didn’t think he’d ever light a match again without thinking of her story of the burning of the Big House. God, he wished he’d been there.
The match flame shrank as he touched it to the wick, and the translucent wax of the candle went a dim, unearthly blue for an instant, then brightened into its normal glow. He glanced at Mandy, singing to a collection of stuffed toys on the sofa; she’d had her bath and was meant to be keeping out of trouble while Jem had his. Keeping one eye on her, he sat down at his desk and opened his notebook.
He’d begun it half as a joke. The other half as the only thing he could think of to combat paralyzing fear.
“You can teach kids not to cross the street alone,” Bree had pointed out. “Surely you can teach them to stay the heck away from standing stones.”
He’d agreed, but with substantial mental reservations. Small kids, yes; you could brainwash them into not sticking forks in the electric outlets. But as they became teenagers, with all that inchoate yearning for self-discovery and things unknown? He recalled his own teenaged self much too vividly. Tell a teenaged boy not to stick forks in the outlet, and he’d be off rifling the silverware drawer the minute your back was turned. Girls might be different, but he doubted it.
He glanced again at the sofa, where Amanda was now lying on her back, legs thrust into the air and a large, ratty-looking stuffed bear balanced on her feet, to which she was singing “Frère Jacques.” Mandy had been so young that she wouldn’t remember. Jem would. He did; Roger could tell, when the little boy woke up from nightmares, eyes huge and staring at nothing, and could not describe his dream. Thank God, it didn’t happen often.
He still broke out in a cold sweat whenever he remembered it himself. That last passage. He’d clutched Jemmy to his chest and stepped into … God, there was no name for it, because humanity at large had never experienced it, and lucky for them they hadn’t. It wasn’t even like anything to which it could be compared.
None of the senses worked there—and at the same time, all of them did, in such a state of hypersensitivity that you’d die of it if it lasted any longer than it did. A howling void, where sound seemed to batter you, pulsing through your body, trying to separate each cell from the next. Absolute blindness, but the blindness of looking into the sun. And the impact of … bodies?
Ghosts? Unseen others who brushed past like moth wings or seemed to hurtle right through you in a colliding thump of entangling bones. A constant sense of screaming.
Did it smell? He paused, frowning, trying to remember. Yes, it damned well did. And oddly enough, it was a describable smell: the scent of air burnt by lightning—ozone.
It smells strongly of ozone , he wrote, feeling remarkably relieved to have even this small foothold of reference to the normal world.
This relief disappeared in the next instant, as he returned to the struggle of memory.
He’d felt as though nothing save his own will held them together, nothing but raw determination to survive held him together. Knowing what to expect hadn’t helped in the slightest; it was different—and much worse—than his previous experiences.
He did know not to look at them. The ghosts, if that’s what they were. “Look” wasn’t the right word … pay attention to them? Again, there wasn’t a word, and he sighed in exasperation.
“Sonnez le matines, sonnez le matines …”
“Din dan don,” he sang softly with her chorus. “Din dan don.”
He tapped the pen on the paper for a minute, thinking, then shook his head and bent over the paper again, trying to explain his first attempt, the occasion on which he’d come within …
moments? inches? Some unthinkably small degree of separation of meeting his father—and destruction.
I think you cannot cross your own lifeline , he wrote slowly. Both Bree and Claire—the scientific women—had assured him
The match flame shrank as he touched it to the wick, and the translucent wax of the candle went a dim, unearthly blue for an instant, then brightened into its normal glow. He glanced at Mandy, singing to a collection of stuffed toys on the sofa; she’d had her bath and was meant to be keeping out of trouble while Jem had his. Keeping one eye on her, he sat down at his desk and opened his notebook.
He’d begun it half as a joke. The other half as the only thing he could think of to combat paralyzing fear.
“You can teach kids not to cross the street alone,” Bree had pointed out. “Surely you can teach them to stay the heck away from standing stones.”
He’d agreed, but with substantial mental reservations. Small kids, yes; you could brainwash them into not sticking forks in the electric outlets. But as they became teenagers, with all that inchoate yearning for self-discovery and things unknown? He recalled his own teenaged self much too vividly. Tell a teenaged boy not to stick forks in the outlet, and he’d be off rifling the silverware drawer the minute your back was turned. Girls might be different, but he doubted it.
He glanced again at the sofa, where Amanda was now lying on her back, legs thrust into the air and a large, ratty-looking stuffed bear balanced on her feet, to which she was singing “Frère Jacques.” Mandy had been so young that she wouldn’t remember. Jem would. He did; Roger could tell, when the little boy woke up from nightmares, eyes huge and staring at nothing, and could not describe his dream. Thank God, it didn’t happen often.
He still broke out in a cold sweat whenever he remembered it himself. That last passage. He’d clutched Jemmy to his chest and stepped into … God, there was no name for it, because humanity at large had never experienced it, and lucky for them they hadn’t. It wasn’t even like anything to which it could be compared.
None of the senses worked there—and at the same time, all of them did, in such a state of hypersensitivity that you’d die of it if it lasted any longer than it did. A howling void, where sound seemed to batter you, pulsing through your body, trying to separate each cell from the next. Absolute blindness, but the blindness of looking into the sun. And the impact of … bodies?
Ghosts? Unseen others who brushed past like moth wings or seemed to hurtle right through you in a colliding thump of entangling bones. A constant sense of screaming.
Did it smell? He paused, frowning, trying to remember. Yes, it damned well did. And oddly enough, it was a describable smell: the scent of air burnt by lightning—ozone.
It smells strongly of ozone , he wrote, feeling remarkably relieved to have even this small foothold of reference to the normal world.
This relief disappeared in the next instant, as he returned to the struggle of memory.
He’d felt as though nothing save his own will held them together, nothing but raw determination to survive held him together. Knowing what to expect hadn’t helped in the slightest; it was different—and much worse—than his previous experiences.
He did know not to look at them. The ghosts, if that’s what they were. “Look” wasn’t the right word … pay attention to them? Again, there wasn’t a word, and he sighed in exasperation.
“Sonnez le matines, sonnez le matines …”
“Din dan don,” he sang softly with her chorus. “Din dan don.”
He tapped the pen on the paper for a minute, thinking, then shook his head and bent over the paper again, trying to explain his first attempt, the occasion on which he’d come within …
moments? inches? Some unthinkably small degree of separation of meeting his father—and destruction.
I think you cannot cross your own lifeline , he wrote slowly. Both Bree and Claire—the scientific women—had assured him
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