Chapter 9 The Hole in Nothing #3
Valentina handed him the pale, spongy thing.
It was smaller than his forearm and seemed to weigh nothing at all.
The outer wood was a jumble of insect damage and discoloration from what he imagined were countless varieties of mold and fungi.
Part of him wanted a magnifying glass. Part of him wanted hand sanitizer.
“Okay. So, what? The hole rots things?”
Valentina studied the remains of the log.
“Hmm, I would suggest time and detritivores rot things, but we’re just getting started.”
She began gathering up several sticks and chunks of partially burned wood as she spoke, making a small pile beside the barrier.
“Observe, Mr. Green. Stand to the side.”
Green stood aside and watched his teacher. She began tossing the bits of wood she had gathered into the space between the pines.
The first throw yielded nothing.
The second throw yielded nothing.
The third sent a shower of violet sparks into the air on the far side of the hole. Green flinched and stepped back. There was a smell like burnt Styrofoam and a sudden dryness in his mouth like he had just spit out a handful of cornstarch.
He gagged.
“As you can see,” Valentina continued, “predictability is not a feature of this anomaly.”
She tossed the charred remnants of a campfire log through and this time a glob of something viscous and translucent bounced against the leaf litter.
It seemed to hover for a moment, bits of twig clinging to its wet surface, before some mechanism of physics took hold and the ball of slime fell directly upward, vanishing into the sky with a whistle of sudden speed.
Valentina stooped, picked up a smooth gray stone, and tossed it through.
It landed on the other side, looking largely unchanged except for a fading orange afterglow of dissipating heat. The leaves beneath the stone smoked. Green regarded the cooling rock with suspicion for a long moment before returning his attention to his teacher.
“That, Mr. Green, is why I haven’t tried stepping through.
The other cases in which that technique was employed were decidedly less severe.
There’s no knowing what this break in reality would do to me.
I have tried a few alternative methods of closure, but clearly I haven’t succeeded.
Typically, such interruptions in the fabric of the universe resolve themselves.
I was continuing to monitor it while hoping it would heal on its own.
That hope seems increasingly less likely. ”
“You think the wolf came through there? You think it might be a mon…creature…that tears its way between dimensions or something?”
“I don’t know. But allowing for such a connection is why we are here today. Recent events suggest that a wait-and-see approach to the hole may no longer be tenable.”
Green didn’t like the emptiness between those pines.
The more Valentina spoke about it, the more the hole seemed to have a perspective of its own. The more he felt it watching him.
“We fight fear with action and information,” he said to himself, echoing Valentina.
She nodded. “It is a powerful combination. Yes.”
Green picked up a wilted, rain-soaked cardboard six-pack carrier from the ground and tossed it through the hole, then peeked on the other side. Nothing.
“Cardboard isn’t the most resilient of substances,” Valentina said.
“I know. But, hey, at least I got rid of some of the litter.”
“Mr. Green, this is a one-of-a-kind tear in reality. It isn’t a rubbish bin. Don’t make light of it.”
He sighed.
“I’m not. Look, it’s currently terrifying me, and I want to do something to push back. So, I’m experimenting, okay? I’m taking your advice.”
He snatched up a disposable plastic lighter and tossed it through.
There was a soft insectile buzz beyond the pines and when he rounded the trees to look he found a perfectly round two-inch burrow leading down into the soft soil.
A thin coil of bronze smoke snaked from the fresh opening in the earth.
“I appreciate the virtue of experimentation,” Valentina said, “but I advise against frivolous interactions with something as powerful and unruly as this. I risked a demonstration so you would understand our situation. At this point, there’s nothing to be gained by risking more. Do not poke the bear, Mr. Green.”
He swallowed.
“Fair point. I can’t stop thinking about what that thing would do to a person. I guess it’s like standing on a subway platform. Some part of my brain can’t help imagining taking a leap in front of the train.”
Valentina collected two stacks of sample bags from beside her pack. She shook her head.
“It may come to that, but let us hope for a safer solution.”
The idea loosed butterflies in his stomach.
“Those other times you mentioned…When stepping through was used to close the door? What were those other rifts like?”
“Twice before, yes. Both cases exhibited much more limited, stable effects.”
“Only twice?”
“Large sample sizes are not a luxury our field of study typically affords. There was the Galveston covered bridge. It was closed in such a way, but months of testing indicated it consistently led six minutes into the past. Predictable. Still, the cryptonaturalist who closed it experienced that six-minute journey as a subjective month navigating a silent, lightless maze by feel with no end in sight. No sleep. No hunger. No thirst. Just endlessly pressing on down dark, winding corridors. A harrowing prospect.”
Green’s jaw dropped open.
“He time traveled? Did he meet himself from six minutes earlier? Warn himself about what to expect?”
“Time doesn’t work that way. Not for humans.
Reality’s immune system rejects subjective paradoxes.
For example, no meeting oneself to alter one’s future.
No doubt he lived out those aberrant six minutes in a pocket dimension that mirrored his own past, though without his presence.
He subsequently rejoined his original timeline once he progressed in linear fashion to the moment of his departure. ”
“Oh, of course. It’s so obvious now that you say it.”
She ignored his sarcasm and continued.
“Following his nightmare month in the maze, he found himself standing on the empty bridge, disoriented, forced to shield his eyes from the light. Six uneasy minutes later, his team was suddenly there, preparing to celebrate his success. From their perspective, he simply stepped through and collapsed as the rift vanished. The team quickly shifted to triage as they learned of their colleague’s ordeal. ”
“Damn. That’s awful. What about the other example?”
“There was also the Lake Itasca Mist-Arch, which briefly appeared above the surface of the lake whenever a loon called and transmitted matter about ten meters away into a stand of wild rice. The young cryptonaturalist who kayaked through that rift was transported the ten meters and gained a novel, persistent conviction that clover meant her harm.”
“So…not our first choice. Got it. Are there less-terrifying methods?”
Valentina frowned.
“Yes. Several. So far, they have been ineffectual. We need more information.”
She handed him a stack of sample bags.
“Focus, Mr. Green. We are looking for connections to our current situation. Help me explore the area.”
“Okay, okay.”
He stepped away from the hole, trying to quiet his imagination.
Maybe that thing is the entrance to the wolf’s den?
Maybe it has nothing to do with us at all.
She directed him to begin searching the edge of the clearing for anything noteworthy.
Green turned and walked toward the woods.
After the second spiderweb to the face, he picked up a branch and waved it like a conductor’s wand while he walked, wondering how many spiders were tough enough to survive the frosty fall nights.
He scrutinized the ground, finding fewer and fewer pieces of trash as he moved outward from the clearing.
Something crimson caught his eye and he stopped next to the body of a red bird, one wing splayed like fanned playing cards. Green shouted to Valentina.
“Dead bird over here.”
She was searching the opposite side of the clearing.
“Yes. I have found two dead nuthatches already. Bag it.”
He knelt. The bird lay with one wing extended. The other was plastered to its side. Its eye was a perfect black jewel next to the carrot-orange beak. There was no blood, no visible damage. It seemed perfectly intact. He thought of the pink gumline of the dead woman in the van at Kinkaid Cabins.
“This one’s a cardinal, I think.”
“Keep looking. Call them out if you see more.”
He turned a sample bag inside out and used it like a plastic mitt to grab the cardinal.
He’d seen plenty of dog owners in the park use the same technique.
The little corpse was cold and stiff. A layer of dead leaves came with the bird into the bag.
He put the bag in his jacket pocket. It felt impolite to treat a death in such an unceremonious way, but he didn’t know how to respect a dead bird in a plastic bag.
Green walked on and found another corpse immediately.
“Uh, gray bird. Looks like a small, skinny pigeon.”
“Mourning dove. Bag it.”
The dove joined the cardinal in his bulging pocket. The two bags crinkled as he stood and continued the search.
They moved on, circling the clearing and calling out their finds.
“Gray squirrel.”
“Two more cardinals.”
“European starling.”
“Blue jay.”
“Northern flicker. No, two northern flickers.”
“Uh, a little gray-and-white guy with a black head?”
“Chickadee.”
They continued for a half hour, finding just over a dozen corpses before rendezvousing in the clearing.
Valentina stowed the bagged remains in her backpack.
Except for the bits of twig and leaves clinging to them, all of the corpses seemed to be in pristine condition, avian displays in a natural history museum.
Green ran fingers through his hair and tried to swallow away the knot in his throat.
They’re just birds.
The thought wasn’t convincing. A pattern was emerging in his new line of work, a pattern etched in death. Death, he knew, was natural. But if this was nature’s true face, it little resembled the character of nature from his daydreams.
“Fourteen total,” she said. “All appear remarkably fresh. No variation at all in level of decomposition. Interesting.”
“What does it mean?” Green asked. “I saw a dead bird at Kinkaid too. It didn’t seem important at the time.”
He recalled the lifeless robin in the grass. After the van, after seeing her face beneath the sheet, it hadn’t seemed worth mentioning. Were there dark stains on the flesh beneath those feathers?
“I’m not sure. I need to study these remains. Though, I am more certain than before that this is not a good place for children to loiter.”
She looked down at an abandoned sock at the edge of the clearing.
She patted her pack.
“At least we now have some physical evidence to examine. Our day has been fruitful.”
“It was a dead robin,” Green said. “At the cabins, I mean. Just one more cursed sight on a day full of cursed sights.”
The concern on Valentina’s face told Green that he had that unraveling look again.
“I’m alright. Or I will be. I’m…adjusting.”
“I know, Mr. Green. I know.”
Valentina raised her eyes to the canopy.
“It is too quiet here.”
She looked around the clearing.
“I can’t guarantee if I would have noticed dead birds on the ground in my earlier visits to this place. I feel I would have noticed this…absence.”
She turned and held her hand up, fingers parallel to the horizon.
“Each hand width between the horizon and the sun is an hour of remaining daylight. Plenty of time to find a more wholesome place to rest for lunch and still make it home before evening.”
Green imitated her motion, guessing five hand widths until sunset.
Only five hand widths until another night. Another tide of darkness to hide the thing that is killing this place.
He looked back toward the Hole in Nothing, wishing he had the power to close it. Valentina turned and headed back up the path toward Candle-Fly Camp. Green followed.
“Should we do anything to stop the local kids from coming here?”
Valentina tutted.
“Paradoxical human time travel is more likely than us accomplishing that.”
They put an hour between them and the hole before stopping for a brief lunch.
The day had changed. Now, as they walked back to Candle-Fly, he couldn’t help searching the ground for little bodies. The silence had been companionable on the morning’s hike. It had metastasized into something different.
Back at camp, Green moved the truck to his site and tried to text Alf about his car.
No service.
He was still receiving spam texts from time to time, so he hoped his message would slip through the mountain’s nets at some point that evening. He considered adding a “PS” urging Alf to get rid of his flyer about the Hole in Nothing, but decided that was more of an in-person conversation topic.
The evening was spent in the library tree, reading about an endless stairway leading down from a traveling alley and the ongoing debate about whether the place itself could be classified as a cryptid.
He decided it was mostly fiction, but the subject made him uneasy.
Yet, as the sun set and Green imagined his own personal monster awakening somewhere out in the dusk, the treetop study felt mercifully safe, even if some of the information it protected did not.