"Oberon Hill"

The moment I stepped through the front door of that house, I knew I would be buying it. It was a foreclosure, and the bank was selling it off for comparative peanuts, but that wasn’t its charm. I think I would have probably bought it at its peak price. The house was home the moment I first looked at it. The old, worn tile in the kitchen didn’t bother me, nor did the style-less blue carpet in the den. Something about it reminded me of the house I had grown up in.

Maybe it was the woods. The back of the house had a beautiful wooden deck and very little yard - the trees, held back seemingly only by a flimsy-looking chain link fence, started perhaps fifteen feet from the outer edge of the deck. Several of the bigger ones worked together to shade the entire narrow stretch of grass with their branches. At least one tree, the largest along the verge, stretched branches far enough to shade parts of the deck. Because the house was on the end of the street, the deck was just as private as the inside of the house - none of the neighboring houses had views of it. The front of the house faced down the street, providing views of nothing but a very mundane stretch of suburbia that the developer had named Oberon Hill. I didn’t see anything shakespearean about the community, but it was quiet, only a mile and a half from the freeway, and closer to my job than my current apartment.

The negotiations and paperwork took a week to complete, and as soon as I could hire a moving crew and schedule a few days off I had my things boxed up and moved to the new house. My dozen boxes of odds and ends, bed, and computer desk seemed wholly insufficient to populate the Oberon Hill house, but I knew that would solve itself in time.

The moving crew had been kind enough to move my bed up to the master bedroom and help me assemble it, but it was the only thing that had made it to the second floor. The windows didn’t even have curtains. It felt strange after having lived in nothing but apartments in my adult life to sleep in my own house, knowing that the closest person was not downstairs or across the hall but fifty yards away in the next house down the street.

That second day I spent all morning moving boxes into the rooms they’d be needed in and getting the essentials out. I hadn’t called to get internet service yet, so I left my computer boxed and its desk in pieces - it would be a week at least before that worked for anything I wanted it to do. Every time I passed a window the early June day called to me, and I was reminded of that broad, partly shaded deck.

Just before noon, I went out and bought a deck furniture set, as well as a case of sodas. Not yet owning a refrigerator, I plugged the sink drain and filled the basin with cold water, and put the sodas in there to cool while I put together the table and one of the four chairs. This finished, and soda in hand, I sat down to a well-deserved break in the shade. I noticed that the tree which overshadowed most of the porch was a big oak - I don’t know much about trees, but I can tell an oak tree from the shape of the leaves. As trees go, it was a good looking thing, healthy and definitely older than the Oberon Hill development itself. It probably barely escaped being cut down by an accident of its position just outside a dotted line on a planning map. The branch that overshadowed me looked thick enough to stand on, and ran arrow-straight back to the trunk at the forest’s edge. Part of me fantasized about tying a rope ladder to that branch and climbing up to see where one could get from there - but I discarded the idea. I was twenty-six, and such childish fantasies should have been long abandoned.

As I was looking up into the oak’s canopy, thinking these thoughts, I saw motion, more rapid than the breeze moving the leaves. I didn’t get a good look at it - something narrow and smallish scuttling down one of the smaller branches and out of sight. Too big to be a squirrel, though. I dismissed it as being a raccoon or a possum - the area had plenty of both.

I realized I’d need to eat lunch, and headed inside, locating the microwave in its box and using it to heat canned soup. I ate in my chair out on the deck, as I had not yet set up furniture inside. The day was growing a bit warm, but I didn’t want to go back inside when I’d finished - in the shade, if I didn’t move too much, the temperature was perfect.

As the flies began to discover the remains of my soup, I debated getting up, going back to unpacking the boxed contents of my life. But watching the breeze shift the oak leaves, and listening to the bird calls from the woods was relaxation I’d not known in some time, so I stayed. I was in no real rush to unpack.

I closed my eyes after a time, to save the effort of blinking them, and perhaps I fell asleep, because a rustling sound directly above my head was the next thing I remember distinctly. Expecting it to be the return of whatever animal I’d startled earlier, I opened my eyes slowly.

What I was looking at didn’t register for a protracted moment as I took in the creature crouched above me, peering down curiously. It was shaped much like a human, with long, slender arms and legs, but it was small - no bigger than a large housecat. Its skin was the pale, creamy green color of the inner bark of a tree, and I could see a lot of that - it was completely nude, and undoubtedly female in form. It was crouched on that thick oak branch that overhung the deck, hands grasping smaller branches for support to allow it to lean down towards me. The face, bent down closest to me, was what I got the best look at - it was very human-like as well, with a pair of extraordinarily large, white-less black eyes, a smallish, pointed nose, thick lips slightly parted as if in interested concentration, and swept-back, pointed ears. Bedraggled, almost mossy hair hung in strands and clumps all about its head.

That moment stopped when what I was seeing hit the logical parts of my brain, which kicked up a screaming fit. With a wordless yell of surprise, I jumped out of my chair, knocking it aside. Whatever it was that had taken such an interest in me had apparently not noticed that I was awake until I yelled, and as I retreated into the house I could hear it clambering through the canopy, making all haste to retreat from me as I had from it.

I sat just inside the sliding glass door for several minutes, trying to convince myself that what I had thought I’d seen had been the tail end of a dream, or something easily explained. In this, I wholly failed. I looked out on that pleasant, shaded deck and shuddered to think that I’d so cavalierly dozed out in the open.

Trying to settle my nerves, I went back to unpacking, but after an hour I realized that I had not gotten beyond the room from which one reached the deck, and that I could not help but keep an eye out the window toward that old oak. Fear had subsided and been replaced by curiosity - surely something the size of a housecat couldn’t prove too much of a threat on its own, I reasoned. It was something I knew instinctively should not exist, and this mystery drew my attention. What was it that I had seen?

I eventually abandoned the unpacking effort and carefully walked back out onto the deck. The leaves of the oak were silent - I realized then I’d never seen a bird land on it, or a squirrel hop among its branches, despite this wildlife being quite common in the neighboring trees. Perhaps I had met the reason.

I set my deck chair right side up and sat down in it, leaning back and staring up into the branches. Besides breathing, I did not move, not even when my nose started to itch. To keep my mind off of it, I started counting seconds.

There was a rustling from somewhere by the tree’s trunk just after I counted ninety-three, and another closer when I got to one hundred twelve. The fear came back, less this time, but I tried to ignore it, telling myself that one small thing like that wouldn’t be able to overpower me.

There was a flash of green-tinged creamy motion just above me at one hundred thirty-three, and a few moments later, those big, black eyes peeked out from a fork in the tree limb. At that point, the itch in my nose was growing maddening, but given the circumstances I found it relatively easy to set aside.

It - she - met my eyes unblinkingly, and I found it difficult not to look away from that liquid charcoal stare. After a few seconds of this uncertain meeting of the eyes the pale face vanished, and I slowly let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. This was not a dream, and I knew there was no animal that looked anything like that in the entire region. I was not mistaken - this was something wholly unknown.

After a moment, she re-appeared, peeping out from a new perch slightly farther out from the tree’s trunk. Seemingly after assuring herself that I had not moved, she clambered out onto a thinner branch jutting out from the main, and I marveled that it did not even bend at her weight, which was probably around ten pounds. That she was entirely naked seemed not to bother her in the least, and I got a much better look at her form than I had previously - far better than I particularly wanted.

The itch on the bridge of my nose then intruded into my observations by spiking in intensity. I could not keep my facial muscles from twitching, but I refused to move my hand and risk startling this creature away again.

That curious, wide-eyed face staring down at me smiled impishly at my discomfort, and I nearly bolted again - her teeth were pointed, an even row all the same size. Slowly, as if not to panic me, she brought one slim hand up to her own face, and touched the bridge of her small nose with one finger.

I wondered at first how she knew what it was that was bothering me, but that question was crowded out of my mind when, with a cool sensation, the itch on my nose vanished, just as the tip of her finger made contact.

I’m sure my eyes went wide at that, which seemed only to entertain this creature further. With a shark’s-tooth grin large enough that I was sure her face would tear at the contortion, she watched my surprise and my horror in an unsettlingly knowing manner.

I opened my mouth to speak, to ask her who she was, but stopped when one of her tiny, pale hands touched her lips in a shushing gesture. I realized my folly - I had no reason to expect in this creature the ability to understand spoken English, so the words would be useless. As if to answer my thoughts, she nodded. I didn’t consider myself before then an easy person to read, but this creature seemed to have no trouble whatsoever, and I tried not to speculate as to why. Part of my mind did anyway, and fed my fear with the results.

Forgetting myself, I shifted in my chair slightly, and my tiny observer disappeared in a flurry of limbs and a rustle of displaced leaves, retreating up to the cover provided by that large, thick oak branch. Wincing, I held perfectly still again, and after about fifteen seconds her head peeked out cautiously again. I offered a thin, apologetic smile, trying to radiate harmlessness, if such a thing is possible.

It seemed to work, because she came further into view and mimicked my smile. I wondered how I could communicate that I meant no harm to a creature I could not talk to without moving, and decided it was impossible.

The sound of a car pulling into my driveway startled her away again, though, this time she retreated all the way back to the oak’s bole. Annoyed at the interruption, I got up and went inside to see who it was. My visitor turned out to be the realtor who had sold me the house, coming to check to see how I was settling in. I told her I appreciated the thought, and that I loved the house, trying to hold up my end of the conversation as if nothing strange was going on.

She stayed and chatted for nearly an hour, and it was getting on in the afternoon by the time she left. She mentioned that she’d been in and out of the place with almost a dozen potential buyers before me, but that none of them had been all that interested, despite agreeing with me that it was all things considered a very nice house. Not once did she mention seeing anything strange in the woods, but I didn’t ask directly, not wanting to draw attention to what I’d seen just yet. Probably, I decided as the realtor’s car pulled out, she hadn’t ever sat quietly on that porch enough for the tree creature’s curiosity to overcome its skittishness. Perhaps the previous owner had, though.

As I expected that the creature would be hiding for a long time after the car’s engine died away into the distance, I set to unpacking some more of my things. The going was still slower than optimal, because I made sure to glance out a window  toward the big oak every five or ten minutes, but I kept at it all afternoon and into the evening. By the time the sun dipped below the trees, I had reassembled my desk in the study and re-assembled my modular bookshelves, as well as moved all my kitchen implements to their proper places. This was almost half of the boxes - apartment life had taught me to own little.

I stopped there, though, when a look out the window showed not the return of my tree-dweller but the appearance of a multitude of dancing lights weaving in and out of the treeline. It was the largest swarm of fireflies I had ever seen, and it stretched all down the forest verge as far as I could see. It was mesmerising, and like a child I went out and jumped from the deck to the lawn with the aim of catching a few.

As I walked across the narrow yard to the fence at the treeline, the insects seemed to grow bolder, flowing out from the verge to dance in the open air over the grass. As they hummed past me, I reached out to pin a few between cupped hands. The little beetles were larger than I remembered, the smallest I managed to snag being a quarter of an inch long. I did my best not to hurt the creatures, of course - that might mean less of these displays in the future.

I spun around, trying to catch a particularly large, plump specimen that had zipped past my head, and a slight creak from the chain-link fence was the only warning I had before I was tackled from behind and wrestled to the ground by something wiry-slim, but far stronger than myself. I might have been concerned, but between the dream-like illumination of a thousand fireflies and the obvious playfulness of the attack, I couldn’t really figure out where I had misplaced my fear response.

It took me several seconds to break the playful pin enough to twist so that my face was not buried in the grass, and while the face I saw stooped over me was familiar it was not at all expected. I’d been pinned by my curious tree-dweller - but she was no longer cat-sized. She was in fact as large as me, though obviously not any better clothed, and I found that more than a little distracting.

As if noticing my distraction, or perhaps just deciding that that was the correct opportunity, her tight-lipped smile broke into another wide, toothy grin. In the faint, shifting light her jet-black eyes reflected the greenish motes of the fireflies, and to keep mine from wandering improperly I focused on that. She had about her very pleasant, almost intoxicating fragrance - a cross between the smell of a cool, dewy morning in that careful hour before dawn and the smell of a pile of freshly raked autumn leaves.

She held me down for a long, and to me, awkward moment, during which I found my misplaced fear response. Was she going to eat me with those sharp predator’s teeth?

Just as I had this thought, her grip loosened, and she sprung lithely back, offering me an extended hand. I hesitated, but let her help me up. Her palm was smooth and cool, not at all calloused from clambering about on the rough oak bark, and her grip was strong. That, at least, I could understand - I’d tried free-hand climbing once, and learned the hard way that the trick was strong, lean limb muscle. I subconsciously brushed the bits of grass and dirt from my clothing before looking back up at her. Again, I tried to keep my eyes above chin level, with moderate success. Every time my eyes strayed, it seemed to entertain her greatly.

As I had earlier, I took a breath and opened my mouth to speak, but she leaned in close to put an index finger over my lips and shook her head. My questions died on my tongue under that playful smile, and without them I gestured up to the deck, offering implicitly what hospitality my new house could offer.

She shook her head, and gestured down. I followed the gesture to her right foot, around the bare ankle of which a cord was tied. Looking at it, I realized it was not a cord but a vine, a green-skinned creeper that was so vibrant in color that her skin’s touch of green looked perfectly white next to it. I stepped to the side to follow its path - the tendril snaked across the grass and hung over the top of the chain-link fence, where it disappeared into the gloom near the trunk of that big old oak.

I met her eyes again with the best questioning and concerned look I could muster - was she a prisoner? Was there anything I could do to help?

Her gaiety had not faded, and she shook her head again. I sensed that she was not a prisoner, that the tendril served some other, less fathomable, purpose.

A slim hand on my shoulder interrupted my attempts to determine what that purpose was, and as I looked into her gigantic, fully black eyes, I saw the futility of my ways there reflected. I was stopping to try to explain events at the expense of events themselves, rather than going along and relying on memory to make sense of things.

She laughed, perhaps reading my realization in my face. It was the first sound I’d heard from her lips, and my heart melted at the sound of it - definitely not human, sharp, but still managing to be soft and breathy. I stopped myself before I wondered what sort of vocal apparatus would be necessary to produce that sort of noise, and chuckled a bit at my own foolish desire to make sense of something I didn’t understand. This was not the time to be pausing for thought, I knew implicitly.

As soon as she’d recovered from her laughter, she threaded one of her slim, smooth-skinned arms around my own and led me back toward the verge of the trees. Without really breaking her stride, she shifted her grasp to my hand and in a single step leapt up to perch her bare feet on top of the chain-link fence, effortlessly turning in the air to face me. The fence creaked slightly, but didn’t bend nearly as much as I expected it to. She tugged at my hand, urging me to do the same.

I almost hesitated and tried to tell her I couldn’t possibly perform that feat of agility, but with a beautiful warning look she scattered these ideas into the swarm of fireflies. I shook my head, and trying to mimic exactly the motion she’d made, I took a half step and jumped.

I was almost surprised when I didn’t bound up as weightlessly as she had, and when she pulled on my arm mid-jump and yanked me the rest of the way I was definitely caught off-guard. Accidentally or intentionally, this extra impetus drew me directly into a collision with her, and my momentum tipped us both over and into the bushes on the other side. A branch covered in soft evergreen needles whacked me in the face and brought tears to my eyes, and it took several moments for them to clear.

When I could finally see again, my companion’s face swam into view at a distance of mere inches, and I realized that I was lying directly on top of her. Upon that realization, I became immediately aware of every curve of her delicate form, and my face, already red from the stinging blow, grew hotter and redder. I struggled to extricate myself, but found among the things entangling me her arms about my waist in a comfortable but very firm grip. Slowly, deliberately, she arched her neck up and pecked a kiss on my chin before breaking into a shark-tooth smile. Perhaps, I realized, I had misinterpreted for a predatory grin something else entirely.

I hesitated, but before I could stop to think about things the reasoning portion of my brain, buffeted already by crashing waves of the day, gave way almost audibly. Deprived of its clawing hold on rational behavior, I did what I realized I’d been dying to do, and I leaned my head down to return the kiss, but rather than meeting her chin or her cheek my lips found hers. My experience with romance up to that point being woefully insufficient to inform me for the situation, I reacted at first by tensing in shock, but relaxed almost immediately, there being no reasoning left to keep the shock from fading away. If my kiss was clumsy, she did not seem to mind.

We lay side by side there for some time, arms encircled, and the world seemed to contract around us. To me, there was only the ground, which despite being covered in dry evergreen needles and the occasional twig felt as soft and comforting as a fine mattress, the air, which filled with her fragrance was soupy-thick and intoxicating, and of course those huge, liquid black eyes. It seemed that there were no secrets between us, that I could see everything going on in her mind and her see into mine. The thoughts I saw were wholly alien to any rational cognitive patterns, yet so familiar that I didn’t think I would consider it strange for them to pass through my own mind. Behind those black, featureless orbs, chaos reigned, and there was no semblance of structure or convention. Somewhere in my own mind I knew that my own rational processes, which had failed for the moment, would return on their own in full force, but I didn’t want them to. I wanted to lie there forever, to grow small  with the rising of the sun and scamper among the branches of the big old oak tree forever with her.

I didn’t need to peer into her mind to know that was impossible, though. I doubt now that had I gone looking for this answer, that she would have known one way or the other. That sort of question, that search for its answer, was anathema to every synapse firing in head. In her mind there was no questioning spirit, no drive to find an answer when a question is discovered, and no particular impetus to ask questions. There was no loop of cause to effect and back to cause, only a series of events without cause and causing nothing. There was only the drive to experience, to see and hear and feel and play, without any discernment or processing.

We lay there, unmoving, barely breathing, and it seemed that our minds were minds so intimately interlinked that the idea of physical intimacy was a fumbling and pointless exercise by comparison. Time passed, and I have no clear idea of how long. Perhaps it was minutes, perhaps hours, but at the time it felt like an eternity, like hundreds of years of cool night uninterrupted by the inconvenient brightness of the sun. I showed her my life, stored in my memory, and she showed me hers - I saw through her mind’s eye the old oak grow from an acorn to its current majestic reaches, and I saw the developer’s construction crew scuttle about, only a few yards from its bole, tearing down some of the other trees and erecting the houses of Oberon Hill. In her mind, I saw the previous owner, a large, unhappy-looking man, through the windows of the house, barely bothering to stop once in a while to look outside. Then I saw myself, dozing on the house’s deck, and my eyes opened at the rustling sound -

I opened my eyes at the sudden feeling of being alone inside my head, and found myself lying on the dry pine-needles, with a twig digging cruelly into my side, entirely alone. From the direction of the big oak tree came a sound which could have been mistaken for that of a bird, if one hadn’t heard it before, if one didn’t know the beautiful dark-eyed creature who that laugh belonged to. I crawled out of the underbrush and clambered clumsily over the chain-link fence, heading for the narrow stairs that led up to the deck. The fireflies had all retired for the night, and the only light came from the house windows and from the crescent moon high in the sky.

As I got up for work the next morning, I paused for a long moment to look out to the old oak tree, knowing without reason to that the chaos there contained would show its face again when the burden of sanity weighs heavily on me. Or perhaps when it presses lightest, or perhaps at some more moderate time. She isn’t bound to the loop of cause and effect, or to question and answer, only to action and experiences of every moment.

I take my dinner out onto the deck every evening, weather permitting, hoping to spy that green-tinted face peeping out from the leaves of that big old oak. Even though I have yet to spy any movement among the oak’s branches, I know not to be discouraged - even in the universe of the rational and sane, past performance is no guarantee of future results. How much more true must that be in her world?

"Hide and Seek" (Part 5 of ?)

Part 4 to this story posted previously (here)

“Carrie, you’re fourteen. This can’t go on for the rest of your life. You have to stand up to her eventually.” Mark said, just loud enough to carry through the bathroom door but not loud enough to carry downstairs to the kitchen. Carrie was in there, retching her guts out, the effects of Lauren’s latest set of “vitamins” for the teenaged girl. Mark hadn’t heard any sound for a few minutes, though, so he suspected that she’d already expelled everything she had in her system, hence his willingness to try to start a conversation.

“Of course it will last forever.” Came Carrie’s weak reply. “She’s going to try to keep her claws in me all my life.”“That’s my point!” 

Mark, encouraged by the reply, pressed on. “If you make a show of not taking the vitamins, she’ll have to stop.” Mark, eighteen, was starting his senior year of high school and in the process of looking for colleges, which made him keenly aware that he wouldn’t always be around to take Caroline’s side.

“Mark...” Carrie almost audibly shook her head from behind the door. “She’ll get me declared mentally unstable. You know she will.” Caroline coughed loudly, and Mark winced at the sound.

Mark considered this for a moment, remembering the few times in the last few years he’d tried to broach the topic of treatment of Carrie with his mother. He had to admit that his little sister was probably right - Lauren had lashed out verbally and physically at Mark for even taking Carrie’s side on many occasions. Of course, Mark’s growth spurt had ensured that he really wasn’t afraid of her anymore - Lauren, four inches shorter, thirty-two years older, and fifteen pounds lighter, couldn’t really hurt him even if she tried. “You might be right. But you shouldn’t take the pills.”

“You’re probably right.” Carrie agreed grudgingly. “Koffer doesn’t even look at me before he prescribes, how would he know?” Carrie was referring to the fourth doctor in as many years that she had regular appointments with - or rather, that their mother had appointments with to discuss everything she disliked about Caroline and how best to go about correcting these deficiencies. Halwicz, the first, had at one point suggested to Lauren that she explore non-pharmaceutical options, apparently, and the next two hadn’t seen anything in Caroline’s behavior that had suggested a need for medication. As far as Mark could tell indirectly, the current one, a self-described child behavioral specialist, was a quack, and Caroline had far less charitable words to say about the man.

“Exactly.” Mark encouraged. “I mean, you might have to fake it for Mom, but that’s better than the alternative, right?”

“Not much better.” Carrie sounded dejected. “Mark, some days I think I should just leave.”

Mark started at this. His sister, running away? Things were bad sometimes, but he hadn’t thought they were unworkable at any point. After all, Carrie could easily outsmart Lauren even drugged halfway into a coma. Mark knew he wasn’t the mental star of the family, but even he had long since begun to feel like his mother was more to be pitied and outmaneuvered than directly opposed. “Carrie, that seems a little... extreme, don’t you think?”

“Maybe.” Carrie coughed again, and Mark was pretty sure that one was more chunky than the previous one. “Roz offered to give me a place to stay, if I can get there.”

Mark knew that Carrie’s ever-present imaginary companion could hardly shelter her. As far as Mark could tell, “Roz” existed only in Carrie’s head, a sort of semi-autonomous piece of her psyche that gave her advice and acted as a sort of peanut gallery to Carrie’s life. As far as he knew, he was the only one who knew this - and yes, it was bizarre, but Mark didn’t think it was bizarre enough to justify his mother’s actions. Caroline, after all, was a good student, was well-behaved, and didn’t bother anyone - a little bit of insanity now and then was well within her rights, in the older Farner’s mind. In addition, she had gotten good in recent years at keeping that insanity between herself and her brother. People still thought she was a little off, but she didn’t scare her classmates or teachers anymore.
 
“I’m not sure how you’d take her up on that, though.” Mark said, playing along reflexively. He’d grown up around Carrie, after all - playing along with the “Roz” game was second nature to him He didn’t doubt for a moment that there was a voice in Carrie’s head that she called “Roz”, but he didn’t really think, as he had years before, that this entity was an autonomous individual.

“Me neither.” Caroline grumbled. “Even I can’t go that far, but - ” Caroline broke off suddenly, as if interrupted.

“You okay, Carrie?” Mark inquired after a moment.

“Yeah. Roz just reminded me of something.” Came the reply. “What’s in those pills, truth serum? You very nearly got me talking beyond the Line.”

The Line again. Carrie’s word for the boundary between things she could tell Mark and things she couldn’t, for some undisclosed reason. Part of Mark wanted very much to know what secrets his sister kept, but they were hers and not his to ask for. “Want me to go away?” Mark asked hesitantly.

 There was a low, murmured sound from Carrie, which Mark didn’t quite make out, but before he could ask her to repeat that, the door opened, and a pale, disheveled Carrie poked her head out. If it weren’t for the fact that she still looked like death, Mark knew, Caroline would be a rather attractive girl - and she was at the age where boys were beginning to notice. That, combined with the fact that Mark would be leaving for college in less than a year, only strengthened his resolve to keep Carrie off anything that might cloud her judgement. Bitterly, he mentally fumed that Lauren would give her own daughter Roofies every day before school if she thought that would make Caroline move a little closer to the impossible daughter ideal.

“No, I don’t want you to go away.” Carrie replied to Mark’s earlier question, except Mark took it to have a second meaning. With a wince, Mark offered Carrie his arm, which she weakly accepted, and guided her down the hall toward her bedroom.

“You’re right.” She said again, as he opened the room door for her. “No more of those pills. Worst ones yet.” Carrie released Mark and leaned on the doorframe.

 “I’ll go get you some water.” Mark changed the subject. “Why don’t you lie down.”

Carrie nodded, and ducked into her room, so Mark went downstairs to the kitchen. He was dismayed, though, when he got there and his mother was sitting in front of the sink, fiddling with some new kitchen implement ordered from the 800 number in a loud commercial. She looked up as Mark entered, and rolled her eyes in annoyance. “Hungry again, Mark?” She shook her head. “Kitchen’s closed. You’re on your own.”

Mark shook his head. “Just want a glass of water.” He decided not to mention it was for Caroline - that would probably lead to a screed about how Mark “always took his sister’s side over the side of the woman who birthed him” or something like that.

Lauren seemed to buy it, returning her attention to the device in her hands, so Mark grabbed a glass and a few ice cubes, then went to fill it from the tap.

“Tap water, Mark?” Lauren shook her head, and gestured to the chrome machine next to the sink. “How many times do I have to tell you about all the things in that that are bad for you? Get it out of the filter.”

Mark grudgingly obeyed, letting the machine fill the glass at a slow trickle, while Lauren rambled on about the health benefits of pH balance and microclustering and a pile of other stuff that Mark knew from basic high school chemistry was pseudoscience at best and a hoax at worst. He was pretty sure that Lauren didn’t even notice when he retreated, water in hand, and headed back upstairs - she was still talking along that line of thought.

Carrie, curled up on her bed, looked half-asleep when Mark peeked her door open, but she waved him in and sat up enough to accept the water. One sip of it, though, and she made a face. “This is from that machine, isn’t it?” She asked.

“Yeah.” Mark shrugged. “How can you tell? I can never taste a difference.”

“Always tastes... sharp. I dunno.” Carrie, despite her protest, drained the glass. “It’s annoying is all.” She muttered as she set it down, returning to her previous curled-up state. “Thanks though.”

Mark turned to leave, but Carrie reached out and grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “Mark, close the door.” She asked, and her older brother could not but do as was requested.

As soon as Mark had closed the door, he felt a sort of chill, of the kind he associated with Carrie at her most unnerving. It was that feeling that he, years before, had associated with “Roz”, when he was still childlike enough to believe that that alleged entity was more than just one symptom of Carrie’s endearing (to Mark, anyway) disregard for notions of sanity. “What is it?” Mark prompted quietly as soon as the door was shut.

“I know I’ve made your life trouble, since Dad died.” Carrie sighed. “You’re always looking out for me, even when that gets you in trouble with Mom.”

“Carrie, all the crap Mom’s put me through on your account is her fault, not yours.” Mark interrupted. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Let me finish.” Carrie’s tired, nauseated expression melted away into one of fierce frustration for a moment, and Mark nearly stepped back in surprise. Carrie was hard to rile, most of the time. “I think there’s a time coming where you won’t be able to do that anymore.”

Mark had already been thinking about the fact that he was college-bound in less than a year, so took that to be what she meant. Before he could respond, though, Carrie continued. “But Mark, I want you to promise me something.”

“What’s that?” Mark queried, expecting that she was going to elicit a promise to visit, or to call regularly, or something, all of which Mark knew he’d be doing after he left for college anyway.

“Don’t you ever start thinking I’m just your crazy sister.” Carrie said, which matched nothing that Mark was expecting. “Promise me that you won’t start dismissing what I say and do as crazy just because you don’t understand it.”

Mark nodded, frowning. “I haven’t yet, and I won’t, I promise. Though I can’t promise I’ll understand. I don’t think I ever have.”

Carrie gave a single-breath chuckle. “That may change, Mark. Roz and I both think you could see the world my way, if you took the time to learn how.”

Mark shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t have my own Roz yet.” He intended this to be sort of light-hearted, but it was clear his sister didn’t take it that way.

“Roz told me this a long time ago - she’s not like others. You don’t want your own.” Carrie replied, seemingly reflexively, then jumped a little as if poked with a needle and looked away. “Apparently I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.” She admitted, sitting up a little and leaning against the headboard. “That’s a subject beyond the Line, sorry Mark.”

Mark frowned a little, not immediately replying. He was genuinely unsure how to make sense of any of that. Part of him wanted to abuse the mind-numbing effects of the drug that had made Carrie feel so ill, but the rest of him hated the thought of taking advantage. Yes, he could learn something about what was beyond her Line, what was inside her skull that had never gotten out, but Mark knew that that would violate her trust. “Should I go then? That’s the second time since you took the pills that you’ve said too much.”

Carrie shrugged. “I think I just need to sleep it off.”

Mark turned to leave, but as his sister laid back down in the bed she spoke once more.. “Remember, Mark. You promised.” She said seriously.

Mark turned back, and acknowledged with a nod and a thin smile, then left Carrie to sleep off the effects of the new medication.

---

The translations had slowly become routine, and Mark soon lost count of the number of times he had pushed the limit of the strange, springy translation boundary. His first run of the evening resulted in only fifteen translations, but in the first ten he’d beaten his prior record with a chain of twenty that turned his face red and sweaty with effort. It was a strange feeling, the exertion - not a muscle in his body was being strained, but he regularly had to forcibly relax his tense shoulders and arms - they seemed to sympathetically want to share the strain of the higher-order translations, as if doing so would take the effort off of his brain.

Soon twenty was surpassed, then thirty, and after what seemed like a herculean effort to break thirty-seven Mark broke off to get a drink, not remembering to snap himself back first. The apartment outside the mirror looked slightly dim and grayish, almost grainy. He attributed this at first to poor lighting - the hundred-watt incandescent bulb over the bar, the only light on outside the bathroom, seemed to be faint, like it was only putting out twenty watts’ worth of light.

He knew something was off, though, when the refrigerator didn’t open with his first tug. Trying again, with both hands, he managed to open it, but the force required was closer to that he would expect to move the refrigerator than to open it. It wasn’t that the door was stuck - every inch he pulled the handle back was as hard as the previous, like the hinges had been filled with thick tar or the door had been replaced with a slab of solid lead. The light inside also seemed wan, distant, and pale.

Carefully, Mark tried to lift a can of soda from inside the door. it seemed to weigh as much as a whole twenty-four pack case, if not more, and he had to navigate it out of its shelf with both hands. Setting the soda on the counter, he thought better of trying to pull the tab to open it. He knew immediately what was causing the strangeness, and, without bothering to return to the mirror, started another translation. Rather than pushing the boundaries with intent to break through, he pushed only until he felt resistance and then stopped.

The unmistakable settling sensation came back, far stronger this time than it had before, and Mark shook off a light feeling of vertigo that came with it. Almost immediately the light in the overhead bulb brightened back to its full hundred-watt yellow-white cheeriness. Experimentally, Mark picked up the can of soda - it was back to normal weight.

Mark drank the soda slowly, considering the implications. The world faded out when one accomplished enough steps in Carrie’s process - did that mean that he, too, would appear to fade out? Carrie had always been good at hiding herself - was this her secret? Could she simply step away from things, fading into almost nothing?

His eyes fell on the book, and Mark remembered that it was supposed to have a title. He hadn’t been paying attention to it moments before, but he wondered if thirty-seven was enough to see the writing that was mentioned inside.

Finishing his drink, Mark picked up Carrie’s instruction manual and carried it into the bathroom, and started another set. At twenty, he looked over to the book - nothing. At thirty, nothing. At thirty-five, the cover was grainy and hazy, but then everything besides his reflection looked a little grainy and dull. After the thirty-eighth, Mark thought he saw something, a discoloration on the book’s cover. Heartened, he pushed against the resistance to the next translation, and broke thirty-nine. The smudgy discoloration resolved itself into letters that swam into unreadability when he looked directly at them, but the dullness of the rest of his world made it clear to Mark that he was close. Turning back to the mirror, he pushed against the fortieth, expecting it to be the last keeping him from reading the title of Carrie’s book, wondering how many of the questions he’d always had about his little sister he’d have answered if he broke past.

But the resisting force, like a metaphysical trampoline, stymied his efforts again, and Mark did not just settle back - as if the enthusiasm for moving beyond forty was countered by enthusiasm for sending him back, Mark felt not settling but wrenching. His stomach turned, and he was immediately grateful that he had been practicing in the bathroom, as his dinner, now thoroughly mixed with the can of soda from moments prior, made a break for the exit.

Deciding after his insides had stopped heaving that that was perhaps enough translation for one night, Mark cleaned himself off and got into bed. Until now he hadn’t considered that the translations were anything but harmless, but between the dulling of his senses and the snap-back being able to make him sick (even though Mark was historically resistant to motion sickness of the usual types) Mark could no longer assume that the trick Carrie’s little book had taught him was harmless. How many translations before an incautious snap-back caused Mark permanent damage, or killed him? A hundred? Sixty?

As he lay thinking in the darkness, the cold feeling darted down his spine, and he had another, far more disturbing thought - if the translations were not harmless, what about the repetitive cold feeling, that Carrie seemed to imply was the result of contact with an invisible, intangible being, as Mark remembered from her childhood games? Supposing that entity did indeed exist, being associated somehow with the translation trick, he had to assume that it too could harm him. And if the cold feeling could be trusted, that meant it was close, perhaps seated at his bedside, or crouched over him, waiting for its unlucky victim to fall asleep...

No, Mark forcibly discarded that childish line of thought. Supposing the existence of such an entity (Mark still wasn’t sure he could believe it, even after Carrie’s first several instructions), it had had the run of his apartment for two days and had not yet caused him harm. Carrie’s invisible companion had always been a source of observations and aid, at least to Carrie herself - Mark couldn’t recall any times he saw Carrie berate or disagree with her “imaginary” companion.

Still, the possibility bothered him, and eventually, with a groan, Mark rolled out of bed and opened the bedroom door, feeling stupid for even considering what he was about to do. “Look.” He said quietly into the darkness. “I know you’re in here, when you get close I get a feeling. Always have. I’m not going to get any sleep unless you leave me alone... I’d appreciate it if you weren’t in here, okay?”

Mark’s words were met by silence. Even the light hissing sound of the traffic on the road didn’t penetrate this far into the building. He realized all the things he might have done wrong. what if the entity was more a pet than a person, trained by his sister? What if it didn’t understand English?

As Mark’s mind tried to compile a full list of all the reasons he was an idiot, it was interrupted by another cold feeling. This one was different - it was stronger, localized, not trickling in from all his extremities and then wriggling up his spine but centered on one side of his face. Had he not been paying attention it might have been dismissed as a draft at first, but it lasted a full two seconds, growing, before vanishing suddenly.

Shaking his head and not fully understanding what had just happened, Mark shut the door and walked around the room, unsuccessfully searching for the cold feeling. Reasonably certain that it had left him alone for the time being, Mark got back into bed, no less confused but slightly less fearful. It had listened to him, whatever it was, which suggested to him that it wasn’t dangerous.

At least, he decided, not for now, and not to him.