End Time (76 page)

How the heck did Alice know? The girl started drawing in the car before they ever reached the sanitarium or the gabled house. And how did she know about the factory in Ohio? Another mystery. Somehow, Alice knew all about the meatpacking plant and the Rolpens and came ahead to warn them.

Lauren found the answer the very day their Wonderland girl vanished on the landing; in the cellar downstairs with a flashlight, right where Alice said it would be.
Worms in the cellar—worms in the stone.
Fossilized trilobites dotted every granite foundation block. The flashlight lanced from one chiseled block to the next. On every slab some species of fossilized animal flashed back at you: nautilus, prehistoric shrimp, every ancient creature petrified, curled nose to tail in eternal extinction. So Alice's words were true,
They were everywhere, even in the foundation of the house.

Guy's voice came down the stairs, “Honey, what are you doing down there?”

“Hunting Rolpens,” Lauren called up. Guy growled faintly, “What?”

Lauren only laughed. Back in the Keeping Room she got out that moldy old diary they'd discovered in the antique writing desk, the journal with the cyanotypes. Not that there was anything more to learn from it—she and Guy had gone over the relic pretty thoroughly—but fresh eyes couldn't hurt. Bits and pieces still troubled her. The factory, for one; what in the heck made young Alice think of a factory in Ohio?

Lauren felt almost the fool, desperately trying to understand the inexplicable. She laid the leather-bound volume on the kitchen counter and touched the fragile pages. Lauren dwelled again over the lines:

They put an X on the front door. We haven't been outside in a week. Pastor Simmons has been very kind and brought us food. We leave the money on the stoop—

Lauren stopped cold. Her hands began to tremble. Behind some pointless scraps, the torn cover of Alice's contemporary Horse Friends diary appeared. Very old, very dingy as if it had been hidden away in that leather book forever. So easy to miss when you weren't looking for it. Another entry appeared on a fragment of yellowed paper, something she'd missed the first time around. Young Alice writing:

Mama and Papa were sick. Then they died. After Yellow Jack nobody missed me. I went to the new house again today to escape the fever. I like the people, I like the dogs. But I have to go back.

Then the final entry:

Grammy wasn't too angry when I came back. She missed me. But she didn't want anyone seeing the new clothes. Or my memory book.

Lauren turned the last page. At the very back she found a newspaper clipping; a tiny notice really, about three inches square:

K
IDNAPPED BY
E
LVES

O
RPHAN
R
ETURNS WITH
P
IXIE
D
UST

Miss Alice Whitcomb, 12, missing since early November, returned to her family today after an absence of several weeks, claiming she had been kidnapped by elves. As proof of her abduction, the little girl produced curious sugar treats called Pixie Stix that have been sent to New York for composition testing. Throughout the summer months the little girl had gone missing for spells at a time, but in late October—

The rest of the article had disintegrated. That made Lauren laugh; clever girl, she had to say something. Then a red waxy wrapper of a Tootsie Pop fluttered out from behind the news clipping; brought back a hundred and fifty years and saved in the pocket of her pinafore. Lauren touched it, remembering that day in the supermarket how Alice looked in amazement at the shelves. Lauren almost took the silly red wrapper to keep in her jewelry box; she almost cried and pressed it to her lips. But with great reserve she put it back in its place. She'd show Guy later.

Lauren closed the book, and then turned it over. On the back cover, an image caught her eye. As was often commonplace with diaries, the leather-bound book carried an advertisement on the back, like appointment calendars from insurance companies did today. Once again, easy to overlook, as it didn't mean much at the time. Now the advertisement meant something. The picture showed a version of the Currier and Ives print
Home to Thanksgiving
:

Whiteside's Purveyor's, Hillsboro, Ohio

Whiteside's Purveyor's, Hillsboro—Serving the Heartland and Points East.

Featuring Our Cured Bacon and Dutch Meat Rollades.

“From Our Smokehouse to Your Long House”

The address of the meatpacking plant had faded from view, but Lauren had seen enough. A dank cellar with extinct creatures embedded in the walls. An old advertisement for Dutch Meat Rollades. Rolpens from a meatpacking plant.
Where the worms go to be born. They go home to Thanksgiving.

She understood now. Young Alice's vision and leaps of intuition were happy accidents fueled by happenstance. An exceptionally clever girl with an exceptionally vivid imagination, who fit the bits and pieces of reality together—past, present, and future—any which way she could. Rendering coherence and reason from pure coincidence—God's way of remaining anonymous, even inside young Alice's head.

Guy came into the kitchen, up from the cellar. “I think some of the pipes busted,” he informed her rather nonchalantly. “I guess the power went on and off while we were away. A couple of times, maybe.”

“Well, if that's the worst of it, we got lucky.”

Lauren held the old, worn diary to her chest like the most precious thing in the world. Guy wasn't about to take it from her. “Admit it, you tortured your dolls as a little girl. Didn't you?” Guy teased her. “Only you didn't have a toy guillotine.”

Lauren loosened her grip on the book and smiled a little.

“You married me anyway.”

*   *   *

Late that afternoon neither Guy nor Lauren could stand being in the house any longer. In any event, they wouldn't get the water pipes fixed today. Maybe there'd be a plumber answering his phone tomorrow. The lights flickered, but hung on. Guy had left a big stack of cut wood before they left, so they'd use the Keeping Room fireplace if the power died.

Curious about the big wide world, Lauren decided to take the dogs for a walk into town. Might as well see how bad things were. Reading his wife's mind, Guy put the leashes on the dogs before Lauren found their coats. The ten-minute walk took twenty uneventful minutes through half-plowed streets and six inches of slush. A couple of their neighbors came to their windows, peeking cautiously through the curtains.

The late-afternoon sun began to sink toward the horizon as dusk settled onto the snow-bound houses of Fairfield. Guy noticed two bright stars rising over the rooftops, and from the two bright pinpricks in the eastern sky a spray of shooting stars leapt out at him. Flash and then vanish, the shower of meteors pulsed out of the heavens. An old nursery rhyme popped into his head.
Star light, star bright, the first star I see tonight.…
Now there were dozens. What wish should Guy wish tonight? Escaping the end of the world with Lauren and the dogs and a roof over their heads—what sane man could want anything more?

Days later, he found an old paperback on a shelf in the Keeping Room, a Golden Nature Guide called
Stars,
and discovered he'd been looking at Castor and Pollux, the brightest stars in Gemini, and the shooting sparks were the Geminid meteor shower. But at the time all he saw was that bright light in the east shooting stars toward his face.

And it struck him hard, how unknowable and immense that great well of creation. Too much to see, too much to grasp, a vast ocean; while Earth, its humans and human struggle, were just bits of microscopic plankton in the baleen of a cosmic whale. Two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way? Four hundred billion? No one knew.… But one thing was certain. No one on this busy little planet would ever be really alone in this crowded universe.

Guy returned to Earth. In the village, a few good things had returned to life. The Community Movie Theatre's marquee was lit up; a comforting kind of light. At the start of the troubles the theatre had booked that Broderick Fallows flick; a few disjointed letters from its last booking clung to the theatre's promo windows:
In-x-plc
 …

That afternoon the marquee boasted a new attraction:

Now Showing:

Health Clinic/Dentistry—Mon/Wed/Fri. Board Certified. IOUs Accepted

Also, the Firehouse Deli had reopened. The brightly painted fire-engine red building decorated for Christmas; stringed lights, pretty glass balls, and boughs of holly hung from every corner. The establishment had swept their camp tables clean; a large heated dispenser served Swiss Miss hot chocolate. The toppings free of charge; Reddi-wip, a huge jar of maraschino cherries, and cinnamon candy hearts. A few hardy souls sat outside with their steaming drinks, talking and laughing.

“Want a hot chocolate?” Guy asked.

“I wonder if they take money.” Lauren laughed.

In the alley around the corner of the delicatessen, a curious figure came into view, and Lauren's smile faded from her lips. A dumpy, chubby homeless man sat in front of the deli's dark green Dumpster on a camp chair. He wore dark slacks and black rubber galoshes and a dirty black raincoat tied with a belt. Beside him sat a ventriloquist's dummy on a barstool, Charlie McCarthy with his cocky top hat and tails and trademark monocle. The whole scene was somehow unbecoming, unsettling, and awkward.

So who was this fellow, the mad scion of Edgar Bergen?

Moreover, the lone figure seemed strangely familiar. Though they had never set eyes on the man, Guy and Lauren felt like they were
supposed to know him
.

To make matters more bizarre, the plump ventriloquist arranged the Dumpster like a stage front, propping leftover letters from the theatre marquee against the open metal lid:

Bck by Poplr Demd—Musik!

He turned the handle on an antique Victor Victrola portable hand-crank phonograph that sat on a camp table and got a scratchy record playing. An old Negro Spiritual. Guy didn't recognize the song, but he could clearly read the title on the old 1920s faded record label, as it spun around: “Jubilee.”

What is the matter with the mourners?

O, my Lord!

The Devil's in the Amen corner,

O, my Lord!

Jubilee, Jubilee!

With his hand up the Charlie McCarthy's back the queer fellow made his dummy sing along:

You better stop, you fooling sinner man

O, my Lord!

Jubilee, Jubilee!

But before Charlie McCarthy could sing any more, the old Victrola sputtered to a stop. The chubby fellow took his hand out from Charlie McCarthy's back and cranked the record player's handle a few turns. No use, the thing wouldn't play. The raggedy man suddenly spied Guy and Lauren watching him.

At once, he abandoned the Victrola, picked a battered black leather attaché off the ground, and placed it on his knees. He opened it up like a street vendor's case and began to rummage through his knickknacks. After a moment, the chubby fellow looked over the top of the attaché and measured Guy.

Damned, if he could only place this chubby oddball—

The fellow cocked his head sideways, as though forgiving Guy for his slip of memory. “It's not important,” Mr. Chubbs said quietly.

What an ominous and yet pathetic figure—prompting Lauren to say, “Oh for God's sakes, Guy, give him something.”

Nevertheless, even as she said it, she found she did not want her husband
to give him anything
. Corky and Peaches bristled, and she held the dogs close. Guy felt for a few crumpled bills in his parka, a five and a ten. The smart-aleck ventriloquist's dummy grinned under that cocky top hat with the spiffy monocle in his eye, daring Guy to fork over the money.

“You don't expect my Charlie McCarthy to speak by himself, do you?” Mr. Chubbs asked, as if explaining to a simpleton,
No Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.

“He's just a wooden dummy.”

The fellow glanced coolly at the rumpled paper in Guy's hand.

“I'm sorry.” Guy felt suddenly ashamed. “That's all I have.”

“Well, that's not going to get you very far in this world. But let's see if I've got anything you can afford.”

Guy, taken aback, almost laughed out loud. He hadn't expected to
buy
anything. The chubby man in the dirty black raincoat pawed through the open attaché case. With a quiet sense of satisfaction, he repeated a bit of that Negro spiritual—“
The devil's in the amen corner”—
and chuckled to himself as if it were a private joke. “
Oh my Lord, Oh my lord…”