the breeze above the roofs of the town until its nearly-imperceptible shadow fell across the head of a couple climbing out of a car and running toward another house, one the young man recognized all too well, as he did the couple; their faces, too, had been perfectly reproduced by the keening trees.
The balloon hovered, unseen by Patricia and her husband, Richard, as they rushed toward the front porch of the house. Patricia had been trying to get in touch with her brother for the last week and had finally given over to panic when she’d called Mom and Dad to find they hadn’t heard from him for a long while, either.
“He’s probably out of town or something,” Albert had said to her. “He’s been real…busy lately, what with the company taking off like it has.”
The explanation wasn’t enough for Patricia, who insisted that Richard and she make the two-hour drive from Dayton to Cedar Hill.
Patricia pounded on the front door, calling out her brother’s name and getting no response. She began flipping through her keys until she found the spare door key her brother had given her last year when he’d bought the house.
“I don’t know if just barging in like this is such a good idea,” said Richard.
“Don’t start with me again,” said Patricia, slipping the key into the lock. “I don’t care how great things are going for his company, you know how bad his depression can get when he doesn’t take his meds. He pulled this disappearing act the last time he went off them, and it damn near killed him.”
“I still think you’re panicking over nothing.”
“I hope so, Richard. I truly hope you’ll be saying ‘I told you so’ to me in a few minutes.”
She got the door opened but Richard stepped in front of her.
“Let me go in first, okay, hon? He might…y’know…have company or something.”
“Goddammit, Richard, I’m not going to worry about—”
“Just humor me, all right?”
Patricia exhaled, then nodded her head. “I’ll wait here. But not for long.”
Richard went inside, leaving the door half-opened.
The young man in the balloon wanted to close his eyes, wanted to cover his ears with his hands, wanted the balloon to leave here right this second because he didn’t want to see or hear what was about to happen when—
“Jesus!” shouted Richard from inside. “Oh, good Christ – PAT!”
As if propelled by the volume of Richard‘s shouts, the balloon caught a thermal and glided farther on, reaching the banks of the Licking River. The thermal expanded and the balloon lowered its basket and passenger into the waters, the currents carrying it to the junction of the north and south forks.
It bounced off a section of jutting rocks and spiraled upward, pulled into a pocket of churning wind being sucked into the deep chasm in the center of the field.
The keening trees blinked their milky dead eyes and cried out again; louder, this time, and with a deeper anguish. The young man felt their cries chew through him as the balloon hung suspended over the chasm of collapsed earth.
The balloon’s tie-off rope began lowering itself. The rumbling from deep inside the chasm became a whistle. Small sections of hillside crumbled away, giving way to increasingly larger sections sliding toward the chasm and pouring over its edge.
The chasm grew wider. More ground collapsed. The whistling was replaced by the sound of a million rocks cracking apart from the center. The tie-off line then pulled taut, a fisherman’s line at last making the catch of the day, and the balloon began rising, pulling the thing now attached to the end of the tie-off rope.
An ornate kiosk that might have been a belfry poked up, followed by curling arches that formed the overhang of stained-glass windows where stone gargoyles sat underneath.
A tug, another gust of wind, and the tie-off line snapped tighter, tugging with all its mig
ht.
The bulk of the rising church was pulled free of the membranous sac beneath the soil. The young man looked down and saw the world he’d known – as well as those he’d never know – unfurl before him like wings of a merciless predator.
He saw mountains crumble, the sky change color, and the seas give up their dead.
He saw himself watching a television screen that showed him watching a television screen of himself watching another screen where film of a funeral was shown to him as he watched. He watched his soul grow wings and take flight. He watched himself grow older. He watched himself become a baby once again. He watched himself never being born.
He watched himself being born a thousand times in a thousand different places.
He watched his soul’s wings catch fire and plummet downward into the Pit.
He watched as everything shifted and changed and faded into shadows, only to be replaced by other, firmer worlds; there were skies filled with fire and songs to be sung; there were ships and seas and fields of green; there were races being born, becoming children at play, growing up, growing old, dying, becoming ashes, blowing away; he saw his own ghost walk through these ashes and stand over the bones of a child who had once been him, and he wept at the sight, at the wasted potential; he saw the bones rise up and grow skin, replacing the ghost of himself, growing up to become young and reckless, grow strong and virile, healthy and pink-cheeked, suddenly a child, a baby once more, a seed in the womb of its mother who snored too loudly, spinning back in time before starting over once again, clicking off the television remote of the funeral scene and struggling to his feet, old, ancient, his grey hair thinning, back bent, legs thin and weak and unstable, wishing for one last kiss from the wife he never had, then hobbling off to a lonely deathbed to lay down, close his eyes, and disintegrate into vestiges of flesh that blew away to land in a field of ashes where the next ghost of himself stood weeping over the bones of a child….
The church shook off the dirt and began to glow from within as candles were set aflame. The doors were unlocked with a loud, creaking groan, and thrown open.
The Dust Witch stepped from behind the doors and gestured up toward the balloon, the bones in her arthritic index finger cracking as she curled it forward, then back; forward, then back: Get yourself down here, now.
The balloon lowered. The Dust Witch took hold of the tie-off line and wrapped it around one of the gargoyles. The basket touched ground, and the young man climbed out, slowly, with much hesitation and even more sadness.
Around him, the keening trees turned their faces downward, screaming.
He touched his lips, then pulled away his fingers to look at the blood covering them; then he reached toward the back of his head, surprised at the size of the exit wound.
He smiled, shrugged, and looked at the hag standing before him.
“A belated word of advice,” said the Dust Witch, taking his hand and leading him through the doors into Hell. “Whenever you sell your soul, don’t sell it so cheap.”
And When It Is Decided That The War Is Over
By Gary A. Braunbeck
nd for those of you who might not have been born yet, in September of 1945 the General Headquarters of the Occupational Forces issued a statement so flat and emotionless in its content and intent that it still leaves one absolutely speechless. This statement – I can’t remember the exact wording, it’s been well over half a century and I was only five years old at the time, but my uncle, Robert Pearson, was a correspondent with CBS and so had access to a copy of the report, which said, in essence, that those civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who were likely to die from A-bomb afflictions should be left to die. The official attitude was that people suffering from radiation poisoning were not worth saving, and that any attempt to do so would be an inexcusable waste of time, money, and medical supplies. What was understood but of course unwritten was that the General Headquarters of the Occupational Forces did not want to risk the lives of U.S. military personnel by sending them into the quote affected areas unquote. They were just beginning to understand the wide-ranging effects of what had been done, of how long those effects were going to last, and how they had, in their zest to end that damned war, unleashed their version of Frankenstein’s Monster on the entire world. Perhaps calling it ‘Oppenheimer’s Monster’ would be more precise, but I never agreed with that, not entirely. I had the privilege of interviewing J. Robert Oppenheimer in December of 1966, shortly before his death a few months later. I was 26 years old, it was my first really important assignment, and put me ‘on the map,’ as the saying goes. Even then, he could not stop himself from railing against the 1954 hearings that resulted in his security clearance being revoked.
“The man who is now in referred to as the ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb’ was, in his own way, broken by what he had helped to create. His outspokenness against the bomb before, during, after the hearings is well-documented, and I have no doubt that those records – now in the form of computer files – are tucked securely away on several hard drives scattered about through the dozens of underground cave bunkers where the men and women who once governed us are now making their preparations for when it is decided that the war is over. Those computer files, like those whose duty it was to assemble and organize them, are safe and sound, along with those three thousand U.S. citizens who were chosen for their skills, or their knowledge – or were among the seventeen-hundred-and-fifty who were given a place by lottery drawing. After all, while it’s all well and good to have the politicians, the doctors, the physicists, the scientists, poets, writers, newspersons, composers, actors, painters, and others without whom American culture would vanish from the face of whatever will be left of the Earth, there must also be a place for those who perform the invisible tasks that the others cannot be bothered to think about. There must be a place for the cooks, for the dishwashers, for the construction workers, janitors, plumbers, maids, electricians, the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick-makers…
“I was told by the technicians who helped me to set up this broadcast that the network has picked it up for a national feed, so there may be millions of you watching me right now…or maybe no one is watching. I don’t suppose it matters, since everything is being recorded, stored away on digital files, preserved for posterity…or maybe not. I have no idea if this broadcast will be saved or even remembered, I have no idea how long the electricity is going to hold out, but I will not stop talking to you until the choice is taken out of my hands.
“If you’ll look behind me, you’ll see that I am standing atop a television station building in a typical, bland, white-bread Midwestern city. You can see the roofs of houses in the distance, just past the section of now-deserted freeway. The panic is over, the rioting has stopped, the looters have taken all there is to take. If my calculations are correct – and I base these calculations on those issued by the Pentagon – then I have a little over thirty-six minutes before the first missile strikes the air force base a few dozen miles from here.
“Do you like this tie I’m wearing? I actually spent five minutes this morning choosing it. It is the tie I wore when I made my first news broadcast over fifty years ago. My late wife knew how to take care of such things – ties, shoes, suits, all manner of clothing – and it seemed only appropriate that I wear this tie for my final broadcast. The morning of my first broadcast, Carol – my late wife – chose this tie for me. I do this for you, my love, my heart, and hope that you can hear me, wherever you are. You’ve no idea how happy I am that you are not here to witness these final minutes of the human race – the human race that has been abandoned above-ground, I should clarify. The human race who didn’t have enough money, education, talent, or skill to rate a place in one of the underground bunkers. The human race that has been left to face its own extinction with the same matter-of-fact dispassion that deemed the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki not worth saving. I never thought I would say these words my love, my heart, but I am so grateful for your being dead
right now. I don’t know if I could have found it in me to…
“I’ll get to that in a few minutes. Right now, I want to talk briefly about how all of this came about – not only for whatever historical record of this broadcast may or may not remain, but for my own…understanding, if that’s the correct word. I still can’t believe that we, as a race, allowed this to occur. To destroy the world because one nation tried to help another that was starving to death by the millions each day. Until seven months ago, most of us had never heard of Zuhirain in east-central Africa – or if we had, it was just another poverty-stricken, disease-laden, revolution-wracked Third World sink-hole where starvation and sickness were a way of life.
“Our late president, James Ryan, as you’ll recall, sent in ground troops when anti-government rebels blocked all ports in and around Zuhirain and began using anti-aircraft guns on any planes that attempted to drop medical supplies and food. As a result, nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of food and medicine was either being sold on the black market, distributed among the rebel camps, or simply left to rot and expire. The UN Peacekeepers were having little-to-no effect, even when combined with U.S. ground forces, and so President Ryan had little choice but to send in even more troops, much to the ferocious outcry of the public.
“Remember what he said a few days before his assassination? At a press conference one network reporter who, judging from his manner, wasn’t breast-fed as a child kept asking Ryan the same question over and over, changing only the words: ‘Why does the U.S. have to go in there and help the people of Zuhirain?’ And in what was in my opinion the greatest moment ever in a presidential press conference, Ryan gave that reporter a look that could have frozen fire and said, ‘Because no one else is, and I don’t know about you, but I find it a little difficult to sleep at night knowing that a minimum of fifty thousand people will die of starvation and disease while I’m sawing logs in a soft bed with a full belly. Now sit down and shut the hell up.’
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