A Rock by Moon World
By
Harden Taylor
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 John Harden Taylor
License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Also by Harden Taylor at Smashwords.com, discover:
Swim in the Lake of Fire, A murder mystery.
Project 334, When Great Differences Meet, a science fiction novel.
A Cerulean Hug, companion story to Project 334.
Tangled Hearts, a collection of short stories.
Disclaimer
The characters in this story bear no resemblance to persons living or dead. The places are fictional and are not intended to represent or suggest any real place whether presently existing or not. The events described are also completely fictional and are not intended to suggest or imply real events.
Acknowledgement
I am very thankful to Judith Ball and Sally Ryan for their encouragement, strenuous edits and critiques.
Table of Contents
Chapter 13 – Visions of Sugar Plums
Chapter 14– A Message from God
Chapter 18 – A Long Way from Home
Chapter 23 – Fate’s Ugly Birth
Chapter 24 – Sorry, We Can’t Stay
Fig. 09 – The Scribe’s Proposal
Chapter 53 – News Conference I
Chapter 54 – News Conference II
Chapter 1– The Odd Couple
An hour’s drive to the northwest of gnarled and ominous Chicago was the benign community of Fox River Grove. It was a place where families raised children, where businesses large and small thrived, where a major crime was a clutch of teenagers smoking in the park. It was not a likely place to host the most astounding event of human history and Lisa Garski; a misfit local 12-year-old was, some would say, a most improbable person to present it.
There was no precise beginning to Lisa’s discovery, though most agree from her recollection of events that a Sunday in mid August was the closest thing to something that could be called a beginning. At the time, it was not an unusual day, at least not in most ways. The atmosphere was sultry, even at night, enough so to keep the windows closed, blinds drawn and the air conditioning on – perfect conditions for a sound night’s sleep and a lazy morning lollygag.
And, sure enough, Lisa slept late again till finally, at close to noon, she piled out of bed a disheveled mess. As she passed the full length mirror her mother had sadistically planted on her closet door, she stopped momentarily, looked, then turned her eyes away from the hated image stuck to her – the configuration of her face and body, that large, ungainly thing, that magnet for such taunting nicknames as “Lots-a-large”, “The Garg” (shortened version of gargantuan), “Bump-a-lump” (based on her favorite attack mode – lunge at your opponent and simultaneously swing your ample hips into his mid-section). But the worst, most hurtful uninvited moniker assigned to her was “Gargo”. This term was based on Lisa’s exceptionally Romanesque nose and generous, protruding ears. With anger curling her lips and scrunching her eyebrows, one could easily visualize her perched high on the peak of a gothic arch at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
All these and other sadistic labels had much traffic behind her back in the bright rooms of the Ronald Reagan Elementary School. “RR” as its students lovingly called it, was the jewel of affluent Fox River Grove, a community that served as an enticing beacon for young professionals seeking a safe and advantaged place to raise their children. The students at RR were strongly challenged academically, and active in a host of activities from badminton to ballet. They were lean and engaged, well dressed and “fixed” with braces and anti-depressants and special diets – except for Lisa, a child of less anxious parents.
It wasn’t that Lisa was especially over-weight – a bit perhaps but more, she was nearly six feet tall, large-boned and not well coordinated (except when she ran.) When she walked, it was, as her friend Charlie was wont to say, like watching a drunken gorilla trying to walk standing up. Charlie could say this to her face and not end up with two broken teeth and a swollen eye because the two of them had a binding but unspoken agreement – nothing said would destroy their friendship.
And it wasn’t that she was ugly in either heart or looks. On the rare occasions when her mother forced her to dress up, wash her face; comb her hair and smile she might be considered moderately pretty. She had plenty of heart as well – for animals and defenseless people. She had a loving, though somewhat aggravating relationship with her parents and was known to be generous with her money and her time. It was her defiance of expectations – her refusal to be “cool”, to tow the fashion line and, most of all, to abandon the pleasures of childhood. The approaching hormonal calamity she shut out of her mind completely. It was, therefore, not unexpected that she should walk out of her bedroom in a rather disorderly state of mind and body.
It was strangely quiet downstairs. Her parents were evidently gone along with her seven-year-old brother Jamie. On the kitchen counter was a note, “Lisa. We were hungry and you were asleep. No one had the courage to wake you (can you guess why???) so we went to The Pancake Palace. We’ll bring you back your favorite. Much Love and Big Smooches, the rest of the Garski’s.” Rather than being handwritten, the note had been painstakingly assembled from letters cut out of a newspaper – in the manner of a kidnapper sending an untraceable ransom note. The friendly dig did not escape Lisa’s notice. She composed her own notice, similarly constructed reading, “HOSTAGE WILL BE KILLED IF RANSOME NOT FORTHCOMING.”
She sat on a stool by the microwave oven picking at the dried mud on her tee shirt and fuming at she wasn’t sure what. Was it at being abandoned? Or was it at the snide remark about her … well, admittedly somewhat irritable attitude when first awakening; a comment sharpened by the bizarre manner in which the note was written. Or was it having to wait for the arrival of her favorite of all favorite breakfasts – apple pancakes? Flashing across her mind was the thought that they could have gone earlier and brought the booty back in time … but, of course that was an unreasonable expectation, a down right silly idea.
The string of brass bells hanging from the inside front door handle jingled pleasantly as Charlie walked in “Hey, Lisa, where … oh, there you are. I called and your mom said you were probably dead and it was good riddance and they’d probably bury you out in the back yard after the crows finished off everything but your bones. Boy, you’ve got really nice parents.”
“Ha! At least they’d bury me. You, they’d feed to those pathetic minnows in the lake.”
“Jeeze, Lisa, you look liked a pig farmer in a mud storm. What did you do yesterday? And is your mother gonna kill you for sleeping in that.”
Lisa snickered, gently whacked him up-side his unkempt head and told him he looked like a demented elf kicked out of Santa’s workshop for being too short and so scraggly skinny-ugly he scared the reindeer to death. Charlie winced slightly, he being not quite as resilient as Lisa and then told her about the matinee that would start in about an hour. Would her parents get home with the pancakes in time? Would she have to use buttered popcorn as the lesser alternative to a real breakfast? Would Lisa pay Charlie’s movie ticket since she owed him for three bottles of pop and a candy bar? Lisa snorted her reply: space opera movie comes first. What else could an astronomy/geology junkie say? Fortunately for the apple pancake hostage-taker, the civilized portion of the Garski family arrived with the ransom in time.
Lisa’s stride was quick and purposeful on that crystal bright afternoon in mid-August. She and Charlie were walking home from the matinee – a rip roaring space odyssey with lots of ion blasters obliterating vast armies of very strange looking alien creatures while grotesque space vehicles raced around and blew each other to bits. Charlie broke the strange silence, “Hey, didn’t I tell ya? He used his magical powers to get through the time gate.”
“Sorry but WRONG! He dialed in the special code on his cryptoanalyzer. That sent a signal to the Microquantum lock on the gate to open. No magic. Sorrrryyyyy!!!”
“He wasn’t even touching it when he did it. Anyway, there’s no such thing as a cryptoanalyzer.”
“Well, there’s no such thing as magic.”
“There is too!”
“Show me.”
“You’d say no even if I did.”
“Ha! There isn’t any magic.”
“Is!”
“Isn’t!”
“Is!”
“Isn’t!” Lisa followed this exclamation with her famous “cross me and you die” scowl. Silence again prevailed for several minutes until Charlie said, “Hey, where’s the fire? Them ape legs o’ yours are goin’ too fast.”
“Shut up, worm, I’ve got things to do.”
“Like what’s the big deal. Ya go there and what? Who’ll go there with you anyway?”
“I told you Charlie, I’ll go alone. You’d come too if you weren’t so chicken shit.”
“I am not! My Mom’d kill me. She thinks weird people hang out by the lake.”
“Nobody goes there, Charlie, nobody. It’s too hard to get to. The trees and the berry thorns, they’re too thick for wimps. Anyway, I like being there.”
“So, what’s so great about it?”
“I found 23 Indian arrow heads there already. And I got a bunch of rocks for my polisher.”
“Yeah … well, I gotta get home. See ya tomorrow if you don’t get cut up in little pieces and fed to the fish.”
“Bye wus.”
Chapter 2 – Shadows
“Where’re you going Lisa?” Lena Garski asked expecting the usual answer from her peculiar daughter.
“Just down by the lake. Can I take the … what is it?” Lisa said as she turned away from the back screen door to face her mother, happy anticipation exposing her widely spaced, vaguely yellow front teeth.
“Hamburger Lasagna. Kinda messy for a picnic don’t you think? Anyway, the flies and mosquitoes ’ll pick you up and carry you away before you get a chance to eat it,” Lena replied as she pawed clumsily at the bundles of black hair sweat-glued to her cheeks and forehead. At work she was a high-powered PhD microbiologist directing a team of five researchers in a major university’s adjunct laboratory working on food preservation. At home she was a hard-pressed mom.
“I’ll take it with me. I’ll bring the pan back Mom, I promise.”
“Kid, you worry me going down there when it’ll be dark in a couple hours.”
“Don’t worry Mom. It’s a cool place, lots a trees and I found some Indian arrow heads, some stones for my polisher … lots ’a neat stuff. Anyway, I wanna enjoy it before the developers rip it up and put in more of those stupid looking monster houses.”
“I think that’ll stop for now. Some kind of huge lawsuit has it all stuck. Anyway, did you think about the dance lessons? We could go shopping …”
“See ya later mom,” Lisa said as she picked up the quarter-full baking pan of luscious smells, balanced it on one large hand, clutched her white cotton sample bag in the other and made for the back door before her mother could continue with the unwanted words. The screen door screeched its protest to the violent hip thrust forcing it open then closed with a sharp clap as the pressure was relieved. Lisa hopped over the five back stairs without touching any of them, trotted through the back lawn, out the back gate and down the winding weedy path to her favorite patch of lakefront “beach” – a sandy stretch about 20 yards wide and 30 yards deep gently sloping into the glacier-scrubbed hole. Called Potato Lake for its shape, it was guarded by a stand of tall flashing poplars on the north side, some scraggly ashes to the south and a tangle of thorny wild raspberry brushwood due west (see FIG 00 – Potato Lake).
To the east, across the Lake was a row of new luxury homes perched on a rise similar to the one on the western side where a weathered mix of modest ranch, split level and colonial style homes waited gloomily for the wrecking ball to unceremoniously remove them and their adjacent forest from existence. As the land is cleared, more “monster houses” would arise from the forlorn soil like slime mold fruiting bodies sprouting from their mother tangle in forest bottom rot.
In that summer, what remained of the original forest was crammed into a crescent bounded by the backyards of the original Fox River Grove residents on the west, the lake on the east and the northern and southern-most shores of Potato Lake. When rummaging around on her special beach, Lisa had only to turn her eyes to the west, over the raspberries, up to the crest of the hill if she wanted a vision of her castle keep – her home since birth. The back picture window of the sprawling ranch-style home, its aluminum frame gray with the corrosion of a hundred storms was the portal for the first light to soak into Lisa’s newborn eyes. It let in the pink morning sun to wake her and formed her earliest memory – a snuggle between the two softly breathing giants. It was a feeling of total comfort and complete protection. If only that feeling would return.
Across the lake, 300 yards at least, was a string of two and a half story new semi-mansions packed together with barely the space for a garage between them. Elegance seeped from out their tall ornate windows, slithered over their scripted landscaping, past their multi-functional children’s playhouses, right down to the ends of their boat docks. They were beautiful, yes, but not the patchwork of meadow and deep forest that was there – a place where unsightly and unusual people were welcomed in peace. Lisa thought about what she would do when the bulldozers come to her side of the lake: Lay her body down in front of them? Hand-paint a sign and picket city hall? Write letters to a thousand newspapers? Run naked through the streets screaming? She was not kidding.
There was a large black rock in the middle of her beach, strangely scalloped, about the size of the living room couch. There were dinner plate-sized patches of rusty brown splattered between the scallops. When she threw rocks against it, the sound was almost metallic, not the sharp crack that pure stone would make when impacted by a rock flying at high speed. Being a lover of rocks in their entire variegated splendor, this was no small thing. The sound made her giant stone a prize of discovery. Its presence made her beach hide-away a precious place. The rock’s size and shape made it a perfect picnic table.
Lisa sat beside the rock; her pizza pan balanced on its rough top and gazed out over the lake. As she ate, she waited for that feeling to arise, as if it were a mist seeping out from underneath the rock, drifting up through her generous nostrils, through the delicate tissues hidden there, into her always turbulent mind and there to conjure bizarre but fleeting thoughts and intriguing feelings. This ancient stone must have seen much in its long and arduous journey through time. Where was its home? How was it born: split off a noble mountain in some terrible earthquake; ejected as a fragment from the collision of two planets after which it roamed the cold vacuum of space for billions of years before making its fiery entry to this spot; or a glob of metal caught in the throat of a volcano and spat out in disgust to land here? Was it carried here frozen in a river of ice for a thousand years before the sun finally did its duty and released it? How long had it rested here, alone, waiting – for what? She had never seen a rock like it anywhere else and could find no reference to anything very much like it in any of her rock books. It was, indeed, a delicious mystery to her and not without a noticeable tinge of danger though from what source she could not identify.
For as long as Lisa could remember, some five or six years at least, the rock had been in this very spot. Unchanged, unmoving, silent with all its secrets, pulling at her. While Lisa found the rock fascinating, Charlie feared its imagined evil power. To him it was a place where terrible things happened in the past, a magnet for sinister happenings in the present.
The rock was not loved by Lisa’s parents either, it being one of their worrisome daughter’s strange obsessions. Lena and Anton Garski waited patiently, lovingly for the tug of hormones to yank their daughter into social survival mode: acceptance of the “real world” and all its compromises, nuances, burdens and occasional pleasures. Being black sheep, they knew full-well the hurt that comes from being “unusual.” They worked diligently at maintaining the balance between nudging Lisa toward conformity and accepting their eldest child for all that she was.
Lisa waited patiently as she had in these languid summer weeks for another glimpse at the shadows sometimes flashing around the rock, into and out of the lake, between the trunks and branches that framed her beach. They were peculiar and seemingly unconnected to the polished silver water in front of her, the pale yellow sand and patchy brown soil beneath her or the rustling trees around her. They were shadows unconnected to any visible person or animal yet they leaped about as if they were. Each day they took on more definition but still stubbornly withheld their meaning. Lisa felt vaguely as though she were on the verge of some great discovery. Sitting next to her rock, the ugly thought of school’s approaching start slipping away, fanciful speculations filling her mind – she felt a wonderful peace.
But after consuming a quarter of a bake pan of lasagna, the weight of pasta in Lisa’s gut pulled heavily on her eyelids and loosened the tension in her muscles. A soft cool breeze from the north wafted over her, the hint of chill curling her up into a drowsy ball. Soon she was asleep.
Her eyes popped open, wide in astonishment, the memory of a sharp scream immediate but the sound itself gone. She froze her body in its curl, with her head up and listened but heard only the gentle chirps of crickets and frogs. It was now dark, a moonless night, the nearest street light at least a hundred yards away. Terror gripped her – the unseen cause of the scream, still there? She sprang to her feet, looked about for signs of the only danger she truly feared – an adult child molester – saw nothing but darkness and shadows and rushed up the hill.
The fright from the lake was now replaced with the fright from the parents – they would be angry. The noiseless side door was locked. She went to the back; quietly, gently eased the back door open, wincing with each squeak, slid through the narrowest door opening her body would allow and walked slowly into the den where her parents were singing a dissonant sleep duet through their noses. Lisa smiled then dragged her weary body up to another pleasant curl knowing the giants below would protect her from whatever lurked in the watery wilderness outside.
Chapter 3 – About That Scream
It was Saturday and Anton Garski was arriving home from his job at 5:00 pm. There had been an accident where he worked and as the plant safety officer, he had to conduct an immediate investigation. The victim was a new employee, probably not well trained, who had improperly mounted a large grinding wheel, which exploded when he turned on the machine. The operator was in critical condition at the local hospital.
For fifteen years Anton had worked as a safety officer for Gemlon, a large car parts manufacturing plant. The work was stressful, the tug-of-war between productivity, cost and safety being a daily struggle with sometimes an uncertain outcome. Reluctant management and reckless workers sometimes unwittingly conspired to thwart Anton’s constant cajoling to behave in a safe and sensible manner and thus avoid painful, debilitating and costly injuries, life-threatening health problems and damage to the environment.
He came through the side door, asked loudly if Lena was home from the lab yet, received no answer then plopped down in his recliner chair.
“Dad, that you?” floated downstairs along with the muffled hum and rattle of Lisa’s rock tumbler.
Anton weakly replied, “Yes.” Lisa bounded down the stairs taking two or three steps at a time.
“Lisa, you’re going to fall and break your neck doing that. For Christ’s sake, take it easy. You’ll get there.”
“Dad, look at this one. It’s got glittery veins in it. I think they’re gold.”
“Let me see … oh, it’s just fool’s gold, pyrite or iron sulfide. It’s pretty, I think more so than gold. Worthless though as far as getting any money for it.”
“I don’t want to sell it anyway,” Lisa said softly. She didn’t know why her father was so tired but she knew it was something to do with his work. She felt empathy for all the energy-robbing hard work he did during the day, parallel to her own, she thought, when she was in school for all the stressors there she felt. She knew a free spirit lurked in his breast, chained there by caring, allowed to fly to the full length of its tether from time to time, its lust partially satiated in some benign way, the magnetic force of love always drawing it back to its perch.
She leaned over the arm of the chair and gave him a giant hug. He kissed her cheek and smiled.
“Dad, don’t get up. I’ll get the dinner started. Mom got some of that deli cheese ravioli stuff yesterday and taught me how to cook it. It’ll be ready in about an hour. And yes, I know, a salad too.”
“Lisa, you’re a jewel. Where’s Jamie?”
“He’s at Charlie’s house playing with Joey. Mrs. Pocante’s home all day since she lost her job.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember that.”
“Dad …”
“Yes?”
“Well, you know, down by the lake …”
“You’re special beach place?”
“Yeah. Well, are there any animals that make a sound like a person screaming?”
“Sure. Some birds, probably some mammals. What did you hear anyway?”
“I just thought I heard a scream. But I checked it out and there wasn’t anything. There wasn’t anything in the paper was there?”
“No … no, there wasn’t. Lisa, I wish you wouldn’t hang out down there. Especially at night.”
“Dad, nobody has ever bothered me down there. Anyway, if they did, I’d bust their chops. And I’m not the pretty type that gets bothered by weirdoes.”
“Lisa, first of all you do qualify – more so everyday it seems like – and secondly you wouldn’t stand a chance against a grown man of any size.”
“Dad, you don’t know how tough I am. I beat up both those new kids; the ones on Fillmore Street that you thought looked like tweedle dee and tweedle dum. They were picking on me so I picked back real hard.”
“I hope I’m not going to hear from their parents.”
“Their Mom stopped me in the hall and thanked me for straightening them up.”
“Well, you did your public service stint for the week then?”
“Yes. Do I get a reward?”
“If I weren’t afraid of the consequences, I’d give you a spanking.” Lisa laughed loudly. She glided into the kitchen and started humming as she stirred and chopped.
A while later, the ghostly silver of her mother’s Prius appeared in the driveway then quickly disappeared into the garage. Mother – protective, always worried, sometimes a bit critical – should not hear about Lisa’s disturbing question concerning the scream. Lisa had made her father promise not to tell, giving in return her promise to return from the beach before darkness was complete. Lena’s first act coming through the side door was to hug her sweating daughter and effuse praise for her work preparing dinner. Lisa hummed louder.
Lisa set the last plate on the table as her mother toted a large bowl of ravioli into the dinning room. Anton sleepily dragged himself there mumbling that he would clean up after everyone was finished. Lena suppressed a smile to sternly remind him of the Little Red Hen story and how true a metaphor for life it was. Mr. Garski just scowled and reached for the pasta bowl.
The front door bell rope tinkling, a loud high-pitched grunt and the door slamming shut introduced Jamie to the scene. His opening line was set at the whiney pitch that grated Lisa’s nerves but seemed to melt her parents, “Heh, you guys, you started without me! Is there any left? Is it cheese ravioli?”
“Sorry, I took the last little bit. And it was beef ravioli. Get here on time and you might get some.” Lisa said coldly.
“Lisa! Don’t be that way. Yes, there is another bowl in the kitchen. And it IS cheese ravioli. You can go in and get it for us,” Lena said with more seriousness than she had intended.
Jamie turned his head toward Lisa and stuck his tongue straight out. Lisa flashed her fearsome evil look at him only long enough to send the message, but she hoped below detection by parental radar.
“Lisa, sometimes you act like you’re only 2-years-old,” her mother chided.
Lisa looked down at her food, embarrassed but also angry, envious really, that Jamie still was an undisputed child; the one person she imagined whose free bird within knew no bounds. No responsibilities to speak of, no rules with any sharp enforcement, no heavy expectations. Come home a half-hour late and that’s OK. Now, she didn’t know why, but the humiliating tears came rolling out uninvited. Her mother’s gentle conciliatory grip on her arm grew the anger. She pulled her arm away and stormed out of the room, out of the kitchen and out of the house. No one shouted at her as she left.
Chapter 4 – Limited Vision
Sitting would mean crying and that was the last thing Lisa wanted. The fun and the freedom of childhood yes but the weakness and vulnerability no. She decided to run and run and run until the choking, bitter feeling shriveled up and dropped off in the dust along the way. Lakeview Drive passed directly in front of her house and completely encircled the lake. The lake and most of the houses around the lake were visible from Lakeview Avenue at most points along its five-mile length.
By the time she set out, it was pushing 8:00 pm. Jogging at a deliberate pace she figured it would take her a good 90 minutes to get home, just after dark and within her stretched idea of the limits. The memory of the shadows kept recurring, kept forcing her eyes back to her beach spot, alert for their formation. She reached the long end of the potato shape that was Potato Lake, the marsh at the southern shoreline; stopped and turned toward her beach now barely visible snuggled in the dense cluster of trees that dominated the northern and western shores. The sun was sinking rapidly, its swelling crimson edge approaching the top of her house. This was the time when the shadows started but she saw no sign of them. Birds flew in and about the trees, a mild westerly wind rippled the waters across the center and western portions of the surface and all was normal.
She broke into a run again, throwing her head to the side from time to time, straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of the shadows that never appeared. The steady slapping of her shoes against the pavement timed perfectly with the rhythm of her breathing: slap – in breath, slap – out breath, slap – in breath … Running was her excellent subject at school, her pleasure of pleasures and this route around the lake, a path well worn in the soles of her broad feet. Over hot summer tar or slick winter ice, her pace would hardly vary from the beginning to the end of her lake-encircling run.
When she reached the front of her house, the sun had fallen; a sprinkle of windows lit up and a few brave stars twinkled defiantly in the clear purple sky. Lisa raced around to the back yard, then let gravity and anticipation carry her down hill like a toboggan hell-bent for the finish line. Her feet pranced high over the clumpy, wild grass, through the scratching ripping thorns and on to the beach. And there they were! Shadows flickering wildly about, shadows that just a few seconds ago, one house to the north on Lakeview Drive were completely invisible. For some completely inexplicable reason, the mysterious shadows, Lisa realized, could only be seen in the vicinity of the large black rock that dominated her special beach.
She sat on the rock, reverently watching the puzzling dance of faint light mingling with darkness, urging it out of its mystery, unafraid and alive with hope. She sat for a time, a length of time she could not gage and during which she did not move, in which she forgot every memory of every fear and every failure and every rejection. She opened her mouth and took long quiet deep breaths, stifled her running sniffles, suppressed several potential hiccups, all to avoid spooking the swirling diaphanous display. They had the feel of living creatures moving about in some complex choreography seen through a black silk mesh and a thick fog. The movements were more than random but less than ordered – a condition that demanded the veil be ripped away to reveal the hidden plan.
Gradually, the phenomenon receded leaving behind the black lake dressed in a sparse sprinkle of reflected starlight. The looming trees spoke in rustling whispers that patience was required, that more was to come but on another day. Lisa’s ears resumed their reception of the familiar night sounds; the myriad love calls of a million tiny creatures in chirps and croaks. As the last of the spell disappeared, Lisa heard a plunging through the brush behind her then a voice, “Owww, damn thorns … Lisa, are you here … ahh, I see you. Lisa, dear, can I talk with you?”
Lisa bristled in silence, then turned and said, “Mom, what are you doing here. I was just getting ready to leave. Dad said …”
“Hon, it’s all right. I was just worried about you … I wanted to be with you for a while. Is that OK?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Lena Garski sat down on the rock next to her daughter and wrapped her arm around Lisa’s shoulders, “Lisa, I’m sorry I was cross with you. I had a bad day at the lab. My boss seems to think I can just cook up a bug to perform whatever miracle is required. I told the jerk a raise is required for generating miracles, especially on Saturday. He didn’t think it was funny so we had kind of an argument. But, I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
Lisa let her body slowly sag toward her mother’s, drooping her head as she slid tighter into the embrace she craved. She started to cry, sobbing in her mother’s lap while her mother stroked her hair. Neither said anything after Lisa stopped crying until after a while Lisa said, “Mom, I’m so scared. The boys are getting harder and harder to beat. They’re going to get bigger then they’ll get back at me. And all that work at school … I hate it! Mom, I hate it. Then next year I have to go to middle school.”
“Well, Lisa, there is something I have to tell you. I’ve waited till the right moment and I think this is it.”
“What? Mom, I don’t want anymore bad stuff,” Lisa sniffled.
“Just listen to me for a minute and you will be surprised. You know how you’re starting to change … I don’t just mean getting taller I mean changing … in your body.”
“Mom!”
“Now, just listen to me young lady. These boys you’re so afraid of will get physically bigger but they will also get a whole lot stupider. What makes them stupid is hormones. Your hormones will make you smarter so you see, you’ll still have the upper hand.”
“Mom, that’s dumb. Boys don’t get stupider.”
“Actually, they do. What happens is they start feeling like they need girls and want girls to pay attention to them and like them so they go out of their way to impress girls doing what ever they think girls will like. Like your father is toward me … and you.”
“Dad is not stupid.”
“Not any more. He outgrew that part of it. Now, he’s just nice.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“Lisa, look around at the other kids. Don’t you see it at school? You certainly will when you start at Lincoln in September. Promise me you’ll do that and report back to me what you see other kids doing.”
“Mom …”
“Promise?”
“OK, I promise I’ll look at all those dumb jerks even though it’ll probably make me puke in the hall.”
“If you’re going to puke, do it on the worst one of them will you?”
“With pleasure.”
“OK, now something else – your birthday, the big 13 on September third. That will make you an official teenager and insufferably obnoxious.”
“I thought I already was … obnoxious that is.”
“Deary, you have not yet seen obnoxious.”
“I can hardly wait,” Lisa moaned.
“I was thinking we could have your party at Gabby’s. You like their pasta and they do special stuff for birthdays.”
“That’s so embarrassing … everybody looking at some dumb waiters singing off-key.”
“They have a private room and no singing if you request that. I’ve asked around and found some interested participants. They’re all people I know you like. I’ll let you see the list before I send out the invites.”
“Oh, God, I hate this. Do I have to turn 13?”
“What do you think?”
“Yeah, I guess I can’t stop it.”
“”And, your favorite cousins will be there – they’re staying for the weekend – so think about that. It’s time to go back home now. I saved some peach cobbler for you – half a pan actually. Can I have another hug before we go?”
Lisa swallowed her mother with both arms and practically squeezed the breath out of her. Together, hand-in-hand, they climbed the hill and descended on the peach cobbler.
Chapter 5 – The Bubble
Children, being the most observant and opportunistic sub-species of the Human Race are very skilled at detecting moments of weakness in their favorite prey – parents. Striking at the right moment, the fatigued, sleep deprived, distracted and/or guilt-stricken parent can be manipulated into doing almost anything, even breaking long-standing rules. It was precisely in such a circumstance that Lisa was able, between bites of peach cobbler, to get her mother’s permission for some late-night watching of a Classic B movie show lasting till midnight; thus breaking the long-standing rule of no TV after 10 PM. The expected consequence ensued – Lisa sleeping in and missing her mother’s apple pancakes the following morning.
Once she was awake, the shadows and lights of the lake crept into Lisa’s mind and stayed there, picking away at her all day, making everything else seem inconsequential. She watched the clock amble around the daily numbers at an excruciatingly slow pace, seemingly taunting her with deliberate dawdling. An afternoon matinee did not help as much as she had hoped since she had already seen the movie, “Star Cruisers XI” twice before. Mrs. Garski arrived home abnormally late – an unusually heavy day filled with stressful pressures. She was jumpy and fatigued, remembering on her way home that she had promised Lisa her favorite dinner that evening – hamburger lasagna, a gloriously complex tossed salad and a giant chocolate pie – all this to make up for Lisa having missed dinner the day before. When Lena walked in the door, her daughter sized up her mother’s predicament very accurately, thus providing Lisa with the opportunity to squeeze out a concession: permission for a longer stay at the beach to watch the strange shadows dawn with the sunset.
“OK, OK, … so, if you help me with the preparation, and I mean really help, I say OK to you eating your dinner at the beach and staying there till, ahh let’s say 10:00 … no later. Take your watch that you can light up in the dark. But if you take a plate I’m afraid it’ll get broken,” Lena Garski said frowning.
“OK, Mom, I’ll take the Lasagna pan … after everybody gets their stuff-full portion. Then I’ll put my salad and piece of pie in the empty space. The pan can’t break.”
“Yeah, well, it’s aluminum which is soft and dings up easily so be careful please.”
“Don’t worry Mom, I’ll be careful. Thanks. I love you.”
“”Well, I love your tootsies off you little brat. Now let’s get moving with this dinner before we get arrested for starving the poor male members of our family.”
After much chopping, mixing, layering and baking, the dinner was ready. Lisa served up a heap of askew lasagna noodles and stuffing on three plates, set them on the table with a huge bowl of salad, loaded the quarter-full baking pan with salad and pie, grabbed a large spoon and made for her exit. She smiled with self-satisfaction as she imagined her Dad cleaning up and doing the dishes, Mom settling in to some sappy evening soap opera and Jamie engrossing himself in his Dad’s old Superman comic book collection while she was on the edge of a great discovery concerning the nature of light doing weird things in a semi-ordinary place. She quietly slipped out the noiseless side door, through the garage, through the back yard gate, down the path of thorny brambles and to the seclusion guarded by the big black rock. Breathless, excited, she sat on top the rock while she waited; her legs folded under her body, her head erect, her eyes wide open. She wished it to be the day when the shadows would tell their story.
And on that day, at that time, a shadow appeared on the northern edge of her beach – on Lisa’s left where the poplars rattled in the gentle wind. The sun was low in the sky, throwing its reddish light between the clouds, out in long beams, down to the ground, skittering along the sandy beach and into the murky algae-laden water near the shore. The trees cast long gray shadows out on the water but there were also other shadows, impossible shadows projecting in the opposite direction from some invisible source of light near the center of the lake. The show was about to begin. It was an intriguing sight, one that sparked her electric curiosity. Lisa ate her lasagna absently, her eyes scanning the scene in front of her hoping to catch some revealing display – to unmask Mother Nature’s foolery.
But there was more that day. The vague misty shadows gradually took on the shape of a well-defined bubble out halfway to the middle of the lake, a good fifty yards away by Lisa’s reckoning. At first it was only about two yards in diameter, opaque and colored a brilliant cerulean blue, but it grew rapidly, its bottom half plunged into the lake, dimly visible below the waterline while the top half formed an expanding dome over the lake.
Then suddenly, the entire bubble exploded in brilliant white light, like a thousand flash bulbs going off all at once. It blinded Lisa’s eyes for a few seconds but when she recovered she could see the bubble was now clear. Where it touched the water it formed a curved line. On one side of the line was the gently rippled surface of the lake and on the other – inside the bubble – a dark and very rough surface – a solid, dusty, wind-swept plane. Patches of scrubby vegetation were scattered about but anything-resembling trees were conspicuously absent. Although it was twilight behind her, ahead of her, inside the bubble it was deep night but strangely illuminated in a faint white light. Lisa gasped in amazement and repeatedly rubbed her eyes and slapped herself in the face to wake up from this frightening dream.
But it was not a dream.
The bubble continued to expand, stretching across the lake and on up to the shore, rapidly toward a terrified Lisa. She backed up till she stumbled on an exposed tree root, falling flat on her back. The bubble’s wall raced toward her consuming her little beach, the lake and all the trees along the shore, hitting the black rock where it stopped. Lisa sat up and stared straight ahead her mouth open to scream but emitting no sound. The details of the bubble’s interior came to her only slowly as the shock dissipated slightly and she became aware that she was not hurt or in immediate danger.
She was starting to become aware of movement within the bubble. It came from her left, short and squat, the shape and size, even roughly the color of a Pear, and it moved slowly across what was the beach in front of her. A confusing tangle of appendages swirled around its body as if the creature were a bundle of squid in terrible panic. As her focus sharpened, she could see that the tentacles sprouted from the creature in clusters, two bundles on the bottom kicking up dust as they moved it over the battered soil in a vigorous swirl and one on either side of its lumpy body – arms perhaps? Grasped in one bundle was what looked like a small axe. Perched on the top of its dome-like head were two short stalks, each with bulbous ends, the two knobs, shiny on the forward side, swinging about in unison – eyes, she thought. Though its forward progress was slow, it seemed to be in a state of high alert, as if in great danger.
At this point, another creature appeared, this time from her right – long and thin like a large cucumber in size and shape but with a ghastly grey and white speckled pattern all over its body. It too moved forward under the rhythmic movement of clustered tentacles on the bottom of its body much in the same manner as the pear-like creature. In one of its side-mounted arrays of writhing flesh ropes it wielded a long sharp-pointed shaft, which it drew back and slung into the body of the stubby creature, sending it into writhing convulsions. In a matter of seconds, the cucumber creature retracted its weapon and the Pear creature fell to the dusty ground quivering and exuding a dark grey liquid in quantities that seemed impossible to Lisa considering the creature’s small size. Lisa gasped and pulled her arms tight around her chest.
Another cucumber creature appeared on her right, long and thin with the bunch of thin vibrating braids on one side gripping a lance. Lisa was fascinated at the amazing coordination of these seven or eight strands in the cluster closest to her. They looped around the shaft of the weapon, holding it fast, yet at a distance of several inches from its body thus giving it flexibility in movement, accuracy in aim and power in delivery.
Within seconds, another squat being appeared on her left. It leapt on the cucumber-like creature that had just done in the first creature and started hacking it with its axe. Each blow sent up a spray of gray liquid – blood Lisa guessed. Yet another Pear creature appeared and threw its axe at the other lance wielder, the blade sinking deeply into the middle of its lanky body, while in a last act of defiance the lance-wielder threw its weapon. The triangular tip of the missile missed its target but sailed through the bubble wall, hit Lisa’s lasagna pan with a clang and bounced back into the impossible bubble. The axe wielding warrior and its first victim landed in a wriggling heap on the dusty ground within the bubble, just a few yards from Lisa. In short order, the tall thin fighter succumbed. The victor jumped off his vanquished foe and the two pear-like creatures raced away toward the middle of the bubble.
The sun was now below the roof of her modest home on top of the hill behind her. An ominous darkness flowed into the dense forest to her sides and ahead was a terrible dark rough plain extending entirely across the lake. She could see no hint of the mansions on the other side. The friendly blue-green lake was now a threatening morass of deep grays and browns with inexplicable shapes moving about, unrecognizable structures further out and sounds, awful sounds – high pitched shrieks – filling the bubble. Gone was the familiar, comforting symphony of crickets and frogs backed by the faint hum of the I90 highway in the distance. Lisa was frozen in fear, afraid to move but even more afraid of staying. She threw her feet to the ground, impelled her body upright, turned, raced jerkily through the thorny thicket path ripping tears in her jeans, powered herself up the hill to the back door of her house, a distance of some 100 yards, at a speed rivaling the best of a Chicago Bears quarterback racing for a game-winning touch down.
The lasagna pan remained behind.
Chapter 6 - A Hopeful Ding
“Hey Lisa, you still in bed?” Charlie yelled through Lisa’s bedroom door. The Garski household was not one taken to strict discipline. Friends of any family member, though not large in number, were welcome at anytime. They only needed to ring the bell, open the front door and announce their presence. Picking at leftovers in the refrigerator was a common practice as was turning on the TV at a low volume if no one was in the room trying to concentrate on something different.
Lisa mumbled an indistinct complaint.
“Hey, Lisa, let’s go fishin’. Joey says some guy caught this big thing, looked like a shark. You can eat sharks. They’re bad so nobody ’ll care.”
There were indistinct groans, fumbling with furniture, subdued swearing then, the door swung open revealing Lisa in dirty ripped jeans, an inside out Chicago Cubs tee shirt and a very grumpy look on her face.
“Your shirt … it’s inside out,” said Charlie pointing at her with one finger. She looked down, grunted, then grabbed the bottom of the shirt and pulled it up over her head. Charlie gaped in amazement at the sight, never having seen the slightest hint of uncovered female development before. She turned the shirt around and put it back on correctly saying, “What’re you looking at?” Charlie turned red and changed the subject.
“You wanna go fishin’? We could catch sharks.”
“You idiot, Charlie, there’s no fish in that lake much less sharks. It’s nothin’ but a pond for the rich folks to parade their fancy boats around in.,” said Lisa, in a deceptively negative vein.
“Joey said his dad caught some there last week.”
“OK, just to show you what an idiot you are, we’ll go there and fish all day and get a sore butt and catch nothin’ and then you’ll apologize for tellin’ tall tales.” If this delightful idea failed, she could still derive much pleasure from harassing Charlie about it for weeks.
“I’ll betchya five bucks I catch something but you gotta do it too.”
“Alright idiot, let me ask my Dad if he can spare his stuff. You got yours?”
“Right outside.”
Lisa stumbled down the hallway to her parent’s bedroom and stopped at the closed door. The “do not disturb sign was dangling carelessly from the doorknob. Strange grunting noises were coming from within, a sure sign to Lisa that she should not open the door and witness what she vaguely suspected – the mystic rituals only known to adults. She turned her body and her mind away and ran to the garage.
They arrived at the beach with Lisa feeling a tight knot of anxiety in her gut. She approached the rock then stopped dead in her tracks as something metallic glittered on her right. It was her Mother’s favorite aluminum baking pan … with a triangular dent in the middle a quarter-inch wide. The dent had three clean grooves converging to a point in the middle, as though made by a rod with a triangular shape – a three-sided pyramid on the end of a three-sided shaft. Charlie didn’t notice the pan as he prepared his fishing gear. Lisa threw the pan into the brush behind her.
“What was that?” asked Charlie.
“Just some old trash I found. I’ll take it back home later.”
Lisa was glad fishing required silence so as not to scare away the fish that weren’t there – she needed time to process the events of the day before. As their bobbins jumped crazily up and down over the top of the wind driven ripples, Lisa scoured her brain for an explanation of what she had seen. She was seriously worried about mental illness. There had been a psychologist who came to her class last year and talked about mental illness and how it can strike anybody, even children and how people who have it see things or hear things that are not really there. She snuck looks back at the pan … definitely her mother’s pan and definitely with a nice clean triangular dent in it … a shape, she suddenly remembered, about the same as the cross section of the spear that killed the Pear-like creature. She had to have corroboration that at least part of what she had seen was real. She looked at Charlie and said, “Charlie, you see that pan over there? Yeah, that one. Does it have a ding in it? It does?”
“Duhhh! So now who’s the idiot,” he asked.
“Ahhh, what shape is it?”
“A ding is a ding. Round I guess. Isn’t that your Mom’s favorite baking pan?”
“Yeah. I left it here last night and some jerk came along and stuck it with something. So, tell me … what shape is it?” Lisa gave him her famous do-it-or-else scowl. He promptly went to it and confirmed the dent formed a perfect three-sided pyramid.
“Wow! That’s cool. I wonder how that happened,” Charlie enthused. “Ya think it’s a bullet?’ Lisa merely frowned and went back to tending her fishing.
Lunchtime finally rolled around and, being bored with the bet, they agreed to call it off and put everything away before going in for lunch. The afternoon was consumed with a matinee movie and for Lisa, conflicted thoughts about the visions at the lake. When her mother asked about her baking pan, Lisa promised she’d go back and get it. When asked why she left it there, Lisa responded haltingly, “I … ahh … well, I fell woke up and forgot about it. You know how pasta makes me sleepy. Sorry Mom. Your pans all right … well, not 100% all right. It has a little ding in it. Sorry.”
“I aught to put a ding in your head. Then again, I’d break my hammer if I tried.”
“Mom, if you’re trying out for Comedy Central, I’d suggest you keep your day job.”
“Duly noted. So, when do I get my pan back?”
“Tonight … I promise. Mom, I need to go back there again. Those weird shadows … they’re doing things … I need to take pictures.”
“So, I suppose you want to borrow the camera.”
“Please.”
“That’s a very expensive digital camera. I got it for your dad last Christmas. You lose it or break it and I’ll fry your butt in bacon grease and that’s mild compared to what your dad will do”
“I promise I’ll be very careful. Thanks a lot mom.”
“You remember how to use it? It’s kind of complicated.”
“I remember. Where is it?”
“In the downstairs hall closet. And that’s where I want to see it tomorrow, in perfect condition tucked away in its little bag, hanging on its own little hook.”
“Gotchya mom.”
Chapter 7– A Blind Eye
She started out the back door as dusk began to form, the camera in her hand, resolve in her heart. She was going to solve this mystery, mark its parameters, define its borders, photograph its rising and falling, photograph the unbelievable creatures inhabiting the bubble world and perhaps even enter it – whatever was humanly possible. The thought of that sent shivers of excitement through her body – an adventure that was truly an adventure – where real danger lurked, where mysterious things happened - but not too much danger, not insurmountable danger. After all, the creatures were small; their weapons primitive, their quarrels were with each other. Lisa felt she could master the bubble. The only question was: could she enter and leave it safely?
Her watch read 9:05 pm.
By the time she got within three yards of the rock she saw the bubble taking shape. She looked up to see a family across the lake lounging around a shiny steel grill, black smoke leaning leeward from the mild northerly wind. The people seemed not to notice the rapidly expanding bubble – their disinterest a frightening reflection on her perception till she remembered herself not seeing the shadows from the other side of the lake or even only a short distance away. For some bizarre reason, she had to be close to the rock to see the bubble.
The bubble’s clearly defined surface, glasslike, colorless, visible only at an angle, was now more visible to her under-water where she saw layers of different colored soil and rock just as she saw when her family drove through the cleaved hills of West Virginia – rugged layers spelling out the history of Mother Earth in sepia, burnt orange and gray.