Бен Маркус - Notes from the Fog - Stories

I’d had enough. I looked over to where Nelson usually came from, the hallway, the wall, his whole mysterious wing, but I didn’t figure I would see him today. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t watching.

One time they strapped me to some sensors and the screen lit up with bright bursts of dots not when I spoke, but when I didn’t. So I talked and talked, because I didn’t care for those points of light. I could go my whole life without seeing them again. So who cares if I had to talk to keep them gone? I’d say what I needed to. We all do things to keep the wolf away.

The rest of the day was mostly chopped up into the usual workaday carcass: lots of data to wing around, and lots of filing. I pounded away at my terminal and I filled the screen with meaning. Lunchtime came and when people asked if I was going to eat I dragged myself after them and sat through the awful, wet gnashing, holding my breath. Later we heard on the intercom that more snow was coming, and it seemed that a decision went around to let us all get the hell out of there early. People cheered, and afterward it was like they’d forgotten to close their mouths. They were showing teeth, walking around, getting their things, bundling up, all the while showing teeth as if they were about to tear something apart with their mouths, if only no one was watching. I kept my head down because after a little while you can’t look at people like that. It starts to unravel you. It starts to be too much.

It was early enoughin the day that I thought I could catch the kids coming out of school. Surprise them maybe. I stood at the fence with the other parents, and it wasn’t clear who was in jail, us or them. We clung to the fence and we watched the door of the school. We looked at our phones. For a moment it seemed that anything could come out of that door: water, mud, animals.

When the bell rang and the children poured out, the parents pressed against the fence, hollering and waving. The children rippled into the playground, scanning the world for their makers. How did you know, looking at these children, some of them so truly lifelike, which ones were yours? The problem wasn’t that none of them were familiar, it was that they all were. I knew all of these kids. Their faces, the little way they ran. Some of them fell over and righted themselves and ran on and my heart ached. I stood there as they paired off and ran to hug their parents, and after the dust had cleared none of them had run to me. Not even one. They’d all been spoken for. I was standing here in plain sight and my own little ones were nowhere to be found. I watched the door and waited. The school had gone quiet. Everyone was shuffling away.

There was a man at the fence who widened his eyes at me, as if I was too big to see in one look, too complicated.

“Hey Terry, don’t see you here much anymore. How are the kids?”

What did you ever say when people asked you shit like that? You don’t say help me I’m dying. You don’t say hold me because I’m going to fall. You don’t say I cannot really speak to you right now, because if I do the blood will come out and I won’t be able to stop it and then we’ll all be in trouble. I guarantee it. You just don’t do that.

What I did say was that everyone was swell, in their way, and I rolled my eyes, and what a day and wasn’t it beautiful, the snow? The man looked around as I pointed, but you didn’t need to look around. It was on us, covering us up, and if we stood still any longer we’d be buried for good. I said, wasn’t it the most extraordinary thing he’d ever seen?

There were copsat my house when I got home. Outside of the old rotted house, looking in the windows. A couple of young men in uniform. What was my protocol here? Keep walking and circle back around? But didn’t that leave my house vulnerable and should I not be protecting the inner contents? Who else would guard the place if not me?

When I walked up, they took off their hats, called me ma’am.

Did I live here, they wanted to know, and what was my name and would I be so kind as to show them some identification?

They came in and we talked and it was not at all unpleasant. This was routine, they said, they were checking in. They were seeing that people were all right. Did I live alone? Was there anyone else in the house?

I offered them tea and apologized. There was just nothing to eat. Nothing nothing nothing, never, no matter how much I shopped. Trucks rolled up and offloaded food, I explained, and the little ones upstairs sucked it down, spitting out not even a bone. There was no way to keep up.

They were okay, they didn’t care, they weren’t hungry. They just had a question for me, if I didn’t mind. Just a question and then they’d be on their way. Was I okay? Did I feel okay? What did I feel?

What did I feel? What a funny thing for a police officer to ask. I half expected a question along the lines of, where were you when, and I was worried a little bit. I thought I might not know. I thought I might not remember. Who doesn’t feel that in some tiny, forgotten part of their day they might have done something truly horrible? And then the cops come, and then, well, you find yourself confessing.

But what did I feel ? What I felt was old, and I shared this with the officers. I cried a little bit right in front of them, and I’m not really bragging. I felt dead. I felt tired. I felt unattractive. I felt no longer intelligent. I felt slightly horny, but in such a nonspecific way that it might just be an allergy, an illness, an excitation of the skin. But really, I asked them, why was anyone ever expected to report accurately on their own feelings? Could either of them do it? If I were to pin them down and ask them to report the truth of themselves? Would they be able to perform? They shouldn’t trust me, I said, finally. I was not a reliable source. If they really wanted an answer, they should ask my doctor.

The car that we rode inhad a nice comfortable seat in the back. It was more like a bed. We drove through the sweeter part of town and it was almost like we skirted the perimeter of a plunging cliff. You know that feeling—that the car and the road beneath it are themselves just delicately suspended in space, poised to fall? It’s like you understand that the road is holding the car up, and the earth is holding the road up, but it’s not clear what’s holding up the earth itself, and if you pay attention, really really pay attention, you can feel it, the falling. Certain people are terribly attuned to it, and they can’t bear it. They try to escape the world as soon as they can. Scientists try to explain this, but you can see it on their faces, the doubt, the sadness. They are more afraid than we are. I looked out the window and only saw sky, the sort that bends into finer clarity where it meets the horizon. A sharpening of the lens, just where you most need it. Where, if you look carefully, and really study it, you might see something important in the distance, something that has been kept from you your entire life.

I knew where we were going. I’d driven this same route myself, many times. It was my favorite part of town and I’d never get tired of it. I got a little bit emotional, I must admit, when I looked at the long, thin trees in Sawtooth Park. I’d seen these things planted when I was a girl. There had been a fire. Nothing serious, but part of town was blackened. The parks were scorched. It wasn’t a big deal. Anyone with a computer could look up the details. From space, maybe, it looked like nothing. But for those of us down below it was not nothing. And then they chose a species of tree that was controversial, I guess. Because these trees grew taller without getting thicker, and after a little while they curled, maybe like hair would. And so from above this park was supposed to really look like something. People ooh ed and aah ed over it. People said it was indescribable, amazing. But who got to look at the park, or really anything, from above? What population took to the air to see the world? A mistake had been made. Our world had been designed for birds, and the people had been forgotten. What about the people? I always wanted to ask. We will never know how beautiful our own world is if we’re stuck down here.