Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2

by Gary A Braunbeck

  In the shade of the shallow cavern, Sheila took a deep breath, almost free of the dull, pounding headache she’d been fighting for two days. The wind blew a soft, hollow note through the canyon, a lonely sound that suited her mood. Grit made her eyes sting and water. She searched her jacket pocket for some tissue. A soft cloth containing something hard and round bumped against her hand. The lens. She kept transferring it from pocket to pocket, intending to give it to Daniel, then somehow forgetting.

  Little bits of pocket lint clung to the quilted velvet pouch, which was drawn tight over the lens. She picked them off and opened the pouch, sliding the lens out to check it for scratches. It looked fine. In the slanting afternoon light it caught a sunbeam and painted a bright circle on the stone wall. Sheila turned and gazed out at the canyon through the lens. The same as back in the house, the landscape distorted, pulling some objects closer while the background tunneled away.

  Her stomach contracted, the feeling of motion nauseating her, but she squinted and pulled the lens closer to her eye.

  Shadow-shapes plodded across her sight line. She peered around the lens and they vanished. Through the lens they sank in and out of focus. Great lumbering forms. When they contacted the earth, she could almost feel the vibration of their passage. Long necks swayed, shadow-tails swept back and forth. The rocks themselves changed, melting from sharp peaks to slouch lower and lower into the ground, a landscape that formed and eroded in slow undulations.

  Her head ached as she tried to force one version of what she saw to resolve into full clarity. But a shadow eclipsed the canyon, dropping her into a buzzing, whirling darkness where great beasts paced.

  Night Routine

  The air felt cold, the shadows deeper. Sheila opened her eyes. They filled with grit that blew up from the canyon floor. She coughed and spat to clear her dust-coated mouth. The flame-red sun peaked over the ridge of stone, winking as it set.

  Her watch read six o’clock, past time for the nurse to go home and Sheila to take over. Sheila gathered her belongings and jogged back to her car as the badlands purpled into dusk.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she called into the darkened house when she arrived.

  The nurse nodded, satchel already in hand, and rushed for the door. “She’s in the den. Wants tomato sandwiches and soup for dinner.”

  Sheila sighed. Tomato sandwiches were her least-favorite meal. Sheila fed Beverly the sandwiches, trying not to focus on the soft, wet lips that suckled her fingers with each bite. She shuddered to think of herself, one day, reduced to this dependence.

  Instead she talked to Beverly about Daniel’s invitation. “So what are you going to wear to the big naming ceremony?”

  Beverly smiled, her head bobbing as she chewed, expressing none of the paranoia and dread that often followed mention of the fully operational telescope. She didn’t seem to understand that Daniel and his team had located the black hole she had been studying—a task made more difficult not only by seasonal changes in the Earth’s position, but the fact that the object itself had shifted, tilted. The properties Beverly had logged remained the same, so the black hole would be named in honor of the person who first spotted and identified it: B. Barkley 017.

  Sheila had her charge clothed in a nightgown and settled in bed long after dark.

  “Ah. There’s wrinkles.” Beverly shifted in discomfort.

  Sheila sat beside her and leaned down. “Put your arms around my neck.”

  Beverly hugged on to her and Sheila sat up, pulling Beverly into a sitting position. She reached around and smoothed the fabric, tugging down to eliminate any folds that might itch or irritate. Then she gave the loose skin on Beverly’s back a light scratch with her fingertips. Forehead pressed into Sheila’s collarbone, Beverly sighed with pleasure, and Sheila listened with concern to the phlegmy gurgle of her lungs.

  “Better, Bev?” Sheila smoothed her fuzz of dark hair once she rested back on her pillow.

  “Yes. Much.” She closed her eyes. “Tell Danny I’m making waffles for breakfast. His favorite. With chokecherry syrup.”

  “Will do. Sleep tight, now.” Sheila closed the door softly.

  She wondered how often Daniel thought about those waffles his wife used to make him. Sheila made the mistake of cooking them once, and ached for her employer as he chewed one bite, then took his coffee and left for the lab, unable to look her or his wife in the eye.

  The Night Sky

  She slept, and then she woke. Her body heavy, sunk deep into the mattress, sweat and skin melding with cotton and foam. The house was silent, not even a breath of wind to send tree branches skating across the shingled siding. Usually she woke when Daniel came home, listened to the floorboards and hinges creak as he snuck into his office and shut the door. He kept a pillow and a blanket there. Probably had the same at his office in the observatory. But tonight no stealthy footsteps in the hall, no snores or muttering from Beverly’s room. Just the silence.

  Her muscles tingled and twitched, slowly coming awake. She stared at the angled ceiling of her attic room as dream-visions faded. The sense of floating in a great sea amidst strange aquatic clicks and cries, like the music of whales and dolphins. Glowing, crystalline jellyfish sweeping past in fluid contractions, brushing against her, leaving her flesh numb and immobile.

  With a deep breath, she slipped out of bed and pulled on her robe. In the hall, the boards seemed to shift and lurch, and she staggered as though she’d spent months at sea and lost her land legs. She navigated the stairs slowly, cringing as each step voiced its grinding complaint. No sound came from Beverly’s room or Daniel’s study.

  In the darkened sun-room she skirted the rag rug that coiled between the two rocking chairs. The fabric always retained a crust of burrs and spiky seeds that blew in from the garden and the fields beyond—a hazard for bare feet. The braided strands of the rug appeared to shift restlessly in the streaming moonlight, and as they spiraled inward they dropped away into deeper shadow. She eased the screen door open, then shut it.

  The garden was tinted a pewter grey, the sky clear and teaming. Finally Sheila could breathe. Until she got outside she hadn’t realized how stifling and close the house felt. The stars really were brighter out here, far from city lights. She strolled out into the middle of the lawn, something heavy tapping her leg from the pocket of her robe. The velvet pouch and the lens. Sheila didn’t remember putting it there, but she pulled the glass out and tipped her head back, holding it up between her eye and the night sky.

  Again her vision shifted. At first a flat black plain with sparks glinting in varying degrees of brightness slid forward. Then she could see not just the vast dome of space, but into space, the breadth and depth of it. The number of stars multiplied until bright outweighed dark. Other events spun into focus, spiraled away into the far reaches of the universe. Enormous and dizzying, cascading galaxies, fountaining supernovae—the heavens afire.

  From the distant reaches a command, a staccato shriek that loosened her joints and shuddered her spine. Sheila closed her eyes and the night fell silent, the gut-clenching vertigo faded with each breath.

  From the house, Beverly screamed in wordless agony. Sheila raced inside.

  The Event

  They had another difficult morning after an even more difficult night. Sheila had woken in her bed, vague recollections of running back inside the house, head throbbing, vision blurred and distorted, to find Beverly thrashing in pain. Once she had medicated and soothed her charge, and made sure she was resting comfortably, Sheila washed three aspirin down with a shot of vodka and gave herself to her nightmares.

  Early afternoon, Sheila bathed Beverly and they got ready for the ceremony. The house creaked and shifted, walls crowding, oppressive. Everything conspired to magnify Sheila’s headache—the antiseptic stench of alcohol as she swabbed a new scratch on Beverly’s arm, the intricately stitched doilies spread on every surface, their manic patterns pulling at her, even when she closed her eyes. The anxious chatter fr
om the radio mixed with the piping of the birds outside, but they couldn’t distract from the low hum she felt coiled deep in her bowels.

  “Hey Beverly, this came in the mail the other day. What is it?” Sheila held up the glass disc. She’d been fidgeting with it as they waited under a darkening sky for the car the university was sending to transport them.

  Beverly’s gaze sharpened for a moment and her hand went to the jagged stone she wore around her neck. “A piece of this. Space fossil. Throw it away.”

  “You mean a meteorite?”

  Beverly’s head bobbed up and down as her gaze went vacant. “Found it years ago. It’s not good. The other one broke. No good.”

  “Do you remember the other day, you had a seizure. We were holding your stone. What did you hear?”

  Her head bobbed and bobbed, as she mumbled her response. “Screaming. You. Daniel. You won’t stop screaming. But you’re better now? And Daniel will be fine. He won’t find it. You give that to me, girl. Throw it away. He’ll be fine.” Then Beverly’s eyes clouded and she repeated her husband’s name in a voice thick with phlegm.

  “He did find it, Bev. That’s what we’re doing tonight. Going to see the black hole. We’ll cut the ribbon or whatever they have planned. Maybe drink some champagne.”

  Beverly just nodded and smiled, whispering her husband’s name, her fist clutching her pendant.

  More than one hundred people were gathered in the lobby of the observatory. Large banners depicting planets and star formations were set up around the room, and people mingled and stood in clusters between them. Some students, some investors, some journalists from scientific magazines, some people from town. Everyone had come out to see the culmination of the project that had brought so much attention to the university, and revitalized Mason.

  A few grad students Sheila had studied with hovered near linen-draped tables, napkins loaded, talking over each other while stuffing their mouths, their collars tight, their eye-glasses flashing. Her ex was not among them, thankfully.

  Sheila stood sentry, one hand on Beverly’s wheelchair, smiling and nodding as people drifted past, oddly in sync with her charge’s perpetual head-bob. The speeches and toasts began, and Sheila noted a mounting agitation, both a quickening of her own heart rate, and whispers and clutching hands from Beverly.

  “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

  Colleagues and friends winced visibly when they greeted Beverly, shocked at her deterioration since her last day at the lab. One of the scientists who worked with Daniel, a constellation of skin tags rising from the collar of his shirt, greeted her in tones more suited for a small child.

  “I have some pain pills with me, if you feel you need them.”

  The “pain pills” were a recent innovation of Daniel’s. They couldn’t keep giving Beverly more and more morphine. By the time she felt a myalgia seizure coming it was too late for medication to intervene. Daniel bought some sugar tablets without consulting the nurse, and Sheila fed them to Beverly when she requested, whenever the aura of an impending attack descended. They had a calming effect. The dread of the impending seizure made her attacks worse, and so Beverly quickly became quite dependent on the “pain pills.”

  Beverly shook her head, refusing medication, but continued to whisper her husband’s name.

  When it was time, the attendees climbed the stairs to the observatory dome.

  Sheila wheeled Beverly over to the elevator. Her stomach plunged as they ascended. She shouldn’t have had so much champagne. A bouquet of roses sat on the table next to the steel doors, the scent sweetly nauseating. Petals spiraled inward, a crimson vortex.

  When the doors slid open, the crowd gathered by the telescope applauded, pale in the green light from the computer screens. Beverly flinched and her knuckles whitened around her pendant, but she waved and smiled.

  The observatory hatch gaped at the night sky, and the computer screens displayed the data the telescope collected. One screen showed a graphic interpretation of the data. A depiction of the black hole’s devouring hunger, sucking light in an endless stream to its boundless void.

  Daniel joined Beverly, as though drawn by her continued whispering.

  He placed a cool hand on Sheila’s back. “I’ve got it from here, dear. You take a break. Go see your friends.”

  He stood by his wife, a mixture of pride and grief in the set of his mouth, the slant of his shoulders.

  Beverly let go of her pendant and laid her hand on his, where it rested on her arm.

  A Glimpse

  Sheila took another glass of champagne and moved away from the chatter, the drifting clouds of perfume and aftershave. In the shadow of the giant telescope she stared down into the trailing bubbles in her glass, then looked up through the open maw of the roof at the sky.

  She walked over to the telescope for a closer look.

  It had a metal cradle in front of its eyepiece. One of the many things Beverly had destroyed on her last day in the lab. Daniel restored it, though he was still unsure of its purpose. Now that Sheila saw it, she understood. She pulled the lens from her pocket. It slid into the aperture with a click.

  She stepped forward. Felt the cold metal against her skin.

  A wave of sound rushed in behind her. Daniel’s voice raised in distress, calling his wife’s name. Beverly’s guttural screams. Cries for water. 911. But Sheila couldn’t look away.

  She no longer existed in the observatory, in her body.

  There was only space.

  Stars.

  All of them, past, present, future, burning together.

  Tunneling away, toward her, her body at once compressed and expanded to the point where she felt like bones would crumble, muscles tear.

  B. Barkley 017, the mouth of space, consumed it all. Devouring and shrieking.

  A knife of pain, eardrums popping, yet still the shrieking continued.

  Inside the whirling hole movement stirred the darkness. A sinuous mass—it sensed her—she felt its attention. Its vast mind touched hers. A howling, icy blast twisted through her, ripping nerves, severing body from mind.

  And as she dropped to the floor she reached for the glass, pulling it free of the armature, down with her. Before blackness fell, the final image played.

  She heard the bright shatter of glass. She saw it one more time.

  It sensed her—it turned—and it shifted.

  Closer.

  Outside

  The silhouettes of the night nurses darkened the open doorway. With effort Sheila rolled her face toward them, straining against the wash of static that filled her head. Her body felt foreign, unmoving, heavy and dull. Blankets bunched under her and the bruising intrusion sent a dull ache through the softening flesh of her back. Her arms twitched, but her fingers couldn’t grip the fabric, couldn’t pull it smooth. No comfort in life now, or in death.

  A shard of glass lay on the table beside the bed, casting a shadow and a pool of light.

  “…runs in her family. Her mother had it. Surprising she’s never been tested.”

  “Her doctor said she’ll be moved to a long-term-care facility they’re building back in Mason, once we’ve got her dosages right. That family she was working for offered to pay. No one else came forward to take care of her. Lucky girl, I guess. Considering.”

  If only she could end it, prevent it.

  Sheila rolled her face away, and looked out the window. The hospital was on the outskirts of town, the night sky full of stars, no city lights to hide them.

  “No… no… no…” Sheila moaned, holding her hands up to shield herself, but she could feel it.

  From the whirling blackness. From the writhing crystalline mass that lived within—beyond—a millennium away. It had touched her, and now her pulse was a beacon, drawing it closer.

  A muffled cry from down the hall sent one nurse hustling from the room.

  The other nurse went to the window. She paused before she dropped the blind, frozen, staring out at the sky. Then
with a shake of her head the woman pulled the cord and let the slats fall with a shrill stutter.

  Sheila closed her eyes, but she could still see.

  “It’s coming…”

  1570 kHz

  Damien Angelica Walters

  My daddy’s awful different now. He went to war to kill the bad guys, but I guess they killed something in him, too, because sometimes he gets mad and sad and goes in the garage and pulls the door down—even on the hot days—and turns the radio on. Sometimes he curses and sometimes he cries, and that’s worse than the cursing. He doesn’t even sound like Daddy then. I sit beside the garage and keep quiet so he doesn’t know I’m there. Maybe part of him does, though. Maybe that’s the quiet part, when he isn’t cursing or crying. When he’s just listening.

  I used to make him laugh by pretending I was one of the Fontaine Sisters and sing “‘A’ You’re Adorable” but that doesn’t work anymore. I would give anything—even my most favorite thing in the world, the music box that belonged to Momma when she was a little girl—to hear him laugh again.

  Momma says we’re lucky. Lots of men didn’t come home from the war at all, or they came home missing arms or legs. Daddy has a big scar on one arm and pieces of shrapnel still inside. That’s metal pieces from bombs. I don’t know why they didn’t take them out, but I’m too afraid to ask, and Momma says we’re not supposed to talk about it. The scar, the war, what happens in the garage. She says I have to be patient. It’ll take time. But what happens if time runs out? What will happen to me and Momma then? Most of all, what will happen to Daddy?

  —

  Me and Momma get home from the grocer’s, and I creep around to the side of the garage. The radio is playing, but Daddy’s quiet and the big door is up. That means he’s having a good day. I sit on the ground, careful with my skirt so I don’t get grass stains on it. It’s only an everyday skirt, nothing fancy, but Momma just finished making it yesterday. After she tied off the last stitch, she said, ‘Eleanor Rose, try not to ruin this one.” When she uses both my names, she means it.