The World Ends at Five & Other Stories
Read The World Ends at Five & Other Stories Online
Authors: M Pepper Langlinais
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The World Ends at Five & Other Stories
M Pepper Langlinais
Second Edition
(c) 2012 M Pepper Langlinais
This
ebook
is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This
ebook
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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
With the exception of “Milling Wind,” all the stories in this collection were written between 2000 and 2005. The first edition of
The World Ends at Five
was published in 2008 in paperback form; it is no longer in print.
At the time I wrote these stories, I was finishing graduate school and only just beginning to be A Writer. Those readers familiar with my more recent works might well see a difference in
style and tone, and certainly in
subject matter. Much of
The World Ends at Five
is filled with magical realism, and there is at least one fairy tale.
For this edition, some of the stories have been edited
, though none are significantly changed from their originals
. I might have considered rewriting all of them, but we Writers must ever till new ground. It would be easy to go dig in earth that has already been turned over—that soil is loose and requires less effort—but eventually there are no new treasures to find
, and if I spent all my time making an old field perfect, I would be neglecting the harvesting of fresh crops in other pastures
. (I have mixed my metaphors
, but you get the idea. That’s the thing about being A Writer—it is part archaeology and part farming and all of it hard work.)
So think of these stories as old, lost treasures. Or think of them as old, dried crop
s. Whichever suits your
fancy.
Risking yet another metaphor, I will say for me these tales
will always represent a starting point, the moment I set my token on the board and rolled the dice.
Notes on the Second Edition
"A.B.C" was originally published in Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, Autumn 2004.
"Raising the Ruins," "The World Ends at Five," and "Immanent
"
have been revised and expanded for this edition.
"Milling Wind" appears in this edition for the first time.
All other stories appear as they did in the 2008 edition.
Contents
In the echoing silence their voices were too loud to use.
They decided to drive up to the wind farm and climb the hills there, the best view for the end of the world. They parked on the gravel shoulder (despite the NO STOPPING sign) and clambered over the chain link (despite the NO TRESPASSING sign) and sat under one of the turbines, its blades still in the heat.
There was no shade. There might never be shade again.
I remember seeing her in person when I was six years old. My parents and I were in the subway, waiting for a train, when she came down the stairs. She seemed to float, I recall, and I thought she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.
She wore faded blue jeans and a gray top that looked to be made of flannel or some sweatshirt-like material. Her long red hair fell in foamy waves around her face. She wasn’t pale, though, like a lot of redheads. In fact, she was quite tan, which made her pale blue eyes stand out in her face.
Once people saw her, they swiftly moved aside, out of her way. I saw that she wore the necklace, and noticed how the adults around me darted their eyes to it and away. But I was a six-year-old and had not learned to be shy, so I openly stared.
She saw me looking and smiled. She stood on the platform to wait not far from me, and so I asked her, “Why are you taking the train?” My voice echoed loudly in the cavernous station, and I realized then that everyone had fallen silent when she’d arrived. Now there were a few soft whispers in the wake of my childish question.
She leaned over, her hands on her knees. The necklace dangled near my nose, and I went cross-eyed trying to see it. She didn’t seem aware of it at all; years of wearing it must have made her take it for granted.
“I have somewhere to go,” she told me. Her voice was kind, a low, smooth sound.
“But
you
don’t
have
to
take
the
train!”
I
said. Behind me, I sensed the unease and uncertainty of my parents. They wanted to stop me, but their fear of her prevented them from coming closer.
“No. But I like to,” she said. The bright blue stone in her necklace flashed in punctuation of her words.
“What does it say?” I asked. “Your necklace?” Everyone in the tunnel gasped collectively at my
impertinence
.
“It says,” she began in a conspiratorial stage whisper, and the stone set in silver and engraved with the oldest known language began to glow and burn, “that children should not ask it such questions.” It was said with a smile, and I remember she touched my nose with one cool
fingertip
before
she
straightened
back
to
her
full
height.
The train rumbled into the station, and my parents ushered me to a different car from the one she boarded.
She wasn’t the only one of them,
Aerwyth
born Beverly, although she was the best known. Most of them remained secluded. But she seemed to love and embrace our world, the common
world, that
must have been so different from the one she inhabited.
Those not of The Order have only the
vaguest
comprehension of what they do or how they live. The rest of
the world understands that their plane of
existence, their dimension, is more elevated than ours. They see and comprehended more than average people.
Which puts them in the difficult position of doing something about it.
In the early years, The Order lived in isolation and refused to reveal their knowledge for fear of corrupting the world or changing destiny, or some such excuse. Then, at some point a group of them decided it was wrong of them not to put their gifts to use for the common good. Some of them were humanitarians, some were entrepreneurs, and there was nearly a century of rivalry amongst factions before The Order was reconstructed into what it was to become when Beverly was admitted into it and given her new name.
The funeral had the biggest turnout in history, the people on the television said. I would have gone, too, except that I
w
as sure she wouldn’t remember me, and the thought made me bitter and sad in a way I’d never thought could be possible, for in that moment I hated her. Had I really spent my life watching her, loving her from afar, subconsciously waiting for reciprocation—all based on a few minutes spent in the subway tunnel when I was six?
And
yet
I
was
one
of
the
millions
stuck
to
my couch, not daring to get up even to go to the bathroom, for fear of missing a moment of the rites.
The casket was alabaster, nearly transparent but not quite, and I could only just make out her form, the splash of red hair.
Aerwyth
, born Beverly to two middle-class suburbanites who had died when she was young; she’d spent more time than most inside the walls of
Steorra
, the majestic compound that housed The Order. She had been their most powerful member, and now the world watched and waited, as they say, to see who would rise to the pedestal she’d vacated.
But I didn’t care. All I knew was that she was gone, and all I was left with was my scrapbook and no hope of ever encountering her again.
The night of her funeral, I dreamed of her. In all the years I’d followed her with my heart, I’d never once dreamed of her. But that night she came to me, dressed in her faded
jeans and her gray
tee-shirt
, and she told me the world was going to change. That it
needed
to change.
I woke up pleased that she hadn’t forgotten me after all.
The
news
that
morning
was
chaotic;
no
one seemed to know what was going on, and the news stations were reporting anything and everything, every rumor and conjecture.
Aerwyth’s
necklace was missing.
There was talk of opening the vault and checking the body, despite the sacrilege such would entail. There was worry that someone “natural” had got
hold
of it and would misuse it—assuming someone lacking Orderly gifts could use it at all, which was questionable; apparently it had never been tried. “Chances are they’d just end up hurting themselves,” one political commentator theorized in an attempt to ease the panic.
But the greatest fear was that someone within The
Order had taken the necklace. And that
that
person meant to misuse it. One news program had a panel of politicians and religious leaders arguing about it. “They all have their own necklaces!” one man kept pointing out. And every time he said it, the woman sitting across from him would reply, “But this is
Aerwyth’s
necklace we’re talking about!”
What it boiled down to was that no one was sure whether
Aerwyth’s
necklace was any more powerful than
any other member of The Order’s own jewel. No “natural” person knew, anyway. And if The Order knew anything, it was keeping quiet. Until late that afternoon, anyway, when one of them came out of
Steorra
, outside which the news cameras
had
been
parked
since
the
funeral
the
day before, to read a statement.
“Do not be alarmed,” he read, his voice clear and ringing like a bell knolling over a battlefield where the dead still lay, and I wondered what made me think of it that way. “We do not believe
Aerwyth’s
necklace to be a danger.”
“Beverly,” I heard myself say to the television. “She’s just Beverly now.” And I wondered what made me think
that,
too.
And
which
name
was
engraved on
the
vault.
“Do you know where it is?” a reporter was asking. The Order spo
kesman, whose name according to
the television news graphic was
Maewyn
, tilted his pale face in a way that caught the evening light, causing it to gleam like a small moon. His short, curly hair was so fair it seemed almost white, and in his Orderly robes, he made me think of an old Roman statue. One I’d like to break.
The sudden surge of venom towards
Maewyn
startled and perplexed me. I tried to negotiate my feelings, but the longer I looked at him, the higher the tide of dislike for him rose within me. All at once I was sure he was going
to try to take
Aerwyth’s
place within The Order. And that it would be a disaster if he did.
“We have some reasonable ideas,” he told the reporter.
“Is
it
a
member
of
The
Order?”
another newsperson called.
“I
cannot
confirm
that
at
this
time,”
Maewyn
replied, a bit smugly I thought.
And then I had the sudden urge to see
Steorra
, but
it was angled away behind
Maewyn
, mostly off-screen. I had this image of it in my mind, its white walls and domed roofs glowing in
the twilight with the dark forest surrounding
it.
. . Had I seen a picture of it thus? I wondered. Why did I keep thinking all these unnatural thoughts?
And
yet
I
found
myself
flipping
through
the television channels, looking for a news broadcast that would give me a camera angle on
Steorra
. None of them had one. Then I remembered there were restrictions on filming or photographing it. I eventually turned off the television in disgust and it stayed off the rest of that evening.
When I checked my mail the following morning, I had a lot of bills, a fair amount of junk mail, a couple of catalogues,
and one little package. It was one of those padded envelope things, and it smelled funny. Actually, it smelled like roses.
I took it
all upstairs
and dumped it onto my coffee
table. The package gave me a strange feeling, almost like déjà vu. I went through all the bills first, to make myself feel dutiful. Then I thumbed through the catalogues. I even glanced over the junk mail, pretending to be interested in the grocery store flyer.
But then all that was left was the package. So I opened it. And of course it was
Aerwyth’s
necklace. Just as I’d expected, had been expecting, really, since the news of its disappearance.
She
hadn’t
forgotten
me.
Maybe
she’d
even
thought about me from time to time, wondering what had happened to that child from the subway station.
That night, as I was combing the tangles out of my hair, there was a brief moment in which I was sure the image reflected in the mirror was not
me but her
. “We are the same,” I heard her low, smooth voice say. “You will do this for me because you will be doing it for yourself.”
I looked around the bathroom, just to make sure I really was as crazy as I seemed to be. I was, indeed, alone.
Alone and hearing voices.
Seeing dead people. I slowly
turned back towards the mirror, watching for her out of the corner of my eye, but she didn’t appear again.
I
awoke to
find a
pair of
faded blue jeans and a gray flannel
tee-shirt
neatly folded at the foot of my bed.
I began to suspect she might not even be dead. After all, one as powerful as she could surely fake her own
death.
. . Maybe, after I helped her with this, she would come out of hiding and we’d really meet and talk.
In the pocket of the jeans, I found a map showing how to get to
Steorra
.
The
train ride
seemed longer than it actually was, and I had trouble sleeping in my reclining coach seat. I tossed and turned, alternately too warm and too chilly to be comfortable. I was glad I had the whole bank of seats to myself; I would have felt guilty for disturbing any neighboring passengers.
I disembarked at a stop that few people opted for; there weren’t many people headed into the woods this time of year. Which was funny, because the cool air felt perfect to me.
The trees were still green, despite the oncoming autumn. But hadn’t I heard that the forest around
Steorra
was eternally green? Or was that an old tale, one of the myths that had grown up just as green and eternal, about The Order?
I had with me a backpack containing the jeans and
tee, as well as food, water, a flashlight, and a blanket. I didn’t expect to have to camp out, but the hike would take until evening, and I anticipated wanting to take at least one break.