Piercing The Firmament
(And Then the World Was Filled With A Brilliant Light.)
Greta was the first to see it, but soon everyone stared into the night sky. Ryan had stopped, looking upward with rapt amazement at its beauty. Charlie had clutched her brother’s arm to her like a little girl hugging a security blanket, while Greta still forged on regardless.
A blue light began to ripple through the blackness. The starlight would shift towards the green, then the blue and then the darkness between them would lighten as if dawn was about to break. The light would ripple through the heavens in time of a resting heartbeat.
Greta thought she could pinpoint the source just a little above Orion’s Belt radiating out in a circle. It was like the waves made by dropping a pebble in water. Then as the circle of shifting light radiated outwards it began to break into something resembling the Northern Lights.
The effect was beautiful, and it stopped Ryan in his tracks. The sight filled him with awe that clutched his heart with an iron grip. The ripple of energy that flowed across the sky did not do so in time with the screeching portal. They were two different songs playing at distinct times and speeds. One was the discordant sound of an orchestra tuning up for a performance, while the other was the performance itself.
Lucas led Charlotte towards the rip in reality as she stared distractedly at the lights that filled the sky above them. They were close enough that the coven should see them, but their lack of reaction showed they couldn’t. The figure that led the dark congregation was only steps away now.
If Lucas had looked behind them he would have seen Ryan within speaking distance, if anyone could hear over the sound of reality being torn apart, and not far behind him was Greta, who stumbled forward and uneven shuddering steps.
But Lucas had no intention of looking behind him. He could feel his sister’s hand clutched in his and see his destination only feet ahead. His words came in a torrent now. He barely thought of them. As the resistance he fought against slowly reduced he could feel each step grow less laboured.
Behind him, Ryan moved far faster. Like a racing car caught in the slipstream of a faster car, he surged ahead, closing the distance, and behind him, even Greta was gaining despite her injury.
High overhead the wave of blue sparked and a single star flashed brightly. It was another tear in the fabric of space. This one was so brief that the most finely calibrated sensor would have barely registered it, but everyone below could not have missed it.
The hooded figure looked upward as his ceremony paused. A moment later the gaze of his congregation followed. Greta was next to have her attention drawn upward, then it was Lucas. Charlie was next, she staggered back into her brother’s arms, her face between awe and terror. Then it was Ryan, who had never believed in anything he couldn’t touch, who stood in amazement.
Across the rooftop that wasn’t a rooftop, Natalie sat alone. In her hand, she held the limp cold hand that had belonged to her son, and she saw nothing but his still form.
Around her reality cracked and shifted, the stars changing their alignment, but Natalie neither saw nor cared.
“Mum?”
The voice was soft, nothing more than a casual request for attention from the boy she had held and loved for so many years. She looked up and saw only him, the world around them both falling into soft focus. The portal boomed but his soft words overshadowed it.
“Matty?” She said and then the tears came again.
She fell apart. On the outside the term was a figurative description, but inside it was literal. It must have been because the void that she had felt open in her chest began pulling at her flesh as if a mini black hole where her heart had been threatened to consume her.
“Oh, Mum,” he said. “Don’t be sad.”
He reached for her, and she felt him brush her cheek. His touch was hot and cold, hard, and soft, and she wouldn’t feel anything like it again.
“Come back Matty,” she moaned. The pain tumbled around her empty chest. It stung wherever it touched, and she knew that everything good had been taken from her.
“No, I can’t do that Mum,” he said, then raised his finger to her lips when she tried to speak again.
Natalie wanted to tell him he had to, she wanted to say, “I am the adult. I am the mother here and you’ll do as I tell you to,” but his raised finger to her lip was enough to hold her silence as he spoke.
“You’re going to have to be tough Mum,” he said, “You got work to do when all this is over. There are loose ends of tie up so this never happens again.”
She opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t care about any of this, she just wanted him back with her again.
“I know that.” He said, his smile filled with adult understanding, “And I’ll see you again when all this is over, but before then you have to be strong. You have to do the learning, she won’t be up to that, but she will be good at finding them, so be nice to her.”
Natalie was confused, and she tried to tell him.
“You don’t have to understand me.” He said. “You will when the time is right. The important thing is that you’ve got to go and help her, right now Mum, she’s walking into Hell, and she wasn’t supposed to be here so she won’t be able to get back out.”
She just sat there and stared at him. He was as real as he ever was, but he looked different, older perhaps like he had seen more or done more than he could have in such a short life.
He grabbed her arm pulled her to her feet and marched towards the rip of sickly blue light. She saw people standing around it as it pulsed, their shadows lengthening across the rooftop. They were all black silhouettes, but she could see the girl she had met. She was behind the others, closer to Natalie than the rest were.
“Go Mum,” He said urgently, “Get her out of here. There’s too much to be done and you can’t do it alone.”
She wanted to tell him she loved him and that she was sorry. She didn’t know what she was sorry for, she was sorry for losing him, but she meant more than that.
“I know, I love you too Mum.” He said. “But you have to do this now or we won’t get a chance to see each other again.”
Why? She asked silently.
“Because there won’t be another chance,” he replied earnestly, “if you fail there won’t be a way for you to get to me, because this world will belong to them.”
It all happened at the speed of thought. Ryan fell first. He was mid-step with his centre of balance forward, but his foot didn’t come down to take the weight, it hung uselessly as he toppled forward, slamming into the ground. Charlie shrieked as Lucas pulled her out of the way of the falling man, and Greta dove forward, mindless of the pain she would be in when she fell to the rooftop beside him.
Around them, the world flickered. It was as if a gigantic celestial bulb was on its way to failing. The darkness wasn’t merely the absence of light it was the absence of existence. They popped in and out of reality but each time they found reality had changed.
Greta’s pain was replaced by fear, Ryan’s uncertainty with certainty, and instead of looking down at his sister Lucas found himself looking up.
Charlotte was tall and pretty and as scary as only a big sister could be. So, when she took him by the hand and told him to follow her Lucas did it without question. His hand looked so small within hers, and as she pulled him along, he was afraid to stumble in case she didn’t notice, and he was left to tumble across the floor like a cowboy being dragged by a wild mare. His legs, as short as they were, worked double to keep up with her as she pulled him past their mother and into the room.
Lucas thought he was far too old to share his sister’s room. His mommy had told him that he was even big enough to start going to school by himself and a big boy who did that shouldn’t have to share a room with his big sister.
Charlotte put her finger to her lips and glared at him when he opened his mouth to complain, so he shut it quickly. She was a big girl, much bigger than him and almost as big as Mum, at least from where he stood, and when she told him to do something he did.
Their mother followed on their heels as they heard the front door open and heavy footsteps walk in.
“Take this,” she said as something was thrust into his sister’s hand. He knew what it was, though he shouldn’t. It was a folded collection of paper, “Hide it,” she said urgently and the papers were hidden as a face appeared at the door.
Lucas’ father was as large as the world. He ducked under the top of the open doorway and still Lucas saw the man’s hair brushed aside by the wood. His hand darted out and then caught his mother’s arm. She was pulled from the room and the door swung closed behind her. Lucas heard his mother cry out but the sound was drowned out as Charlotte pulled him further into the room and clamped her hands over his ears.
He pulled her from her feet and for a moment she knew what it was to fly. The feeling was fleeting, ending when she collided with the wall opposite. The pain ripped through her shoulder and then the apartment floor came up to slap her in the face. His hands were on her immediately, and she was wrenched back to her feet. It should have hurt worse than it did, and she knew what was happening to her was not what it seemed.
She knew the man who towered over her. She knew him well even though she hadn’t known him long and knew he wasn’t who he appeared to be.
She wanted to speak but the air had been driven out of her and all she could do was experience what happened in breathless silence. There were places she could go, soft places that had no sharp corners, and she sought out the doorway inside that would lead there. It was open and all she had to do was step through. It didn’t make the pain stop or the fear evaporate but changed it from a thing that happened to a lucid dream.
A dream, that was what it felt like. It would have been a nightmare if it had been her dream, but she knew it wasn’t.
Then there were other hands on her. They were smaller than his and infinitely more gentle. As his hands broke her skin, the others pulled her away from the blows. He followed, but he was a step behind her and though his fists connected, they were not the blows he would have them be.
She raised her hands and fought off the blows, but she was missing more than connecting now. She knew this should be her last night, and that there should be no others. She could hear the screeching of tearing metal covering the cries of a woman. She was in her apartment, but she had no apartment. She had lived on the streets since she was little more than a girl. She was not a mother, and she was not a wife.
She had taken the role that belonged to another woman.
But hadn’t she done that many times?
Greta caught his hand as it snaked out to her, pulling it along with the arc of his strike. The man stumbled and she drove the heel of her foot out into his stomach. He doubled over and fell to the apartment floor with a grunt.
It wasn’t just a man, it was Ryan. Her Ryan.
She pushed back further from him, feeling the woman’s hands helping her make distance. The crumpled form of Ryan looked up at her, and she saw something in his eyes. The rage flickered and for a moment she thought that he knew who she was. Then the moment slipped away, and she found herself on the roof with the woman’s arms wrapped around her.
For the briefest of moments, he knew exactly what was going on, who he was and what was happening to him, and now he knew who the woman was in front of him. He could see Penny behind the woman’s face and the sight of her pulled at his heart.
The veil of unreason fell over him before he could consider that thought, and before he realised his feelings for her he had forgotten about her.
She was gone. Lay across the living room floor. Her arm was draped over the couch seat, her palm up as if holding an invisible ball.
Her eyes were blank, but he did pause to see if they would ever blink again, he was already turning towards the children’s room.
He didn’t think about what his intentions were. They were lost in a sea of grey confusion. When he got to the door it opened an inch before something behind it stopped.
He screamed and slammed his palm into the door hard enough for the pain to reach up to his elbow. The bruise on the pad of his thumb was already turning a plum colour when he struck the door again, but he didn’t notice. The third strike cracked the door panel, and the fourth pushed half the panel inward, leaving a thick shard of wood in his palm. The fifth left a smear of blood across the paint, and the sixth sent the panel inward.
Somewhere inside Ryan raged against what he saw his body do. He knew this wasn’t real, but he also knew that it was. He knew this had happened and he was being made to reenact the viciousness of another man. It was not his own, but it felt so familiar. His heart had moved on the edge of such rage his whole life. It was an infection of the mind that had infected him since birth. He had fought it but had not been strong enough, and the failure was none but his own.
The little girl fell to the floor and turned to crawl under the bed. The wardrobe she had forced across the door shifted with a screech across the floor. It toppled and fell at an angle against the foot of the bed and Ryan watched his legs climb over it. He wanted to drive his thumbs into his eyes. He could not hurt what he could not see, but his body was not his own.
Lucas pushed his fist into his mouth as the small wardrobe his sister had stuffed him into shifted under him. She had told him not to make a noise. Then she took his face between her hands and forced him to look into her eyes as she told him again. Her eyes had been hard and frightening, and he had decided he wouldn’t make a sound, no matter what.
Even as the whole wardrobe shuddered and shifted, he made no sound, but when it toppled, he felt his teeth tear into the flesh of his knuckles to hold back his scream.
With a crunch of wood on wood the door splintered as it hit the foot of the bed, the door shifting open as he slammed into it, revealing a wedge of the bedroom beyond it.
Charlotte screamed and turned to crawl under the bed, and large hands reached for her, she kicked and squirmed, but their father was a large man, and his hands were strong. One wrapped around her ankle and pulled.
She bawled as she was dragged out. She kicked with her other leg, but the man caught it and her wriggling made it easier to pull her from her hiding place.
Tears squirted from Lucas’ eyes, and his vision of the world suddenly psychedelic. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eye sockets and sobbed and he wiped them clear.
She was pulled out until only her head and arms were under the mattress. She was clutching at the wire mesh beneath the bed. Holding on for dear life, but her tiny arms would not resist the man’s muscles for long.
The man pulled at her legs and the bed was pulled from the floor, slamming down into the wood with a boom. The wardrobe shifted more, and Lucas’ view changed, and he saw his father’s face. It was drawn into a manic open-mouthed expression as if it had been frozen midway through a scream.
Lucas put his hands over his face, covering his mouth and staring through the bars of his fingers.
Charlotte was pulled free, her body was lifted into the air and then slamming down onto the wooden floor. It drove the air from the little girl’s lungs and Lucas saw her hands rise to ward off the blows she knew would come.
Their father raised his broad fists, and the world was filled with a brilliant light.