American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,178

by Weringer, and his followers.”

Much as a neighborhood association, thinks Mona, keeps the medians of its roads carefully weeded.

They continue into the muddy trench. In the shallower parts she can see over the lip, and she thinks she can glimpse buildings or structures far out in the mist. Is it their city? Do such things have cities? Or is it something they conquered, and took?

“How far does this place go?” she asks.

“It goes,” says Parson, “until it doesn’t.”

She stops. There are markings on the ground, odd, swoopy ones that are strangely tentacular; something has raked the mud here, leaving small, circular patterns in the bottom of the trench, like those of coleoidal suckers…

“Ah, shit. Does something live here?”

“Oh, yes,” says Parson. “Or it did, at least.”

Again, she brings the rifle up into her hands.

“That won’t be necessary,” says Parson.

“Why not?”

“Because it is gone, like I said.”

“How do you know?”

He points to one side of the trench. There is another set of tracks there: these resemble small, dainty shoes with little heels.

“Because Mrs. Benjamin came here to check,” says Parson. “She came to many of the hidden places around Wink. The residents are gone, all gone. To where, we don’t know. Just not here.” Then he points ahead. “Look.”

She sees nothing. “What?”

“Look,” he says again.

She looks again. Suddenly there is a line of pinyon pines across the trench. She barely has time to think What are they doing there? when things click—just as they did at Coburn with the lens—and she is standing in the pine forest below the mesa again.

“See?” says Parson. “Right as rain.”

“That is not,” says Mona, “my definition of right as rain.”

“Nearly there.” Parson waves her forward once more.

They resume the hike up the slopes to the canyon. Mona notices there are no buzzes and chitterings here, as there were in the town. The woods are totally silent.

“How many of them were out in the woods before?” asks Mona.

Again, Parson shrugs. “My family is like the stars.”

Mona suppresses a shiver. “And why did you stick them out here?”

“I did not. That was not my choice. They were too young to reside within one of… well, you, I suppose. They were not wise, not mature. They could not control themselves. So they came to this place much as they are on the other side, only with a slight physical form. But when Weringer and his followers decided to maintain the town, and live as people, and have their fun, they could not allow the young ones to live among them openly. They did not fit in with their image of the town. So they were made to retire to the mountains and the woods and the valleys to conceal themselves by their own machinations.”

“That almost sounds”—Mona hops over a gulch—“like they got fucked.”

“It sounds that way because they did. We do so many silly things,” he says with a sigh, “in service of our vanity. It was then that I ended my support of Weringer, and much of Wink. I am opposed to my brethren. And they have ostracized me. I am alone. Mostly,” he adds.

“Mostly?”

“There is Mrs. Benjamin. She vaguely grants her support to them, yet she consults with me frequently, and they do not object—Mrs. Benjamin is much feared within my kin. Mother made her to be a… a weapon, I suppose. And Mother’s designs rarely fail.” Mona, who remembers the sight of that huge, hulking, many-legged thing on the other side all too well, can completely understand that. “But I am visited also by my brother, whom you are about to meet.” He pauses and purses his lips, suddenly awkward. “That is a… secret. No one knows about that. Not even Mrs. Benjamin. Please do not spread it around.”

“I’ll make sure not to,” says Mona, who cannot imagine when she’d ever have the opportunity.

“He comes to me, and we talk, and play games.”

“That’s charming.”

He ignores her. “We are the two eldest. We have always been alone, a little. Now more so than most. But just recently he stopped coming. Right after your arrival, in fact. He walled himself off in his home, and he does not come out, nor can anyone get in. I understand it is a cause of much concern.”

“Why the change?”

“Well… I think he is quite happy where he is. He does not want things to change. But things are changing. I think he is preparing for something. He will not share this information with me, but it is… how shall I

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