American Elsewhere

CHAPTER SEVENTY




They sit in silence for what feels like lifetimes. After a while Mona realizes Mrs. Benjamin and Parson are watching them from down the path. She feels a wave of irrational rage, for they did this to her, they or their kind, but she swallows it to ask, “What do you want?”

“To ask something of you,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“What the hell do you mean?”

“We have discussed it in detail,” says Parson, “and we have decided that, though there are many things to endear us to this way of life”—he exchanges a glance with Mrs. Benjamin, who nods—“it would be best for us to go home.”

“Home? You mean to—”

“To the other side, yes,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“You can do that?”

“There is no one now to say that we cannot,” says Parson. “And with the lens, we have concluded it is perfectly possible. It should be just a short step away. I do not know what state it’s in—Mother’s machinations likely left our home quite in ruins. But that does not mean it cannot be rebuilt. With Her gone, perhaps there is some hope.”

“What about the rest of you?”

“I believe most of them perished in the fire,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “They, or their vessels, or their physical forms. They are no longer bound to this world. They are, most likely, on the other side already, in some fashion or another. Lost, drifting, helpless… it would simply be a matter of reuniting them, and giving them a little leadership.”

“Then you could do all this again,” says Gracie. “You could come back, and try all over again…”

“No,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “For one, Mother is no longer with us, so I doubt if we would have any motivation to return. And for another, we will not have the lens.”

“Why not?” asks Mona.

“Because we want you to close it after us,” says Parson.

“Close it, and lock it,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“Why?” asks Mona.

“What was done here was foolish, and vain, and proud,” says Parson. “I wish to forget it ever happened.”

“Or, failing that, at least to learn from it,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

Mona turns away.

“Will you help us with this?” Parson asks. “Will you help us close the door?”

“We have asked much of you, we know,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “But there must be someone behind to close it. Just one more thing, Miss Bright. Just this one thing.”

Mona looks at Gracie. She sighs—for there is no place she’d more prefer to avoid than the innards of Coburn—but says, “Wait here for me. This should only take a little while.”


They wend their way back, through the empty, whispering hallways. But the halls do not feel quite as frightening to Mona as they did before. Now they are hollow, broken. She asks, “Will this be dangerous for you?”

“Oh, yes,” says Parson. “I expect so. Our world is in quite a bit of turmoil. Mother meant it to frighten us into leaving. Her threats were rarely hollow.”

“Then why would you choose to leave?”

“You’d want us here? The people who did all this to you?”

“Well… they’re all gone. And that wasn’t you, really.”

Parson thinks on it. “You talked to Mother, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“When you were struck with lightning. I know her devices. She spoke to you, didn’t she?”

“Yeah. She did.”

“And did she offer you something?”

“How did you know that?”

“Mother always offers something, Miss Bright,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“Well, yeah. She did,” says Mona.

“And you turned it down,” says Parson.

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know. What she offered me just wouldn’t feel… honest. It would have been as made up as the rest of the things in Wink.”

He nods. “That was a very wise choice, then. We make the same choice now—we have the option of living there as we are, as we really are, with all its misfortunes and difficulties, or living here as we are not—without pain, without hardship, and without value.” They arrive at the lens chamber again, which has lost none of its unearthly quality. “What lies on the other side of the lens may be dangerous. But I would rather have it than the alternative.” He looks back to Mrs. Benjamin, extends a hand, and helps her over the threshold to the chamber.

“You know, Miss Bright,” says Mrs. Benjamin, “you could come with us.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Well, you are one of us, to a certain extent. Where we are going is, I guess you could say, our ancestral home. I do not know if you have ever felt at home in this place… but perhaps you may have better luck with us. Though it would leave the door open, since there would be no one to close it.” Parson gives Mrs. Benjamin a disapproving look. “I only wish to give her the option,” she says mildly.

Mona thinks about it. She stares into the mirror, and wonders what she would see if she accepted. But she shakes her head.

“I am happy to hear that,” says Parson. “I believe your chances are better here.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I find it difficult to say. I suppose I think you to be a caring person, Miss Bright. You are not Mother—you have much to give others. I cannot tell you what to do, but I suggest you leave this place, find someone to care for, and live as honestly as the world allows.”

A hum fills the lens chamber once more. Their eyes shudder like candle flames. “Remember,” says Mrs. Benjamin, “you must shut it behind us.”

“But I don’t know how,” says Mona.

“It is simple,” says Parson. “A mirror that looks in on itself is not a mirror at all.”

The surface of the lens ripples. Mona sees red stars, and many peaks, and a far, strange country of leaning gray towers…

“Goodbye, Miss Bright,” says Parson.

“Goodbye, dear,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

Two childlike figures stand in the center of the chamber, watching her with old eyes and youthful smiles.

They blink out, once, twice, three times—and are gone.

Mona stands still and reaches out to the lens, feeling its boundaries as she did mere minutes ago. It could go to so many places, so many times, if I wanted it to. But she remembers what Parson said, and bends it, pushes it, slowly and carefully, until the only thing the lens opens on is this chamber, and the lens itself, until…

There is a sound like freezing ice. Mona looks and sees the lens no longer reflects anything: it is solid, like a plate of lead.

She reaches out and touches it. It is slightly warm, but solid. “Gone,” she says.


Gracie is waiting for her on the edge of the mesa when Mona returns. She says, “I’ve been thinking—should we go down?” She nods toward the flaming ruin miles below.

“To Wink?” asks Mona.

“Yes. There could be people that need our help, or things we need, or… I don’t know. Anything.”

Mona thinks about it. “No,” she says.

“Why not?”

“I think that’s all gone now, Gracie. I think it all burned, or… worse. I think we need to leave it alone.”

“But we should at least see,” says Gracie. “We should at least go down and look for…”

“For what?”

“I don’t know, but… but it can’t all be gone. I… I had a boyfriend. He was good to me. I just…” She trails off.

“I’m sorry, hon,” says Mona. “But from what Parson and Mrs. Benjamin said, I think it’s all gone, or close enough to count. I think… I think we need to let it go.”

Gracie stares out at the valley. “Then what do we do?” she asks helplessly. “What do I do now?”

“You’ve never been outside Wink before, right?”

Gracie shakes her head.

“Well, would you like to go?” asks Mona.

“To… go outside?”

“Yeah. To go outside and see.”

“What is there to see?”

“Everything. Everything that’s out there.”

Gracie stands up and looks north, as if imagining the horizon extending and extending, past the mesa and past the borders of Wink. “So it all keeps going?” she asks.

“Yeah,” says Mona.

“It just doesn’t stop?”

“It just goes,” says Mona, and she extends her hand to the young girl, “until it doesn’t.”

Gracie takes her hand and pulls herself up. She looks both excited and a little frightened by the idea. “We can just go? Right now?”

“Right now. We don’t need anyone’s say-so. We don’t have to wait. We can just go.”

Gracie reflects on this. Finally she nods and says, “All right, then.”