The World Ends at Five & Other Stories (5 page)

I hear someone trying the door, but I ignore it as I go to the next console. The sight is so sad to me—people on top of roofs, one of them a young girl in pigtails holding a bedraggled cat. The streets are flooded, and already some houses have given way; I know because I see the debris as it floats past places that are still standing.

They’re pounding on the door now. I hear her screeching with frustration. “I know it’s you!” she shouts at me.

Yes, it’s me.
The weak link.
Her antithesis and the one who hates her most.

“We’re going to do this, if I have to take a sledgehammer to the town myself!” she tells me.

I’m thankful the Machine Room door is steel. They’ll have to bring up a blowtorch from the welding shop. It gives me a little time.

Time. I look at the monitor that’s counting down to 5:00. There are sixteen minutes left.

I turn back to the console. A dial marked “Drainage” is turned to “off.” I turn it on, my reasoning being that by systematically reversing all the settings on the machines, I’ll be moving things in the right direction.

But it’s still raining in Barton Crossing. I glance around at other consoles, other screens. I need to turn off the wind, too.

Outside the door there’s a clanking sound; they’ve brought up the blowtorch or whatever else they’re thinking of using to get me out.

I spot a monitor that shows something like a weather map, with dark green hanging over what I assume is a representation of Barton Crossing. The labels on the console say things like “Drift” and “
IpH
.” I’m not entirely sure what it means, but I see “Drift” is set on “West” so I turn it back to “East” and sure enough the dark green rain changes direction, headed back out over the ocean.

“
IpH
?” I ask myself. “CC?” Using my method of turning off what is currently on, I reduce each of these to zero, and on the monitoring screen, the rain ceases and the clouds begin to break apart almost instantly. It’s like something out of a cartoon. The sun is shining and the water is receding. It’s a happy ending.

For Barton
Crossing
, anyway.

Via the monitor I watch the people on the rooftops, others in boats and paddling through the streets. They’re looking around, unbelieving. They’re hugging and crying and laughing. They’re not real
people
, but we gave them everything real people have: love, and hope, and fear.

The girl with the pigtails is still clinging to her cat as an older woman who stands with her, perhaps the girl’s grandmother, or maybe even Audrey
Bennis
, is helped down from the roof into a waiting boat. The men in the boat turn to help the girl, too, although it’s more difficult because her arms are full.

In another boat, I’m happy to see, rides a very wet Labrador.

A high-pitched alarm tells me that it’s 5:00.

Outside the Machine Room, there’s a shriek of frustration and thwarted ambition, followed by the sound of breaking glass as, I suspect, she’s shattered one of the front observation windows.

Even if it’s the last thing I’ll ever do, I’m pleased with myself.

At 5:01 I unbolt the door.

A.B.C.

That’s how they named us, in alphabetical order. Our mother is Dana. Our father is Elliott. We live in a Victorian, down in the old part of Bethel Hill, the “historic” district.

I’m Abbey, the oldest. But Bryan is the one who got all the size. The doctor says he managed to make the most space for himself in the womb. Poor Corey was
the
crowded
one;
he
was
small
and
pale
and almost completely silent from the start.

I wouldn’t say we look especially alike. We all have similar faces, and blond hair and clear blue eyes. Corey was the fairest, and very fragile. Well, it was going to be one of us, and Corey was the prime candidate.

The day we were born was a big deal in Bethel Hill. It ran on the front page of the local paper, as well as most surrounding towns. It was in the Austin paper, too, but much further back, somewhere in the Regional section. We were billed as an amazing coincidence, triplets born
in Bethel Hill almost exactly 100 years after the last set of triplets had been born here.

They say babies that share a womb also share a sort of connection. Some say it’s spiritual or mental or even supernatural. I can’t say I know what it is that connects me to my brothers, but it’s there, an invisible but tangible string that I can sometimes picture as a bright ribbon of light that stretches from one to another of us. Even Corey. Even though he’s dead. It’s like he’s here anyway; I keep turning to look for him, as if he might be just behind me, like he’s catching up to us.

Before he was dead, we were all thirteen, all of us with a growing sense of something coming towards us like a big wave waiting to break over our heads.

A
few
months
after
our
thirteenth
birthday,
I
was digging through some of our mother’s stuff. She keeps this hope chest full of albums and newspaper clippings. I don’t remember what I was looking for, if anything; sometimes I just like to go through all that and look at her old pictures and stuff. She wrote a lot of poetry when she was in high school, and she has notebooks full of it, and I sometimes like to read them. On that day,
though,
I
found
a
bunch
of
brittle,
yellow newspaper clippings from when we’d been born. I was
surprised because Mom is usually very careful with those kinds of things, and she would normally put them in an album. But these were crumpled and torn, shoved to the bottom of the chest.

I pulled the clippings out for a look and realized they weren’t so much about
me and my brothers
as they were about the triplets born a century earlier. They had been Xavier, Yancey, and
Zenia
Tate. Their mother had been Willa and their father had been Victor. People had stupid names back then.

It had been nothing short of a miracle for Willa to survive giving birth to triplets. Fuzzy pictures accompanied the articles. No one looked very happy in
them
. It must have been the clothes. They wore a lot of them, and Texas is
hot
.

The articles went on to note what all of them considered the “Tate Family Tragedy.” When the triplets had been thirteen, Yancey had drowned in Bethel Pond.

I thought about how we sometimes went to the pond, how Bryan and I would hang out up at the swings and Corey would just go stare at the water. Bethel Pond is clear and green and always cold. It has a few small fish,
minnows
I
guess.
The
bottom
of
the
pond
is smooth gray rocks and gravel. Weeds and funny little white
flowers
grow
all
around
the
margin.
There’re some daffodils, too. And a lot of oak and pecan trees.

I started and looked again at the pictures. Yancey was the thin one in the middle. He stared dully out of the photo, his eye
s penetrating me from a distant
past.

Slamming Mom’s chest shut in a way that she always told me not to, I ran to show the articles
to Bryan. Why Bryan? I don’t know, except to say that if I ever wanted to work through something, I always went to
Bryan.
Corey
was
not
the
type
to
elicit
much response. Corey was more of a listener.

When
we
showed
Corey
the
article
a
little
later,
he didn’t say anything right away. But a few days later he mentioned that he wanted to go to the pond. He would have gone alone, maybe, but we never did.
None of us.
It was always the three of us at Bethel Pond.

When we arrived, Corey went to his usual spot
right by
the pond’s edge and stared out at
the still water. Bryan and I sat down on the scrub and grass about a yard back. When Corey finally spoke, he didn’t turn around. “He’s still out there, isn’t he?”

“No,” I snapped. “They buried him of course.” I
silently added
you moron
to my sentence. I never would have said as much out loud, but I sometimes thought Corey wasn’t the brightest star in our little constellation.

“That doesn’t mean there isn’t something left of him
here,”
Corey
said
evenly.
Corey
never
shouted, never raised a fuss. On the few occasions I’d seen him cry, he’d been perfectly silent and still, like a statue that leaked from its eyes. I’d always known there was something
off
about Corey--Bryan had too--but it wasn’t until that very day that the word “creepy” presented itself to me as a description for my youngest brother.

I would have said something else to him, told
him to snap out of it, but when I glanced at Bryan I saw that he was seriously considering what Corey had said. “Let’s get Buchanan’s boat,” Bryan suggested.

Clint Buchanan is an older man who looks a lot like his bloodhound Mitzi. He lives near the pond and has an old row boat that no one has ever seen him use. And
why
would
he?
There
are
no
fish
in
the
pond besides the minnows. No one knows why Mr. Buchanan has a
row boat
, but he sometimes lets us use it. That day he said to us, “Go on,
take
it. Needs some exercise anyway.
”
I remember looking over at Bryan when Mr. Buchanan said that, to see if the old guy was serious. But Bryan was already dragging the boat down towards the pond. Corey followed behind; he didn’t even bother picking up the back end of the boat, so it left a wide, muddy skid in its wake. I picked up the oars and Mitzi barked as I ran to catch up with my brothers.

Bryan and I got the boat into the water, and I gave Bryan the oars. He was the biggest and strongest of us. Then I called to Corey to get in, but he just stood
there.

“Corey!” I shouted again. “What is wrong with
you?”

He made his way slowly towards where I held
the boat to keep it from floating off; Bryan was already seated in it. Corey’s eyes stayed on the center of the pond the whole time he walked. He acted like some kind of ceremony was taking place as he gingerly climbed in to sit in the middle. I pushed off and waded to clamber in last.

Bryan steered unerringly to the center of the
pond. Bethel Pond is not especially deep, maybe eight to ten feet, and that’s only at the very middle. Most of it isn’t more than three or four feet.

Once we were at about the center of the pond,
Bryan stopped paddling and we all just sat there. Bryan and I faced into the boat, and Corey sat between us, sideways, his legs folded under him and his hands on his knees. He leaned out and stared down into the clear green water. You may wonder how water can be both clear and green, but Bethel Pond is. Like bottle glass.

“What are you doing?” I finally asked and was immediately
sorry
for
opening
my
mouth.
My
voice
carried sharp and flat over the still water, cracking the calm. I felt bad for it, and I don’t even know why.

Bryan flashed his eyes at me, a silent signal for me to keep quiet. I was surprised at how seriously he was taking Corey’s behavior; usually Bryan was even more impatient with our youngest brother than I was. But sometimes being the only girl left me out of things.

“He’s down there,” Corey murmured.

“No, he’s not,” I said, trying to keep my voice patient and even. “They buried him. I told you. We can go to the cemetery and see him if you want. What has gotten
into
you?” Although I wasn’t all that surprised by Corey’s going on; he had always been susceptible to these kinds of things. He felt like he was connected to everything, you see, not just me or Bryan, but
the whole world.
He felt caught in its web. Every little thing was one more thread. The article, that had been more than one thread--Corey was tangled up in the coincidence.

I said as much to Bryan later and he shook his head. “It’s not a coincidence,” Bryan told me.

“What do you mean?” I asked. We were out on the porch after supper, watching the stars come out. I sat on the top step and hugged my knees to my chest while Bryan sat on the old porch railing that threatened to give under his weight.

“Something
like
that,”
Bryan
said,
“it’s
too much of a coincidence. We need to do some more research.”

“I’m
beginning
to
be
sorry
I
ever
found
that
stupid article,” I sighed.

“That wasn’t a coincidence either,” said Bryan. “You were meant to find it. We’re thirteen now. They were thirteen then. And Corey—”

“I’m Yancey.” Corey’s voice seemed to float out
of the darkness. I whipped my head around so fast that my ponytail slapped my cheek with a sting. Corey was leaning a shoulder against the corner of the house. In the cut of moonlight that crossed his chest, his white shirt seemed to glow.

“God, Corey, don’t do that,” I said. “And you’re not Yancey,” I added.

“He is,” said Bryan. “You saw the pictures, read the article. Yancey was the youngest.”

“The smallest,” Corey added. “I’m the one who has to die.”

“No one’s going to die,” I said.

“We’ll go to the library tomorrow,” Bryan announced as if I hadn’t said anything to contradict their stupid idea. “Maybe we’ll be able to stop whatever’s coming.” He said this for Corey’s benefit more than mine. I could tell from his tone that he didn’t
really believe it. And there was something else, something that made me think Bryan was actually
enjoying
this.

“It’s a game, right?” I asked Bryan later that night. “You’re just messing with him. Or maybe you’re both messing with me.”

Bryan kept his eyes on the Monopoly board. He
always won, so I never bothered to put too much effort in. Trivial Pursuit was more my game. Corey didn’t like board
games
at
all;
I
couldn’t
remember
him
ever playing one with us.

“I don’t know,” Bryan finally said. “Your roll.”

I picked up the dice but didn’t roll them. “You don’t know?”

“I thought it would be fun at first,
but.
. . Now
I’m not sure if it’s real or not.”

I
snorted
and
rolled.
“You
are
messing
with
me.”

“You owe me five hundred,” was all he said.

Bryan and Corey made me be the one to ask Mr. Christianson for the archives. Mr. Christianson is the research librarian, a tall, craggy man with wiry, steel-colored hair that’s a little bit long. He wears boots. His big nostrils flared when I asked him for the microfilm, as if he were trying to sniff out some kind of trick. But I gave him what I think of as my “big stare,” making my eyes all wide and innocent, and so he grunted and granted my request.

My brothers had already staked out a microfilm reader. The Bethel Hill library only has three. Not that there
are
a
lot
of
people
demanding
to
use
them.
There’s
only about 6,000 people in the whole town to start with. And that’s including the farmers living on the outskirts.