American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,165

“I agreed to come to this place. I chose to accept safety. I did not know what I was coming to, or how.”

“None of us did,” says Parson. “We did not come here. We were brought here.”

“Brought by who?” asks Mona.

The two of them do not speak, but turn to look at one another. Then there’s a series of sounds in the air a bit like someone blowing a dog whistle: while her ears cannot detect the noises, they can tell something is going on. And from the way Parson and Mrs. Benjamin are staring into each other’s eyes, Mona thinks that those things in their heads are choosing to discuss something at a frequency she can’t hear. It is a disturbing thought: has the air in Wink been full of silent, invisible communication this whole time, and she was simply unable to perceive it?

Parson clears his throat. “What we are about to tell you,” he says, “is the most dangerous secret we know.”

“It is the only secret, really,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “It is the secret of us. Of everything.”

“Were anyone to find out that we told you—”

“Any of our kin.”

“Yes,” says Parson, “then the consequences would be… unimaginable.”

Mona asks, “You won’t go into a coma this time?”

“No,” says Parson. “On that occasion, I broke a rule. But there is no rule made for this, because that which made the rules never believed we would ever do what we are about to do.”

“Which is what?”

“Tell you who brought us here.”

Parson blinks slowly. He looks back at Mrs. Benjamin, and she nods, urging him on.

“We were brought here, Miss Bright”—he shuts his eyes sadly—“by Mother.”

Mona stares at them. “Are you serious?” she says after a while. “By your mother? Then that part of your bird story was true?”

The two of them do not respond; they just stare at the ground, shocked, as if they have just committed an abominable betrayal.

Mona shakes her head. It is hard to believe that such things (she remembers the fungal stalk, and the bulky, heaving thing from before, and shivers) could even have a mother. Then she remembers her own vision of the storm, and how she glimpsed that huge, dark figure on the mesa top…

“She actually came here, didn’t she,” says Mona. “Your mother… your mother actually came here, and pulled you through. That was… her on the mountain.”

The two of them do not answer.

“Jesus… that thing was your mother?” asks Mona.

“Yes,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “She pulled us through, scattered us across the valley like seeds. And how we have grown…”

Parson says, “But when Mother brought us here, it was on Her terms. We were confined by Her rules. Rules about what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot say. Some of us—the eldest, particularly—were too large to come here in whole, and were forced to live through devices housed within the people of this town, and thus be safe and hidden. Others, either because they were too young, or—in the case of one—too old, manifested fully.”

“These, naturally, stay concealed through their own designs,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“Mother was powerful,” says Parson. “She made us. She was the architect of our lives. She wished us to be perfect. And we tried so hard to be…” A slightly angry note creeps into his voice. “It was through Her designs that we came here. She dwarfed us in all ways. She was vast, vast, incredibly vast… even we do not know Her reaches.”

“Then what happened to her?” asks Mona.

“The effort of bringing us here, of saving us, destroyed Her,” Mrs. Benjamin says. “She was here for one moment… and then She was gone.”

“But Mother is never truly gone,” says Parson. “She cannot die. Death cannot touch Her. Age cannot wound Her. She cannot die. She may sleep, or wait, but never die.”

“Then what happened to Her?” asks Mona.

“We do not know,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “We were told to wait here, and each should obey their elders, and we should never, ever harm one another… and that She would come back.”

“And we have been waiting ever since,” says Parson. “Waiting for Mother to come back.”

“It has been a long time,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “So long. It wears more on some than others. They get restless.”

“What would happen if that… that thing came back?” asks Mona.

Parson and Mrs. Benjamin are silent. Then they slowly turn to look at each other, and back.

“Then we would be brought through entirely,” says Parson.

“The lines between your world and ours,” says