Naomi’s knees ached as she worked her way out from under the honeysuckle. She looked down the driveway to the smashed wheelchair. Up to the building at the long strip of corrugated metal that used to be a garage door.
It vibrated on the asphalt, agitated by the breeze blowing the sweet smell of their hiding place through her hair.
“The fuck is she going?” Richard asked, voice pinched. Pain or effort. Or both.
Naomi ignored Richard’s question. Walked to the fluttering metal door. She placed her toe on the edge. Her weight forced it flat, and the other side of the door rose up in response.
It crinkled under her like a giant metal lid on a bottle of Snapple.
She heard Duncan and Richard struggle out from under the bush behind her, but she didn’t turn to look. The inside of the Makers building flickered like it was behind a sheer curtain.
Naomi lifted her finger up but felt nothing hanging in the air.
“We have to get back,” Richard gasped.
She spun around, hand still in front of her, then pointed to the bottom of the driveway. Her shocked amazement made it difficult to draw breath. “With those things out there?”
Richard propped himself up on his elbows. “What about Andrea? Bobby and Jericka?”
Duncan rose to his full height, but hands shook when he brought them up to cover his face. “If they are caught in the swarm, they are dead.”
The voice in her head was full of despair. Rough and tired. She had never thought to hear either of the titans sound like that.
Richard’s brows drew down in anger. “That it? No warning? They’re just dead?”
Duncan shook his head. “It is what it is.”
“Fuck you, Duncan! I hear that bullshit all the time. It is what it is. That doesn’t mean shit. ‘I had my favorite meal today.’ ‘Well, it is what it is.’ Everything is what everything is, you dumb fuck!”
The titan dropped his hands. “Then go, Half Soldier. Run to your friends before the hell spawn of the Unity finds them.” He crossed his arms. “I’ll wait.”
Naomi covered her ears. Pressed her hands together like they were a vice. She bit back her scream. Listened to the rush of pressure in her head.
Duncan’s voice penetrated the flesh of her hands. Of course, it did. It was only in her head, anyway. “Are you hurt?”
She met his gaze. “What if they come back?”
His eyes widened, then he looked down at Richard. “We must hide.”
Richard hung his head. “Where? Where the fuck is it safe anywhere?”
Naomi pointed at the building. “What about in there?”
“That’s where they came from.”
“But, they’re not there now.”
“How do you know?”
Duncan shook his head. “There will be no more.”
Richard threw his head back and rolled his eyes. “How the fuck do you know?”
“They are a swarm. There are none left out.”
“Fine. Squat down here, and I’ll ride bitch on the back of an alien.”
Naomi backed toward the door, her eyes glued to the end of the driveway. Duncan had called them reptars. She watched for them to come back, but there was only the breeze.
The pennies tinkled like chimes.
Duncan stood with Richard clinging to his back. He hitched him higher on his shoulders then fell in with Naomi, who turned and walked into the building. They caught their breath at the same time.
Flickers of ghosts. The children from the hill. A strange woman with black hair.
They were gone, but she could hear them still.
Duncan stepped up next to her. “There is phasality here.”
Naomi just nodded. That word couldn’t describe what was happening in her mind. It was like each eye saw something different. A monitor with two video feeds at once.
The dim interior of the building, and the bright LED panels burning to shine on the shoulders of the children sitting in front of Chase and Janine.
The swarm burst out of the grate in the center of the floor. Another faint layer. The phantom of the Dark Father rose from the hole, and she drew back, but he broke apart like smoke.
The laughter of the children. Not manic and strained, but real. Genuine and beautiful.
The light of the sun traced her shadow across the floor. Glowing beams sparkled from the dust in the air, and a ghostly figure was painted in silhouette in front of her.
She drew up as it reached for her. Heard her name as a whisper. Then the figure disappeared.
A shiver made her teeth chatter, and she hugged herself. She stared at the space where the ghost had been. Stepped through it expecting a jump scare, but the room had settled into a cycle of repetition.
The bright light of the sun hanging in the air overlaid the accelerated strobe of days and nights passing, the flickering illumination of the building reflecting off the scales of the creatures bursting from the ground. It glistened on the hair of the children, a shower of translucent sparks in a phantom rainbow.
She turned to Duncan. “I can smell them. And the Dark Father. But there’s something else.”
Duncan stepped out of the sun and looked around. “There is a great power here. In the ground. Wild and unstable.”
Naomi shrugged and turned back to the open grate in the floor. In an overlap of time, the hole remained covered by a grid of metal on heavy hinges. She went right to the edge then looked in.
Something brushed the back of her head. She jerked, spun around. Her heel dropped into the hole. She bent her knees and drew her foot away from the danger, then looked into the eyes of a sparkling ghost.
It was more solid than anything she had seen inside the building so far.
He turned his head to address someone else with a shrug and a rueful smile.
She turned to direct her words at Duncan. “Do you see him, too?”
“I only see the swarm.”
Naomi barely kept herself from rolling her eyes. Another shadow stood at the glowing ghost’s elbow. Young and strong and strangely familiar.
But the first man seemed more real. More there. He lifted his hand, and she matched him, but he didn’t want to touch. He held something out to her, so she opened her hand with her palm up.
A stone fell through the air. It passed the few inches to her hand in a period spanning hours. A lifetime.
She couldn’t have counted the seconds if she had another hundred years of life left.
It looked like half a large almond. Brown with glowing blue veins, glittering like it was covered in silver dust. It rolled as it dropped until the flat side was down, then it hit her hand with the weight of a small moon.
Also landed like a feather.
Every sound she had ever heard rushed into her ears. Her memories were like slides stacked back to back in a long hallway. She rocketed through each one — a complete retelling of her life in an instant.
Her mouth filled with all the flavors of a short existence. Aromas rose into her nose. They sparked a new journey through memory, and the kaleidoscope of colors resolved into a new here and now.
She took a deep breath of the new idiom and looked at the man’s stunned expression. “Holy shit.”
Before she could settle into a fresh thought, she felt Gum approach her — at a dead run. She knew without looking he would pick her up. Press himself into her as if he wanted them to be one. Bury his face in her neck as she cried into his hair.
That’s exactly what happened. As if she had read the future, she found herself in his embrace with her feet dangling. Even the taint of the Dark Father’s fire clinging to his clothes couldn’t hide his scent from her. She took it in through her nose with every breath until she was full of him.
It wasn’t enough.
She wrapped her legs around him, and they stood at the edge of the closed grate. They said nothing as they rocked.
The building was silent.
After several moments, an embarrassed flush creeped into her cheeks, and she pulled back to look at his face. It was beautiful. Swollen and red from crying. Black hollows under his eyes. It was still the only face she had wanted to see.
Then, there was the mark.
The angry burn on his forehead. It flickered with orange light in time to his charging heart. The power of the Dark Father tied to his soul.
She wrinkled her forehead in confusion. No, not the Dark Father, but the power of another. A being made of many parts.
The power of the Unity.
Naomi took the hand that held the stone. Lifted it to his forehead. Put her thumb in the center of the mark. Pressed. His flesh yielded like cookie dough.
Gum pulled his head back with a cry of pain.
She touched the mark again. Appied more pressure. His body locked up. His arms tightened until her ribs ached. She could no longer get a breath, yet still she dug her thumb into his skin.
Rolled it. Massaged. Pushed like she was trying to reach bone.
She locked her feet together behind him. Put her other hand on the back of his neck. His lips peeled back, and he screamed through his teeth.
Her eyes flooded with fresh tears. “I know, baby. I know.”
The skin smoothed under her touch. The hateful light dimmed.
The mark disappeared.
Gum dropped to his knees, and she clung to him. Whispered apologies into his ear. His hands dropped to his side, and he panted in exhaustion.
She slipped the stone into her front pocket. Took his face in her hands. “I love you so much.”
He tipped his head back, expelled a tortured sigh. “I fucking hope so.”
Naomi smiled.
Gum lifted a tentative hand to his face. Rubbed the smooth skin above his eyes. His mouth hung open in an amazed grin. “I already forgot what it was like.”
“Good.” She wanted to sit in his lap forever. Just like this. But there was more coming. She was sure if it. The stone was calling to her, and what it had to say was terrifying.
“You can put me down, now,” Richard said.
Duncan dropped into a shallow squat, then Richard jumped down and looked around with a nod.
Naomi patted Gum’s chest and pushed on his shoulders to stand. He didn’t resist, had to be spent from the transition. She turned to Grismer and Anders. She knew them. Had always known them. It was in the stone.
“We need to get down there.” She pointed at the grate. “All of us.”
Anders smiled, condescension pulling up one corner of his mouth. “Young lady, what makes you think that’s necessary?”
“I had a dream about it.”
Gum grunted as he got to his feet. “That’s right. You told me to come here.”
“No, you told me to come here. Or, actually, you just said it was a secret.”
Anders sighed. “A dream, young lady?”
Grismer shook his head. “No, it was a vision. That’s why the stone wanted to go to her. You felt it, too, General. She’s a Caller.”
“Well, I felt something.” Anders flapped his hand at her like she was a buzzing fly. “Probably the echoes of the idiom she crawled out of.”
Gum drew back in mock confusion. “Was that offensive? I can’t really tell.”
Duncan stepped up, putting them all in his shadow. “This is a phasality node. All of the idioms have been actualized in this point. We all now exist here. That means the air still burns in the south. The ship has rotated on its central axis. All but three of the town’s inhabitants are here in this building. And the swarm is outside the door.”
Gum snapped his fingers. “Yes! The Dark Father turned the ship to get a tunnel thingy to point to the outside.”
Duncan nodded. “Yes, but my brother affected a change in direction. It blocked the Dark Father’s escape, but it also split idiomatic reality into several plains.”
Gum shook his head. “No. That’s the secret, see? That’s why we’re here. I saw the Dark Father—”
Naomi stomped her foot. “Can we stop calling him that, please?”
The dark woman they all called Ginger stepped around the table. “Yes, he is the father of nothing.”
Richard spread his hands. “Bobby called him the Dick Father.”
Gum snickered. “That’s good.”
Naomi dropped her fists onto her hips. “His name is Willis Kemp. He’s a skeevy douche bag, and we can’t let him out of here, or he’ll take the Unity’s power into the real world and kill everybody.”
Duncan nodded. “Just so.”
Gum nodded in excitement. “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Jerry twisted the tunnel thingy to point at a mine just west of the New Age Baptist Church instead of at the bottom of the hill past the Makers field behind us.”
Richard shook his head. “Then why are we here?”
Gum shrugged. “Fuck if I know. I don’t think those shafts connect.”
Anders sighed. His jaw bulged. “Yes, they do.”
Gum pointed his finger in Anders’ face. “You dog. Is that what you’ve been doing? Digging for gold under Hollow Hills?”
Grismer gasped. “Not gold. You've been mining for power.”
Anders nodded. “And I found it.”