The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I see figures in the windows, moving about in shadow, but no one screams.

No figures appear at windows to throw out babies to be caught, no sashes fly open to wave sheets crying for help. No one seems to notice when a brick falls, then another, then a lump of cornice splits off and plunges down to shatter at my feet, followed by a rain of crumbled masonry. The noise becomes deafening, filling my ears and vibrating my entrails. I lift my arms to shield my face as the building slowly, rumblingly dissolves into dust.

No one else on the street seems to notice. They keep moving along in a tide of humanity, clutching their baskets and children as though nothing were amiss while I stand with arms over my head, my eyes saucers of disbelief.

Where the building stood is only a thick cloud of brown dust, roiling on eddies of autumn air.

“What’s the matter with you people?” I scream, my face red.

This didn’t happen the last time I sneaked from the house to go see Herschel.

A few people waiting at the street corner before picking their way between the wagons and vegetable stalls eye me with suspicion, but say nothing.

Desperate, I run over to a curiously dressed young man, hatless, in what look like tight-fitting work pants and a collarless shirt. I grasp his arm and try to drag him to a stop.

“That building just collapsed!” I scream in his ear. “Go get help!”

He pretends not to hear me, and my fingers slide off his arm as he disappears into the crowd.

“Someone, help! There’s people in there!” I shout, pointing at the giant dust cloud.

My shouts cut short when the rumbling begins with renewed malice. I back away from the buildings, wanting to be far away, but I can’t step into the street else I’ll be trampled to death by the throng of horses and wagons and carriages. I once saw a little boy trampled, and his twisted limbs and dully flattened head haunted my nightmares for months.

The rumbling thickens, intensifies, and I stand stock-still, tears streaming down my face. It’s coming from where the tenement stood. The brown dust cloud seems to be circulating, moving, breathing like an ephemeral nightmare animal. It grows and swells, thickening, stretching itself upward to the sky, growing denser and taller and squarer. The rumbling grows so loud that I scream, and my scream is noiseless, swallowed by the sound of the dust cloud. Inside the cloud, something comes ripping up out of the ground, bricks and rocks exploding in every direction as whatever it is comes rocketing toward the sky. I watch it rip skyward, my head falling backward as the thing stretches five, then ten, then fifteen, then twenty—it isn’t possible!—stories into the sky.

When the rumbling subsides I’m left staring slack-jawed up at a fantastical edifice, all dressed in glass, stretching higher in the air than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s like a solid cliff face, as steep and forbidding as the cliffs along the Hudson River at Sneden’s Landing. Here and there the glass cliff has lights, illuminated inside, and I spy other figures, outlines of furniture, the moving shadows of people just like the ones in the tenement a moment before.

No one notices.