F. Paul Wilson - Gateways

But the strange kids they already had wasn’t happy. Not one bit. Not because they was all mistreated by people as they was growin up—Semelee hadn’t been alone in that—but because when they all finally growed up they felt like somethin was missin in their lives.

One by one they all—all the misshapen ones—found their way back here to the lagoon and learned that this was where the itch stopped, this was where they felt whole, where they belonged. This was home.

And home was where your family lived. They came to call themselves a clan, and all decided to stay here on the lagoon.

Yet even with this big family-type gang around her, Semelee still felt a yearning emptiness within. She wanted more,needed more.

“Why do they hafta takeour sand? There’s plenty of sand around. Why they want ours?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Semelee said.

“Who is they, anyway?”

“Blagden and Sons. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know the name, but that’s all it is: a name. Whoare they? Where do they come from?”

“Don’t know, Luke, but their money’s good. Cash up front. That’s bout as good as it gets.”

“Do they know about the lights?”

“That one I can answer: Yeah, they know about the lights.”

Some guy named William somethin from this company called Blagden and Sons come around in a canoe a few weeks ago askin if anyone’d been seein funny lights about this time of the year. The clan folk he talked to sent him to Semelee since she was sorta the leader round here. Not that she’d ever looked to be the leader, but it seemed whenever somethin needed decidin, she wound up the one who did it.

Semelee played it cagey with this William fellow until she was pretty sure he wasn’t no tour-guide type or scientist or anything like that, and wouldn’t be bringing boatloads of strangers or teams of pointy heads to peek or poke at the clan and the sinkhole. Nope, all William wanted was to haul off the dirt and sand from around where they’d seen the lights.

When Semelee had told him they’d been comin up through this sinkhole that used to be underwater but was now gettin dry, he got all excited and wanted to know where it was. Semelee pretended she wasn’t gonna tell him, and held off even when he offered money. So he offered more money and more money until Semelee had to say yes. Maybe she could’ve held out for even more, but there weren’t no sense in gettin all greedy about it.

When she’d took him to the sinkhole she thought he was gonna pee his pants. He danced around it, callin it a senn-oaty or somethin like that. When she asked him what he was talkin about he spelled it for her: C-E-N-O-T-E. Told her it was a Mex word and you said it like coyote. Semelee liked sinkhole better.

The dredgin was all hush-hush, of course. The clan wasn’t upposed to be livin here on the lagoon, this bein a National Park and all, and Blagden and Sons wasn’t upposed to be takin the sand.

“Matter off act,” she told Luke, “I’m pretty sure they want the sandbecause of the lights.”

“That’s kinda scary, dontcha think? Them lights ain’t natural. They changed us and everythin around them. Probably even changed the sand in that hole.”

“Probably did.”

Luke looked uneasy. “What on earth could they want it for? I mean, what’re they gonna do with it?”

“Can’t rightly say, Luke. And I don’t rightly care. That ain’t our worry. What I do know is that our little sinkhole is gonna be a lot deeper without all that sand. And that just may mean that the lights’ll be brighter than ever. When the time comes maybe someone can even look down into that hole and see where they’re comin from.”

“Who’s gonna do that?” Luke said.

Semelee kept her eyes on the rim of the deepening hole. “Me.”

Luke grabbed her arm. “Uh-uh! You ain’t! That’s crazy! I won’t let you!”

She let Luke have sex with her once in a while when she felt the need, and that probably was a mistake. She’d told him flat out from the git-go that it didn’t mean nothin, that they was just now-and-again fuck buddies and that was all there was to it, but she’d probably made a mistake lettin it get started. Still, every so often she needed to get laid and Luke was the least ugly of anyone else in the clan. Trouble was, it let him feel like he owed her, like he had to protect her or somethin.

If anyone needed protectin, it wasn’t her.

“You got nothin to say about it, Luke,” Semelee told him as she wrenched her arm free of his grasp. “Now lemme be. I gotta get to town.”

“What for?”

She flashed him a sly smile. “I’m joinin the nursin profession.”

He shook his head. “What? Why?”

Semelee felt the smile melt away in a blaze of anger. “To finish your half-assed job from the other night!”

3

As Jack stepped out of the elevator on the hospital’s third floor, he spied Dr. Huerta waiting to get in.

“Any change in my father?”

She shook her head. “Stable, but still level seven.”

“How long can this go on?” he said. “I mean, before we start thinking about feeding tubes and all that?”

She stepped into the elevator. “That’s a bit premature. I know it must seem like a long time to you, but it’s been less than seventy-two hours. The IVs are perfectly adequate for now.”

“But—”

The elevator doors slid shut.

Jack walked down the hall to his father’s room, wondering if Anya would be there. He’d stopped by her place before leaving this morning, threading his way through the gizmos crowding her lawn, to offer her a ride to the hospital if she needed it. But she hadn’t answered his knocks.

Normally that wouldn’t have bothered him, but with old folks…well, you never knew. She could have had a stroke or something. Jack had peered through the front door glass but hadn’t seen anyone on the floor or slumped in a chair. Then he’d remembered Oyv. The little dog would have been barking up a storm by then if he’d been around.

But Anya wasn’t in his father’s room either—he checked the corners and behind the curtains, just to be sure. Empty except for the patient.

He stepped to the side of the bed and gripped the limp right hand. “I’m back, Dad. Are you in there? Can you hear me? Give a squeeze, just a little one, if you can. Or move just one finger so I know.”

Nothing. Just like yesterday.

Jack pulled up a chair and sat at the bedside, talking to his father as if the old guy could hear him. He kept his voice low—pausing when the nurses buzzed in and out—and discussed what he’d learned about the accident and the conflicting information, dwelling on the time discrepancies between the report and his father’s watch. He’d hoped talking it out would clarify the incident for him, but he was as confused afterward as before.

“If only you could tell me what you were doing out there at that hour, it would clear up a whole lot of questions.”

Once off the subject of the accident, he thought he’d run out of things to say. Then he remembered the pictures in his father’s room and decided to use them as launch pads.

“Remember the family camping trip? How it never stopped raining…?”

4

After an hour or so of talking, Jack’s mouth was dry and his vocal cords felt on fire. He stepped into the bathroom to get a drink of water. As he was finishing his second cupful his peripheral vision caught a flash of white. He turned to see a nurse approaching his dad’s bed. She hadn’t been around before; he was sure he would have noticed her if she had. She was pretty in an odd way. Very slim, almost to the point of boyishness, and with her dark skin—made all the darker by the contrast of her white uniform—prominent nose, and glossy black hair trailing most of the way down her back in a single braid, Jack thought she might be part Indian—not the Bombay kind, the American kind.