“What are you talking about?” Michael’s voice conveyed threat again, but this time he didn’t bother to correct it. “Grandmother, this is a dreadful game you’re playing. Now answer my question, please — how did you find out about my, ah, situation with Suzanne?”
Grandmother’s smile was thin and cool.
“Why, Michael,” she said, “we have known about your situation since you were a small boy.”
“You can’t have known — Suzanne and I only just separated a month ago. Why didn’t you let on earlier? In your house?”
“Don’t take that tone with me.” Grandmother glared at him through wide lenses. Now something in her tone had become as threatening as Michael’s had earlier. “Suzanne is incidental. Your true situation is that you were a selfish, stupid boy then, and now you have grown into a selfish and stupid man. We decided you bore watching since the day we made this place.”
“You — made this place?”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t recognize it,” she said. “It has changed since that afternoon.”
“This is enough,” he snarled, and opened the car door. Whatever spell had ensnared him a moment ago was gone now — he could walk as well as anyone, air came and went in his chest with ease, and his arms were strong and mobile again. He slammed his door, and strode around the front of the car, to the passenger side. Anger grew tumourously in his belly. Hadn’t he waited long enough? Grandmother had been playing games with him all evening — just one condition, she said; bring me with you; I’ll tell you a Goddamned story. And…
And now, she insulted him. Called him selfish, stupid. Then and now.
“Get out!” he shouted, pulling the door open and grabbing Grandmother by the arm, squeezing deliberately too hard. “You said you’d take me to see Grandfather, and now by hell you will do so! Is he even here?”
She came out of the car easily — almost too easily, for a woman of her size. Lifting Grandmother was like lifting a heavy coat, nothing more, and Michael stumbled back with wasted momentum when her feet landed on the ground. He regained his balance, and made a fist at her.
“I have to see Grandfather!” he shouted. “You’d better take me to him!”
She coughed again. Her eyes seemed enormous in the flat cloud-light. Infuriatingly, they didn’t seem particularly frightened. She regarded him levelly as she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a package of cigarettes.
Michael managed to hold his rage in his fist while she dug out her lighter, lit the cigarette, while she puffed the cigarette to life, up until the point where the smoke came cascading from her lips — and then it was no good. The anger leaked away, and left only a crumbling kind of shame behind. Michael grimaced at it. He’d threatened his Grandmother — manhandled her! What could be worse, more base, than that? His hand dropped, open and empty, at his side. When he finally spoke, he did so quietly.
“Please, Grandmother,” he said, “I need to fly.”
At that, Grandmother let loose another coughing laugh. “Evan told me this would be difficult,” she said. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll take you to your Grandfather. He’s in the garden.”
“The garden?”
“You remember, dear — from the movie.”
At once, it came together for Michael. He looked around the landscape — now nothing but a flattened plain, mottled with stone and debris, but fundamentally equalized by the force of the Earth. In his memory, he drew up the past — the house, with its wide glass doors, and the trees and the garden, the chaos of greenery there. The memory of it floated over the ruined ground like ghost towers.
Grandmother walked through them easily — she wasn’t even using a cane — and Michael followed. After a time, the ground beneath his feet altered, and Michael realized he was no longer walking on gravel. The ground was brick now, smashed brick and masonry, mixed with the occasional splintered piece of wood.
“This place,” said Grandmother, “was an unfortunate side effect. But it was early, and we didn’t quite understand the forces involved. And we did have to act quickly — so I suppose we really can’t blame ourselves.”
“Why did you have to act quickly?” Michael thought he might know the answer already — as he looked around, as far as he could see there was nothing standing above ankle height. There was nowhere for Grandfather to hide. Not above ground.
Grandmother stopped then, and turned around — turning, Michael saw, as though she were standing on a Lazy Susan. Or floating above the ground, just an inch. She fished into her purse, and pulled out a coil of what looked like rope. She tossed it in the air, and it unravelled slowly, drifting to him as though floating in water. Michael reached out and caught it easily. As he held it, he saw it wasn’t rope at all — it was a length of plastic hose, ribbed with wire.
“If we hadn’t done something soon,” said Grandmother, “then your Grandfather would have driven us all into the Earth, with his foolish indulgence.”
“Where is Grandfather?” said Michael. “I have to talk to him.”
Grandmother smiled in a way that was not very Grandmotherly at all.
“Look down,” said Grandmother.
Michael looked down — and immediately realized his mistake. Gravity seized him with two strong hands around his skull, and he fell hard to his knees. He dropped the hose and put his hands out to break his fall—
And they sank into the ground.
Michael yanked back with his shoulders, but his hands wouldn’t come out. It was as though they were set in cement. He tried to lift his knees, but they were embedded in the ground as well.
“Help me.” The words came out as a whisper, but Grandmother heard them.
“Of course, dear,” she said, and then he saw her feet beside him. She bent down and lifted an end of the tube she’d tossed him. “I’m sorry — I should have explained. It goes in your mouth — that’s very important.” Michael felt a hand on the back of his head, and Grandmother’s other hand set the tube firmly between his teeth. “Clamp down,” she instructed.
Michael sank further — his groin was pressed against the ground, and as far as he could tell his thighs were almost completely submerged. In the distance, he heard the sound of a car engine.
Grandmother let go of the hose and his head, and moved further back. Her cold, strong hands pushed down on his behind. There was a crunching sound, as his pelvis slid through stone and wood and dirt. “You’ll thank me for this later,” she said. “It’s better to go down feet first.”
The car engine grew louder. Out of the corner of his eye, Michael could see the glimmer of headlights. Finally, they grew very bright, illuminating the ground beneath him like a moonscape, and the engine stopped.
Michael heard a strangled moan then — dimly, he realized it was his own, carried through the tube that began in his mouth and ended a few feet away.
There was another tube, he saw — sticking out of the ground, just a few feet in front of him. If he listened, he was sure he could hear the faint noise of breathing coming from it.
The car doors opened and closed, and Michael heard voices:
“Mother,” said one — sounding very much like Uncle Evan. “Are we too late?”
“You are late,” said Grandmother, grunting as she continued to work at Michael’s back, “but I am managing.”
“Well now you can take a rest,” said a woman — Aunt Nancy? “We can take over from here.”
“Very well.” Grandmother let go of Michael, and he tried to struggle. But he was at an odd angle — bent forward about forty-five degrees. He could thrash his shoulders, wave his head around, but that was as much as he could hope for.