Armageddon House Read online

  What she comes up with is not the gun or bullets, but a white cardboard gift box, too large to have fit inside the locker. Mark’s certain it wasn’t in there before.

  Jenna lifts the lid to reveal a wedding dress, cream lace and ornament, or maybe white gone dingy with age. “Most of my life, I kept this beneath my bed.” She stands and holds out the dress before her so it hangs straight. The size of the dress suits the thinness she only recently achieved.

  “Jenna,” he says.

  “It’s antique, full of holes.” Her voice breaks and tears form in the corners of her eyes. “But there’s nothing else like it.”

  It’s not only colored with age, but falling apart, so ragged and threadbare it probably wouldn’t hold together if worn. “

  It’s the only one to be found,” Jenna says.

  “Is someone having a wedding?” Mark asks. “

  Remember what you always told me?” she asks.

  Mark tries to remember, struggling to come up with good, convincing words that might fix this. He can’t. He has nothing.

  “That when it’s time, we’ll know. When the end comes, it’ll be obvious. A giant wave looming on the horizon.”

  “I said that?”

  Jenna nods. “A line will mark the end of a cycle. After, there’s no more future, but also, no more doubt. No way of going back. You await the end. You open your eyes and face it when it comes.”

  He tries to remember using these words, but doesn’t even recognize the ideas they express. “What do I mean?”

  Jenna drapes the dress over the edge of his bed. “This is what it comes down to. Either the wolf has to die, or we do.”

  The wolf is another thing everyone’s been mentioning lately. Wolf is a word they all keep saying, but without understanding what it means.

  The wristwatch ticks. Mark watches Jenna begin to transform. Her hair is shorter and uneven, as if hacked away in anger with a blunt knife. She wears the dress, not only old and frayed, but muddy and wet where the hem trails on the ground, stuck through with pine needles. Her belly is swollen, arms held out to her sides.

  “This isn’t the first time,” Jenna says, overcome with sadness and regret. “I’ve told you before. I keep telling you.”

  “And I’m sorry,” Mark says, apologizing because he doesn’t remember, doesn’t even know what she means. He wishes he didn’t have to disappoint Jenna.

  She’s transformed so much, how can he look at her and not say something? Of course she knows. She must know.

  “Don’t be sorry.” Jenna smiles sadly. “Anyway, if it happens again, you won’t remember this. Probably I won’t either.”

  Mark has an idea, a possible solution. “Maybe it’s time we all go watch the videos for instructions. Aren’t there supposed to be films or something?” As soon as he says this, he doubts it. “Am I wrong? Isn’t there a rule that if we can’t continue, we find a message that tells us what to do next?”

  “That’s not true, is it?” she asks, then seems to second guess herself. “It must be written somewhere. Does anyone have the documents?”

  Mark looks around his room, as if he might find instructions sitting out in some obvious place. He shakes his head. “What about the others? Where are Polly and Greyson?”

  “Outside.” Jenna seems relieved to have been asked something she’s sure of. “Polly said they’d wait in the stairs, while Greyson calms down. We’ll all go down together.”

  “OK, you go ahead,” Mark says. “I’ll be right there, two seconds behind.”

  Jenna looks distracted. Her hand drifts to her belly. She appears shocked to find it’s flat again, like it always used to be.

  The wedding dress is draped across the bed.

  “We’ll go down, then.” Looking confused as to why Mark isn’t following, she opens the door, goes outside and closes it behind her.

  Trying not to make a sound, Mark reopens the metal box. He finds the gun, loads the four bullets, then puts the weapon in his back pocket and untucks his shirt to conceal it.

  Nine

  For Each Their Own Message

  In the stairwell echo chamber, cool wind rushes. Mark hurries down, trying to catch the others. Part of him believes there’s no chance they’ll escape without him. A small, fearful voice says, don’t end up left here all alone.

  With each level he descends, the chill grows more pronounced. At bottom, in addition to the whoosh of breeze, another sound rises to the level of notice. A deep, vibrating hum.

  “Does anybody hear that?” Mark asks, though he’s still alone.

  Something is changing, no question.

  Mark emerges from the stairs, crosses the landing and descends into the wide openness of Bottom Cavern.

  Not far off, he sees the others and jogs toward them. Jenna faces the Utgard door, now standing open, one hand gripping the outer edge. Polly and Greyson crowd behind her, all three looking into whatever lies beyond the threshold.

  The cavern room swirls with outdoor air, as if past the door must lie a forest, a scrim of trees, a clear blue lake. The outer world has found this place. Real nature, not just a picture.

  It’s the end of everything. The start of the new.

  Mark reaches the others, and sees what they see. It’s not the nature vista he expects. Beyond the door is a narrow room, barely more than a short hallway. On wood tables, left and right, stand electronic components mounted in racks, like a radio studio from a bygone era. On either side of both tables are closed doors, four in all.

  “This must be where,” Polly whispers.

  Jenna turns at Mark’s approach. “You go ahead,” she urges him. “You’re the one who’s going to know. You can explain to the rest of us.”

  Mark moves past, eyeing each of the inner doors in turn. “They’re identical. One for each.” His hand finds the latch of the rearmost door on the right.

  A voice behind him speaks. “Before you go see, sprinkle dust in your eyes.”

  Without looking back, he opens the door and finds yet another smaller room, barely more than a closet. On a wood desk rests a television or computer display that looks like it’s been assembled from mismatched parts. The smell is stale, dusty, with a hint of ozone. Before the table is a stool.

  The door swings shut behind him. The lock clicks. Mark tries the handle, which moves freely, but the door won’t budge. A deadbolt must’ve slipped into place. A trap, Mark laughs. A trap within a trap.

  He searches for any means of unlocking the bolt, but whatever controls it must be electronic rather than mechanical. Wires run from the door’s metal frame up the front wall to the ceiling, then down the back wall to the desk where they connect to exposed circuit boards in the base of the display.

  It occurs to him, or possibly he remembers, that the door should open automatically, like how it locked. This should happen after he sees what he’s meant to see. Maybe the instructions are here. Didn’t he just tell Jenna each of them would find what they needed to know, at the right time?

  It’s time now.

  The screen flashes to brightness, like the Gymnasium TV illuminated when all four exercised together. This picture isn’t game shows, but something more abstract. Forms emerge out of grey static. Dark vertical lines in the foreground overlap two horizontal halves. The narrow lines are trees, moving slightly, swaying in a wind. The horizon divides sky and water. The static makes a sound, though no speakers are apparent.

  He wants to close his eyes, to avoid seeing. But isn’t this what he’s always wanted, to learn what he doesn’t know, to be able to see beyond, and maybe finally understand?

  Mark sits on the stool, staring into the screen. He can’t help wondering what the others are experiencing. Are they waiting outside for him to finish, or already locked away within their own rooms, seeing messages on their own screens?

  Behind static, a monotone voice speaks letters and numbers in patterns, like a code.

  “I’m ready,” Mark says.

  After a pause,
questions begin, but he’s too preoccupied to pay attention at first. When he doesn’t answer the first, others follow. Several pass before Mark decides to listen and to answer. He has no idea if anyone can see him, or hear his responses. He doesn’t know who it is that’s asking.

  “Do you remember, what do you think is your name?” The voice is strange.

  “My name is Mark.”

  “Do you know, what is the number of the year?”

  “This year,” he says, intending this as an answer.

  “Can you guess, what is in my mind I’m thinking of?”

  He recalls Polly’s games, and Jenna’s, and role-playing in Lonely Tavern. Is one of the women trying to make him guess? The voice isn’t Jenna’s or Polly’s. Maybe the others are outside, somehow asking the questions in another voice, and watching his responses.

  Mark used to believe he was never quite lost, just disoriented, or sometimes confused. Walking through morning rituals, recurrent meals, a cycle of enforced exercise and dosing with strange medicines, all these actions seemed to arise from his own choices. Not automatic, never compulsory.

  The image wavers, overlaid with a face. The eyes resemble his own, but not the way his eyes really look. The way he imagines his eyes.

  The mouth moves, forming words.

  “There’s nothing after this,” someone says. “After, everything stops.”

  Wind rushes, only a sound. The screen flickers, dark, then back to light.

  Now the face superimposed over forest and lake disappears. One brief scene after another plays out, narratives depicting people alone or in groups of two, three or four. Many such scenarios pass before he realizes these are his friends, the only people he knows. They’re familiar, he recognizes them, but they’re also different somehow. More like costumed actors portraying real people based on second-hand descriptions of appearance and manner.

  Greyson, or a taller version of him with a great red beard, straddles a crack in the earth, wrestling a giant serpent. The coil wraps around his body, seeming to crush him.

  Jenna and Polly fight each other with knives. Many cuts, much blood streaming to the ground. Their moves become slow, both dying. They are sisters.

  Mark himself, slipping barefoot on a snowy mountain slope, trying to fight a wolf, much larger than himself. The wolf tears chunks from his flesh. The wounds are bloodless, but he appears to weaken and falls.

  The world flips, darkens, shifts.

  The wolf looms, mouth widens, devours him whole.

  A change of perspective. All light is sealed away, outside, then it intrudes again. Powerful hands pull open the wolf’s jaws. Someone grasps Mark and pulls him out, whole and gasping, into freezing air. A pale-skinned form, moving fast and with great force, pulls the jaws wider until bones fracture. Another jerk and the wolf’s neck is broken. It falls, lies motionless. With a long, needle-like spear, the pale figure pins the dying wolf to the ground. Mark looks on, gasping, bleeding.

  Standing over him, holding the needle that kills the wolf, is a man whose eyes are very old though his naked body is youthful, slim and hairless.

  From behind him steps a woman, similarly pale and unblemished. Like the man, she appears young in body, while conveying a sense of having watched many ages pass. Her hair is striking, white and long and very straight. Her breasts have no nipples, her eyes no lashes.

  When the young man turns, Mark sees he too lacks nipples and eyelashes. Both bodies resemble glossy, polished stone. Mark recalls twin sculptures in the Marble Museum, a man and woman who seemed to watch over the room. These two are the same.

  How long have these twin ideals of sculptural form, seeming objects to be viewed and admired, in fact been watching, waiting for the arrival of their eternal moment? How many times has Mark regarded them without seeing what existed before his eyes? Always his mind makes himself the subject, makes him the actor who flashes his vision and scrutiny onto the world, planning actions, offering judgment. The truth is, he has always required explanation before he could understand, always needed a trigger from outside himself.

  “No more being born, no more dying,” the woman says, in a familiar voice, addressing the Mark who’s watching the screen, not the Mark pulled from the wolf’s belly. “A storm turns. Run now, climb up, out. Go to a new world.”

  The slim man must be her twin. “The world is new,” he says.

  Are the others seeing this same thing, or something of their own?

  “I’ll guess what you were thinking,” Mark says, knowing his answer to the final question comes too late. “You thought of a time before we arrived.”

  The image freezes. Twins inhumanly perfect, a dying wolf, Mark’s blood-smeared actor hyperventilating in the snow. He presses knuckles into his eyes, trying to eradicate the sights. He thought it would be better to know.

  “Better to wonder,” he says, watching the screen.

  The picture doesn’t move, but new words rush, too fast to understand.

  “Who’s speaking?” Mark asks. “Is anyone listening? I hear. Can you hear me?”

  A flurry of voices, all at once. He’s overwhelmed by overlapping word-sounds, a hundred conversations superimposed.

  “Say again,” Mark says. “I can’t translate.”

  The number of voices begins to diminish, a riotous crowd, an unruly classroom, a spirited dinner party, then only a few, two, finally one. Before any meaning can be decoded or deduced, it all stops.

  His frustration at being unable to comprehend is replaced by fear. All he wants is to know what he’s supposed to do here, and maybe reclaim some degree of closeness with Jenna. He doesn’t need perfect happiness, he’s willing to work, to deal with conflicts, to have less than everything he desires, so long as the bargain is a balanced one, a net positive. But he fears he’ll never be with Jenna, and no amount of obsessing or wanting will make any difference. She’s drifting or pulling away, out of reach.

  The screen flickers, light without shape. None of the images make sense. He’s afraid all the messages are over, without any clarity granted. The screen will go dark, the door will unlock and he’ll have no choice but to return to before.

  “What if they’re outside, waiting?” Mark whispers. “Hoping for me to explain?”

  What if they’ve changed so much, we don’t recognize each other? The possibility disturbs him.

  He stands, one eye still on the screen, and glances at the door.

  “I’ll go out and find them coming out of their rooms at the same moment. Same as before, Jenna, Polly and Greyson.” He says their names, proving he remembers.

  There’s another possibility. He reaches behind, finds the gun in his pocket. His hands tremble, contemplating this idea. A heartbeat pounds in his ears, synchronized with pulsing light from the monitor.

  Without the gun, he might consider other options. With it, he knows what he has to do.

  “I know the end can only ever be this,” a voice says.

  He wants to wake with a new, blank mind, to face another day unlike all the others. No hard choices. A day fresh and empty, ready to be filled.

  “There was never anything left,” a voice says.

  “What happens when I open the door?” Mark demands, moving closer to it.

  No answer. The screen is dark.

  He touches the door handle, not trying to turn it, but lightly grasping, preparing himself for the possibility of trying to go out.

  One hand disables the pistol’s safety, the other prepares to open the door.

  “Talk me out of ending this,” he says.

  A woman’s voice answers. “This is what life is. Race in fear of being left behind, fight without reason, try to build events into a story that makes sense. These events don’t connect. These days have no meaning.”

  “But—” His breath heaves, as he finds himself fighting off terrible emotion. He fears some sort of imminent breakdown. He wants out.

  “Imagine what bright new world blinks awake, eyes lit by the fires
of withered old ones burning,” her voice says.

  Whose voice? The suggestion emerges from himself.

  Mark hesitates. What are the possibilities, once this door opens?

  He’ll be alone, and discover he always has been.

  The others will have escaped while he lingered, trying to master his fears.

  Maybe they’ll be outside waiting, and with Mark they’ll climb the stairs and go up to see the sky.

  Polly and Greyson might want to leave, and Jenna will ask him to remain, just the two of them.

  What else? There must be more possibilities.

  But this is the only real ending, without the security of explanation and closure.

  A new, harsh vibration pains his ears, sickening his gut. It’s like touching the oscillating metal cylinder in Medical Center. A rising hum, too terrible to withstand.

  He wants the universe to be stable and persistent, but everything is conflict, selfishness and agonizing disintegration.

  This world is hungry to end.

  Something feels different, but he can’t see it yet. A future can’t be held until it arrives. Each present moment is just a pinpoint, flashing too quickly in passing. All that exists and can be grasped is behind. The past moves slowly. Memory remains within reach, more vivid than perception.

  Mark swings open the door and emerges, gun extended.

  He faces a view of water, a flat blue mirror beyond scattered trees. It’s not real, it’s too perfect. It’s all he can see, the same thing he sees every morning.

  Uncertainty should be harder than knowing, but it’s easier. Confusion is comfortable, proceeding with blank mind, each day pure vacancy.

  Mark is ready to transform. Nothing exists beyond his eyes and his mind.

  He hears others nearby, recognizes sounds of their movements, and familiar breathing. What remains? A view of water, and promise of escape. Someone to hope for, and a future that might eradicate the failures and despairs of yesterday.

  “Remember, the new world is born in spring,” someone says, the same woman’s voice as before. How has he never known her?