Once More Into the Abyss Read online

  Uncle Oliver beams. “Dylan, allow me to show you how to make the perfect BLT.” Exactly what Dad would say. Me too. Dylan uses the make-a-perfect-whatever line with his friends, mostly girls who have a crush on him, often older by a year or two and nearly always taller.

  Katyana and I retire to our room, leaving them to their uncle-nephew moment. Dylan’s never eaten flesh since he met a friend’s pet pig Sophia, and they hung out for the better part of the afternoon, wandering around the property together, a small Hanover farm, mostly wooded. Dylan was seven. “Sophia showed me around,” he said. After Sophia, he shuddered at the thought of meat, especially pork, but here he is, stepping up for his ancient Uncle Oliver.

  This makes Katyana and me feel like such good parents we make love in our new bed, in our new room, in our new lives. That’s how the day goes, one big happy family. Katyana goes to the lab—her lab—and returns with a dazzling slideshow of the first batch of artifacts she’ll be studying, some of the oldest to have emerged from the abyss. We gather around her and eat dessert as she tells us about each one. She’s where Dylan gets his earnest from, his big heart. Every single moment. Everything is perfect.

  * * *

  It’s the middle of the night. The room is bathed in moonlight. I can’t sleep. I listen to Katyana’s breathing like the ocean waves coming in, going out. What a glorious sound! My life is impossible, and yet here it is. Not a dream come true. My dreams were never this good.

  A shadow crosses the window—a bear or a ghost from the abyss or a trick of the moonlight. I slip out of bed, go to the window, and look out. It’s the field the dogs and I traversed at dawn, and now it’s bathed in moonlight. There’s someone standing at the threshold of the woods, looking right at me.

  It’s Dad.

  He turns and disappears into the woods with the slow, measured pace of someone very old but still strong, rather like I imagine myself. I scurry around, throwing on clothes, desperate not to wake anyone, and I almost get away with it. I’m trying to find my left shoe when a familiar snout gets in my face. What are you up to? Myrna wants to know. Don’t even think about finding your way through those woods without me. She has my left shoe. Good thing animals don’t think, or I’d suspect a plot.

  Pretty soon I’m trooping across the moonlit field, with—you guessed it—three dogs. Avatar’s dead on his feet—he likes his sleep—and Horatio keeps running into things. He’s excited though—the pack’s bringing him along on another adventure! I had no choice. He was about to wake up the whole household, and that’s the last thing I wanted to happen. Just like when I was a kid and Dad would phone home from the road, I wanted him to myself.

  Maybe it’s only because I’ve been this way before, but these woods seem easier to navigate in the moonlight, like that’s what they were made for. Or maybe it’s my eyes, pupils wide, that see more in this half light, but somehow, I’m not afraid.

  Myrna veers off on a side trail I didn’t notice this morning, even more obscure than the one we’ve been on. We stumble through a scrubby patch and emerge into an old growth forest of enormous towering trees. The moon is directly overhead, enormous. It’s almost blinding.

  When I look back down to the forest floor, there’s Mom sitting cross-legged in the dirt, the dogs swirling around her, licking her face as she furiously pets them all. I let them have their moment.

  I need a moment too. My mother, who’s been dead for quite a long time, is sitting before me. She always sat cross-legged—on the floor, on the sofa, anywhere she could manage it. On a blanket in front of her are artifacts from the abyss. Alien artifacts.

  “I brought these for Katyana,” she says. “She’ll find them here in the morning when she comes this way. Dad and I are quite taken with her. You’re a lucky man.”

  “I’m an alien.”

  “I’d say those are one and the same, dear.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  She looks around at the surrounding woods with a pleasant smile. “You know your father, Stan. He likes to roam, but he always comes home to me.” She spreads her hands above the weird array before her. “C’mon, guess which one’s the thraxle.” Another lesson for her bright, devoted son.

  “I have no idea,” I say.

  “Use your intuition.”

  I don’t argue with Mom about intuition, whose importance for her was an article of faith. I just point.

  “See there? You’re right. You should listen to your mother.”

  “I always do. It’s good to see you, Mom. You haven’t changed.”

  “Nonsense. Everything changes. It’s good to see you too.” She hands me the thraxle. “Go ahead, try it. You hold it like this and twist it one way and then the other. It will show you the fork that lies just ahead.”

  “Fork?”

  “In time,” she says, like I should’ve figured that much out already.

  “You said Katyana will find these things in the morning. What will bring her here?”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself, dear. The thraxle first. I think it will answer most of your questions.”

  I twist the thraxle to the right and it answers the question I ask myself often: If I were to die right now, how would that be?

  I see it unfold in an instant, like an intense recollection triggered by some scent or object: Into the abyss, like Simon, the dogs and I disappear. Katyana and Dylan’s grief is overwhelming. They remember me fondly as a wonderful influence on their lives they’ll never forget. They both prosper and love many others and cherish and celebrate my memory. Katyana passes through these woods searching for me, stumbling across the artifacts Mom left for her. Her research on them, her lone solace during a time of inconsolable grief, forms the cornerstone of her brilliant career.

  I twist the thraxle to the left and I don’t die right now but much, much later, defying the odds, but I’ve taken a bad fall and can’t get around on my own anymore and can’t give Katyana and Dylan anything in return for their caretaking even as it weighs them down and saps the energy from their lives because I scarcely know who I am anymore, much less who anyone else is. I become an insufferable burden. When I die they celebrate their freedom in their hearts and only wish it had come sooner, living with dreadful guilt for the rest of their lives for having such feelings about someone they’d once loved so much. The artifacts lie deep within the woods, undiscovered.

  That’s some tool, that thraxle.

  * * *

  I leave Horatio with Mom. She says she’ll show him the way home. She wants to see her other son, she says, so she can tell him the fine thing her youngest has done. I’m sure Ollie will be delighted to hear all about it. I hold her tight and tell her I love her, and we both cry a little.

  The dogs, turns out, have been ready for a long time to take this journey but have been waiting on me. There’s nothing hesitant about Myrna’s brisk gait. She’s moving like she used to when I’d take her down to the river, never pulling at the lead exactly, but pushing me to walk a good deal faster than I might otherwise. It’s been a while. It feels good. I wish I had the chance to say good-bye to those I love, but things don’t work that way, do they?

  I can feel it up ahead. It’s close. My intuition, like Mom said. The abyss. I tell the dogs it’s not far, as if that’s news. Myrna looks over her shoulder one last time to reassure me she knows the way. I guess we all do whether we want to or not. Maybe Simon’s right. Maybe we’re all going home to become the aliens we truly are. I have no regrets. I have loved this planet.

  So much love.

  Everything is perfect.

  About the Author

  Dennis Danvers has published several novels, including Circuit of Heaven (New York Times Notable, 1998), The Watch (New York Times Notable, 2002; Booklist 10 Best SF novels, 2002), and The Bright Spot (under pseudonym Robert Sydney). First novel Wilderness has been re-issued with a sexy new cover. His short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizon’s, F & SF, Realms of Fantasy, Electric Velocipede, Lady Churchill’s
Rosebud Wristlet, Lightspeed, and in anthologies Tails of Wonder and Imagination and Richmond Noir. He teaches fiction writing and science fiction and fantasy literature at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 by Dennis Danvers

  Art copyright © 2016 by Chris Buzelli