A Fortress of Pebbles

(Blink: The footsteps retreated down the hall, and Cassandra breathed a sigh of relief.)

Aissaba and Tassadu did too.

“It’s not working,” said Aissaba. “Besides, this is backwards. They need to blink to us. And we need to be in the middle of a conversation about how the pebbles could kill them. And their parents. And their grandpa.”

“That’s dark, Aissaba,” said Tassadu. “Even for you.”

“And their pets,” said Aissaba. “Do they have pets?”

“Seriously, what is wrong with you?” said Tassadu.

Aissaba moaned at the mixture of despair and sleep deprivation that was dissolving the synapses in her brain. “How else do we get them to stop?” she cried. “It’s only a matter of time before their parents find out. Hell, they might even be members of the Rot Cult, for all we know!”

Helpless, the two of them stared into embers of the dying fire. For some reason, Aissaba kept hearing the Master of Mind telling her that the more you know of the Rot, the more it knows of you. The more you know of it, the more it knows of you. Over and over, the words echoed. She’d said it like the Rot was some kind of person, a consciousness – something that could be aware of you.

She began to dream of a vast curtain of stars, a curtain the size of galaxies, sweeping aside to reveal a cosmic stage filled with darkness. And in the darkness, there was only silence. Dark matter. Space through which matter had once moved. Plays that had been played out, and parts that had ended. And somehow the darkness could sense her – even though she had died and dissolved long ago.

***

Cassandra and Orion knew how to get into the attic through the hatch in their bedroom’s closet. From there, they could (very carefully) navigate a labyrinth of dusty old boxes and furniture that had been in the family since the Civil War. One spot, next to a pair of creepy mannequins, was directly above Mom’s office.

They arrived just in time to hear Dad using his irritated voice: “Because Orion’s wetting the bed again, that’s why.”

The thing with Mom and Dad was that when they fought, they spent most of their time just sitting in silence. Stewing. Like they were trying to wait each other out. Sometimes, Cassandra imagined them having an epic staring contest, eyeballs getting dry and cracked like old paint as each of them struggled not to blink. More than likely, though, Mom was pretending to read, and Dad was pretending to be suspicious about things in the darkness beyond the window pane.

Orion put his sleeve to his nose like he was about to sneeze.

No! Cassandra mouthed.

He sawed off his nose furiously, trying to scratch the itch inside. His face twisted into a demonic hellscape, but it seemed to be working. The mannequins looked down upon them both like weird, naked guardian angels – bestowing upon them blessings of silence.

Just as Orion got a handle on things, it turned out to be Mom who lost the battle of waiting. “So… what? You wanna just pack up and move out west?”

The other thing about Mom and Dad is that they made no sense when they fought. It was like they’d written an entire library of arguments over the years, and everything they said now was just a reference to something else. Just a page and paragraph number, pointing to a single book on a single shelf in the vast library created by two lifetimes spent arguing together.

“He wants to die, you know,” said Dad. “It’s cruel not to let him.”

They were talking about Grandpa now, though Cassandra had no idea how the conversation had gotten from bed wetting to this. Sometimes she worried that Grandpa’s dementia was rubbing off on them – that it might be a contagious variant of the disease. It could happen. Maybe that giant library of arguments in their minds was actually full of crumbling shelves and rotting books.

Rot. The moment the word crossed her mind, a chill crossed her back. She glanced at the mannequins, suddenly certain that they could see her.

Orion shivered too – as if he could read her mind. Or perhaps he’d thought the same thing at the same time. A twin thing.

“He wants to see you,” said Mom. “He doesn’t understand why you won’t come.” Her voice was cracking. She always cried during fights. Dad never did.

Then, the longest silence in the history of the universe began. Long enough for the dinosaurs on Orion’s pajamas to have evolved from single-celled organisms. Long enough for the sun to finally go supernova. Long enough for all the light and heat in the universe to vanish…

(Blink: Aissaba woke from a dream of darkness and eternal night. “Cassandra?” she said to the final ember of a campfire. “Can you hear me?”)

Cassandra didn’t dare speak. But she nodded ever so slightly. The blank faces of the mannequins loomed overhead. Silence boiled below.

(Blink: “Cassandra, the pebbles are dangerous. They can cause cancer,” said Aissaba. “And Ebola.”)