Posted on August 4, 2007

Part 25

In the morning, the dream would fade quickly, lost in thoughts of breakfast and the warmth of the dog against his leg. But that night Elliot’s mind, overwhelmed by excitement and grief, confusion and the hints of mystery, played. It wandered and explored the information it had and the emotions that afflicted it. His mind processed.

He sat in his home, at the same kitchen table Evajean had eaten her steak and told him how much she needed to find the Hole. A radio in the front room played a song too low to hear and Callie giggled out on the deck. He smiled with that sound, glad for it. She was just at the age when he felt okay to have her out there by herself, finding her own amusement, without the fear that she might eat the wrong thing or wander away into the street. Blessed independence made his job as a parent that much easier and he needed it, after years of necessary vigilance, his attention never fully focused on anything because part of it–a great deal of it, actually–had to be mindful of what Callie was up to.

So he let her giggle along with some unknown activity and he pushed around the papers on the table. Clarine wanted him to get another business going because she knew that’s what he wanted. The sales job he had, brokering deals for an insurance company, paid their minimal bills, but the landscaping venture had put the entrepreneur bug in him and it buzzed now, louder with each month and each year. “You could sell these policies on your own, couldn’t you?” she’d asked, but he didn’t want that. Insurance didn’t ring in his head the way the hands on of landscaping had. Yet the market here in Charlottesville, if you could believe it, was flooded. Nobody needed another company of guys with trucks and lawnmowers. Elliot would try his hand at something else entirely, just as soon as he figured out what that was.

Callie shouted to him from the backyard. “Daddy!” she called. “Look what I found!”

He stood up, happy to push the piles of research to the side for a moment, and walked through the door at the back of the kitchen, out onto the deck. Callie sat, legs wide and leaning forward, in the middle of the yard. She’d been digging, the garden trowel tossed on the grass to her left. Elliot inhaled to yell at her, because they’d been so stern with her about tearing up the lawn, told her time and again there were places to dig if she wanted to dig but the green grass he’d spent so much time on wasn’t it–but then he saw what she was holding in her tiny right hand, rubbing it with the other, and he fell silent.

The stone was four inches across and nearly round. As Callie petted it, the surface–a deep green like brilliant jade–shimmered in the changing light and shadow. In the quiet afternoon, he could hear the stone humming.

“What is it, Callie?” he asked after a moment.

“Look at it, Daddy,” she said and held the stone up to him. “I don’t know what it is? Do you know what it is?”

He didn’t. Could be jade, maybe, but the green was too much, too intense, like injection molded cheap plastic. Except for that glow–and the sound. It was all rather familiar, though Elliot couldn’t tell how or why. Dirt was still caked on it in places and he realized Callie had been brushing that off when he’d walked up.

“You get that from the hole you dug, honey?” he said, and his daughter nodded enthusiastically.

“Right there, daddy,” she said, pointing at the wound she’d torn in the yard. “I know I’m not supposed to do that but I was out here and I was gonna dig in the corner like you and mommy said I could but then I just had to dig here. I had to.” She turned her gaze dramatically to the ground. “I just had to. Don’t be mad at me, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, “okay, Callie. But can I see what you found?” He reached out for it but Callie pulled it away.

“I can find more,” she said, smiling. “It tells me where.”

“What does, honey?”

“This,” and she waved the stone at him, chastising her father for his obliviousness.

“Callie–”

“Look, daddy, there’s another one over there!” She stood up, still holding onto the stone, and ran to the back corner of the yard. Half way there, she remembered she’d forgot to bring the shovel, and came back for it, shaking her head in embarrassment. Finally equipped to dig, Callie again found the spot and began spearing at the grass.

“Callie!” Elliot called, the anger at her misbehavior coming back, but she ignored him. She hacked at the ground with great wide strokes, faster as Elliot drew close.

With one last plunge, she broke through and golden light burst forth from the hole, fierce and almost angry. Callie cried out and fell backwards. Elliot grabbed her, snatched her away from that terrible fountain of energy that was climbing through the sky, screaming as it went. Elliot could hear voices in it, shrieking and cursing his daughter for what she’d done, and she looked up at him, eyes suddenly sickly. Her mouth opened and what came forth was not that cheerful pixie voice but words he couldn’t understand, words that tumbled over each other in a mad soup of phonetic chaos. Elliot dropped her, fear making his legs weak, and his daughter crawled at him, lips pulled back, teeth clicking loud enough for the sound to carry through the cacophony.

He ran back toward the house, only thinking to get away, to put the door between himself and that thing scrambling across the lawn, that thing with his daughter’s body but not her eyes.

And Evajean was shaking him, standing over him as he lay on the rough, hard wood of the floor. He blinked and tasted blood in his mouth. The dog barked down from the edge of the bed. His cheeks were wet with tears.