As she completed the turn she noticed with a start that Donny had disappeared. Just like the trailers.
“Donny? Don—?”
“Coming,” he said as he trotted up the trail toward her, waving a tire iron.
“What’s that for?”
“It’s got to be a trick.”
He stopped before the stony expanse and hammered at it with the iron. It made just the kind of clank one would expect from steel striking solid stone. Moving back and forth he kept striking the stone until finally hurling the tire iron back down the trail with a frustrated howl.
“There’s got to be an answer!”
“Of course there is,” Hari said. “We just don’t know it. Yet. We get back in the car and inspect the road with a fine-tooth comb.”
“But the tracks clearly show heavy traffic turning in here.”
Hari started back toward the car. “We keep looking.”
And look they did, up and down the mountain road, but found nothing. Being on the east side of the hill, they lost the light early and were forced to call it quits.
As they headed back toward Albany, Donny said, “Didn’t Sherlock Holmes say something about eliminating the impossibles or the like?”
She knew that one. “You mean, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’? That one?”
“That’s the one. I feel we’ve eliminated the possible, so that leaves us with impossible.”
“‘Impossible,’ by definition cannot be, so what we’re really left with is the improbable.”
“Sounds like word games, but I’ll play. What’s the next step?”
“We find a hotel, eat, sleep, and get back to the industrial park first thing in the morning.”
“How do we know there’ll be another convoy?”
“Did you see the size of that warehouse? I’m guessing they’ve got a lot of whatever to move and I don’t see them wasting any time.”
He grinned. “Hotel, huh? How many rooms we renting?”
She had to laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”
A wider grin. “Well, one room would save Art some money.”
She pointed to the radio. “See if you can find a classic rock station. Maybe they’re playing Aerosmith.”
“Aero…?” His brow furrowed, then he laughed. “Oh, I get it. Dream On, right?”
“Riiiiight.”
At least he knew that one. But then, everybody knew Aerosmith.
BARBARA
I’m ashamed to admit that it took me a couple of hours to muster the courage to enter the passage. I spent much of the intervening time with my head under the arch, calling to Ellie. Apparently, in her panic, Bess had dropped her penlight and it remained on, lighting the end of the passage with a faint glow.
As for Ellie, early on she answered once with a faint “…busy…” and went silent after that.
Finally, I could put it off no longer. I had to find my daughter. I lowered myself to my hands and knees and, fixing my gaze on the glow ahead, began a slow, careful crawl—careful in that I kept my back slightly arched to prevent it from going into spasm. When that happened, it rendered me useless, sometimes for days.
As I moved I noticed a slight incline. Viewed from the arch, the tunnel had seemed level, but from within it definitely tilted upward. The soft, faintly warm airflow persisted and, as I approached, the glow slowly expanded to illuminate the terminal section of tunnel wall surrounding it, leaking into the chamber beyond.
I slowed. I felt winded. I couldn’t see how it could be due to exertion because I walked regularly, so it had to be nerves. After witnessing Bess’s reaction, did I really want to see Ellie—the new Ellie—being herself?
I had no choice. I had to push on.
Ellie’s voice echoed down the passage. “Is that you, Mother?”
“Y-yes.” My mouth had gone dry.
“Don’t come in here.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“But—”
“I upset Bess. I don’t want to upset you.”
Upset? Bess had been horrified. But…
“You’re my daughter. I need to see you. You can’t lock yourself away like this.”
“It’s just for a little while. I’ve got things to do, and then I’ll be out.”
But I needed to see her now, and I’d come this far, so I pushed ahead. Grabbing Bess’s penlight, I crawled into the dark chamber—a round floor about fifteen feet across, with a shadowy domed ceiling maybe ten feet high. I sat back on my haunches and fanned the beam around. A half dozen or so white globes the size of snowballs littered the floor, but no sign of Ellie. Where was she?
“Hello, Mother.”
Her voice came from above and so I angled the penlight in that direction…and froze.
Ellie clung to the arching wall about three-quarters of the way up toward the domed center. She clung by long, spindly spider legs that had sprung from her back, slim, many-jointed legs, dark brown, gleaming like mahogany.
With a cry, I dropped the light and crab-scrambled back to the tunnel opening. At least with the beam aimed along the floor, reflecting off those snowballs, I couldn’t see her.
“Oh, Ellie!” I cried when I found my voice. “Oh, dear God, Ellie!”
“I’m all right, Mother,” she said, her voice unsettlingly calm. “Really, I am. And believe it or not, I’m okay with it.”
“But what is ‘it’? What’s happened to you? Who did this to you?”
“Not so much a ‘who’ as a ‘what.’ As for the rest, I don’t know. I woke from the coma knowing a lot of things I never knew before, but I don’t know why I know them, or why any of this happened. But I sense some sort of purpose.”
“How can there be a…?” I heard hysteria creeping into my voice. With a supreme effort I curbed it. “How can there be a purpose to…this?”
“It originated from a place with a different set of rules, with a different logic, with different geometries.”
I moaned. I felt so bad for her. “I don’t understand, Ellie.”
“Neither do I, Mother. Not completely. I think causing confusion and fear and grief and dismay is part of it, and yet… I know I shouldn’t be okay with it, but somehow I am.” A sharp, bitter sound,
