Kevin Anderson - The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF

Betty Ann stops right there and frowns at the tub. She’s real sure she turned the water on, but there isn’t a drip or a drop, and the tub’s dry as a bone. Betty Ann shakes her head, says “Well, I declare,” pads in her bare feet back down the hall, back to the kitchen, back to the stove, back to the counter and the peels in the sink, back to the meatloaf in the stove. Walks to the screen to check the latch. Stops, looks out the back. Remembers where she is and has to laugh. No one walks around naked in the kitchen, bare ass naked, not a stitch at all, even in the dark. If Jack came in right then he’d think she was crazy as a loon. Which doesn’t much matter, she remembers, Jack’s not coming back at all.

Betty Ann stands at the screen and looks out. Doesn’t seem that long ago she was watching the light slink away, waiting for the dark to slide in. She looks past the drive to the Hooper’s back yard. The walls are black, the roof has faded into night. She can see the Prewitts’ fence, but the Kamps are out of sight. John-William’s mother looks up as something flutters in the night. Just for an instant, it hangs there, a smudge against the inky sky. Maybe it has red eyes, she thinks. Maybe its tongue is colored orange.

A wind hot as syrup fills the night. Betty Ann’s heart skips a beat. Skips two, hesitates, decides to try again. Betty Ann catches her breath, backs away from the door, leans against the sink. Lets her eyes touch the room. The garbage can, the broom, the chair, and the stove. She opens the pot, peers inside. The carrots are limp, dry as brittle leaves. The pale blue flame has gone out. She opens the oven door. The meatloaf is cold, pink, with little eyes of fat. The radio is dead, the refrigerator, too. The lights, the gas.

Turn on the faucet. A sputter and a cough. Betty Ann tries the phone. “Hello? Hello?” Just like in the movies. Nobody’s there.

Betty Ann walks naked through the gray heavy gauze of her first brick house. She’d been real scared once before, when she and John-William were alone and Jack was in Tulsa overnight. Something had scratched on the window and made wet steps on the lawn. In the morning, there was nothing there to see. The next night Jack was snoring by her side, but Betty Ann didn’t sleep for a week.

“It’s all right,” she says, “everything’s fine. Everything’s off right now, but it’ll all go on again.” Her voice sounds funny in the still and empty house. She feels her way back to the kitchen, finds her Old Golds, a box of matches on the sink. Paws through the junk drawer, finds a wad of string, pencil stubs, and dry fountain pens. No candles at all.

John-William’s mother moves back down the hall. Looks in the mirror. Can’t hardly see herself at all. Lights a kitchen match. Betty Ann naked, skin white as tallow in the flare of sudden light. The living room carpet’s black as tar. The easy chairs are blurs against the greater dark. Feels for the sofa. Can’t find it anywhere at all. The match doesn’t work. She tries another and another after that. Tosses the box on the floor.

Moving real slow, doesn’t want to bump her toes. Opens the front door a crack. Can’t see much better than she did in the back.

The houses across the street are just like hers. Stubby brick, living room, bedrooms, kitchen in the back. Arch across the porch. Now all the houses are solemn and gray, all the color drained out, the life washed away. No lights in the windows, no lights at all.

Betty Ann opens the door a little wider, a little wider still. One bare foot outside and then the next. John-William’s mother, Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, stands naked on the hot front porch. Night wind brushes her flesh, tickles her breasts, whispers naughties in her ear.

Betty Ann stands very, very still. She can’t remember when she last stood out in the night. Didn’t flee, didn’t run when the big clock deep in the earth warned everyone the light was dying and the dark was sweeping in, told everyone to hurry, get safe inside.

Still, it isn’t so bad if you stand real still, if you don’t think hard — if you don’t let the dark know you’re there. It can’t see everything, can it? A whole world of night out there, it can’t watch every leaf, every stone, every time a dog does his business on the lawn….

It comes to her then, like the secret was there all the time, like she knew it in her head. Grandmaw didn’t know it all — she knew the scary part, knew about the bad, but she didn’t know the rest. All you have to do is stand very, very still, listen, listen, to the great stone clock down deep-deep within the earth, listen to it tick-tick-tick away the quiet moments, the hours, the long years of the night. Don’t move, don’t breathe, feel the silence and the wind, feel the whisper of the dark against your skin….

John-William’s mother, Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, peers into the dark, looks into the inky night for a very long time, and after a while she wonders if she might not be Betty Ann standing naked on the porch, she might be Betty Ann dreaming somewhere, Betty Ann back at Mama’s on the farm, looking at the rusty old Ford. She might be Betty Ann having ice cream with Johnny Two Horse, who said he was pure Cherokee. She liked Johnny Two Horse a whole lot, kissed him twice till Mama found out he wasn’t white, washed her mouth with soap and put a stop to that.

Johnny Two Horse kissed her again, or maybe it was only the hot breeze sliding in upon the night to sweep the dream away. And, when she peered once more into the dark, Betty Ann could see things she hadn’t seen before. The houses and the lawns and the trees looked different now, like the shiny things you get when they send your pictures back. Everything that used to be black was murky gray, and everything white went just the other way. It didn’t seem wrong , turned inside out, it seemed, to Betty Ann, the way things ought to be. Maybe the way things had been all along and were getting right again.

Up past the Harpers and the Smiths and the Roers, where the street lamp stood on the corner, something seemed to shimmer, seemed to tremble, seemed to hide behind a veil, like looking through Grandmaw’s glasses where the world was all a blur. Betty Ann blinked and the blur went away.

Then, for an instant, something was there and something not, something just beyond the corner, something coming, something waiting, something maybe in-between, something not quite ready, something not really there .

Betty Ann feels her mouth go dry, feels her legs go weak, backs up against the cold brick wall, backs up, finds the wall isn’t there, knows, for sure, that isn’t right at all. Walls stay where they are, where a wall’s supposed to be. Betty Ann tries again, staggers, very nearly falls, slips through the wall, through the wires, through the wood, through the pipes and the nails, through the cobwebs and little dead spiders and bugs that huddle there.

John-William’s mother, Sarah’s daughter, Betty Ann, walks through the curtains that trickle like powder, like snow, like ash, before her eyes, walks through the sofa that crumbles into dust, into the hall where the walls begin to vanish, into the kitchen where the stove, the mixer, and the radio sigh and fall away.

Betty Ann stands naked, looks through the screen door, where it used to be, looks for the black birds singing on the wire, black birds white now, sees them on the ground, lying on their backs with their little beaks open, claws up in the air.

“Well my goodness,” says Betty Ann, “now isn’t that a sight to see. Why, it’s like Andy always says, ‘You neber do knows what gon’ be happ’nin’ but you kin bets it will.’ ”

John-William’s mother laughs at the thought, walks back through where her first brick home used to be. Stops, for a moment, glances at the mirror in the hall. The mirror’s not there but someone is, someone Betty Ann thinks she ought to know. Just for an instant, just for a blink, then just as quickly gone.