American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,148

with—

ERIC BINTLY: The corners. What’s in the corners?

MICHAEL DERN: Right.

ERIC BINTLY: Yeah, so… while his comparison with the skylights isn’t correct—because that’s not really how the lens works—it just makes me wonder if we are making holes somewhere, in some part of the world we can’t measure or quantify, and if the holes are there, then… what else can come through?

MICHAEL DERN: You sound like—

ERIC BINTLY: I know. You said it already. Steven.

MICHAEL DERN: Did he—did he tell you everything, Eric? Because Steven told me everything. After all, he couldn’t go to Dick, so he came to me. And it was fucking. Insane. It was fucking insane, Eric. He said the, the lenses were windows, and there was someone on the other side of them. That’s what he said, to me. He said there was someone on the other side, watching, and then—I swear I am not making this up, this is what he said—he corrected himself, and said, “or something.” And he was dead fucking serious. Now, is this really something you want to get behind, Eric? Do you really want to discuss this, seriously, on tape, with me, and throw your career behind this sort of shit?

ERIC BINTLY: I don’t know. I saw what I saw. There’s no way around it.

MICHAEL DERN: Christ.

[SILENCE]

ERIC BINTLY: They’ll have set up a perimeter, right? One of those search nets? APB, all that stuff?

MICHAEL DERN: I think so. I assume that’s why no one’s here to tell us what to do. They’re all looking for her.

ERIC BINTLY: I ask because… I think she made a lot of changes to the lens before she left.

MICHAEL DERN: What kind of changes?

ERIC BINTLY: I don’t know. I’m not allowed to be around the lens that much since I got sent away. And besides… I was never as good as she was.

MICHAEL DERN: You’re sure? Sure she made changes?

ERIC BINTLY: Pretty sure.

MICHAEL DERN: Well… fuck, man. Let’s hope it wasn’t anything important.

ERIC BINTLY: Dick will take care of it.

MICHAEL DERN: Yeah. Yeah. He’d fucking better. Jesus.

SOUNDTRACK TAPE TO JLB [FILM STOCK MISSING]

MAY 13TH 1983

[FOOTSTEPS, ECHOING]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Hurry! Come on!

UNKNOWN VOICE 2 (RICHARD COBURN?): I am hurrying! You should have warned me about this…

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: I did warn you! I told you two days ago it was happening.

POSSIBLY RICHARD COBURN: I don’t even—

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: It wasn’t just me. It doesn’t matter now. Just come and look.

[BANGING, SQUEAKING, POSSIBLY HINGES]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Through here.

RICHARD COBURN: Is it really necessary we go all the way u—

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Yes, it is! Come on. Up the ladder, you go first.

RICHARD COBURN: Oh, well, I…

[RUSTLING, BANGING]

[STATIC]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: You’re sure the lens is on?

RICHARD COBURN: Of course it is! The test is scheduled to continue for the next fifteen minutes, so we—

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Good. Then it lines up perfectly. Let me just—

[RUSTLING]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Push!

[HINGES SQUEAKING]

RICHARD COBURN: My God, it’s cold up here. I haven’t…

[CRACKLING]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Do you see it?

[SOUND OF WIND]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Yeah. There—there it is.

[SILENCE]

RICHARD COBURN: My word.

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Yeah. Jesus.

[SILENCE]

RICHARD COBURN: It’s heat lightning.

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: No.

RICHARD COBURN: No?

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: No. I’ve seen heat lightning before, and that is not heat lightning.

RICHARD COBURN: Then what is it?

[SILENCE]

RICHARD COBURN: And you say every time we perform a test, then…

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: The lightning comes. Yeah. I don’t even know how long it’s been going on for. Paul just happened to notice it. It isn’t on any meteorological forecasts.

RICHARD COBURN: It is so odd that it’s silent.

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: I know.

[SILENCE]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: So what do we do?

[SILENCE]

UNKNOWN VOICE: So what do we do?

[SILENCE]

[STATIC]

THE PEOPLE FROM ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Mona listens as the tape continues in silence. Every document she’s read and every tape she’s listened to has made her feel sicker and sicker, but it is not until this moment, as she listens to Coburn staring silently at the lightning-ridden sky, that she really begins to understand what happened here.

She punches the STOP button on the tape player. With a loud pop, the wheels stop turning.

She sits back. There’s a knot in her stomach and it keeps getting pulled tighter. She has only pieces of what happened here, snatches of conversation and patches of reports, but she feels she is on the border of comprehending it. Yet it almost defies her. It is too huge, too strange, too impossible.

She remembers reading the word pandimensional and wondering what it had to do with anything. She remembers Mrs. Benjamin producing her two mirrors, murmuring (with