The lids of two of the pods were rising—slowly and apparently silently. For a moment, Ramsey felt that same sense of helpless, almost sexual horror that he had felt as a child in the darkness of a movie theater. An alien spacecraft, the door opening, something about to come out—but what would it be?
But this was no movie. This was real.
A shape lurched in the nearer pod, then began to drag itself upright, bathed by the dim lights around the inside rim of the lid.
Ramsey had the line open and was shouting at the screen now, but Olga clearly was not receiving his call. He could only shout her name over and over as an immensely fat, horribly naked man climbed out of the glowing pod.
She slid the Storybook Sunglasses on. It was good to be in the dark behind the lenses. She could hear her mother's voice in the other room. Mommy was really angry—angry at Mister Sellars, angry at Daddy, even angry at Mister Ramsey, who didn't seem to have done anything as far as Christabel could see.
It was good to be in the dark. She wished she could have sunglasses for her ears as well.
"Tell me a story," she told the glasses, but nothing happened. The lenses stayed black. There was not even a message from Mister Sellars. It made her sad—he had sounded so tired, so hurt. She almost wished that her mother and father hadn't found out about her secrets with him—her visits, the ways she had helped him, all the things, all the secret things. How he smiled and called her "little Christabel."
Their secret word.
"Rumplestiltskin," she said. Light opened out in front of her eyes like a flower.
"This will be like a call to someone far away," Mister Sellars' voice said in her ears. "Or like going on the net. I'll be with you in just a moment. . . ."
"Where are you?" she asked, but his voice was still talking, not hearing her. It was another message, a recording, like before.
". . . And then I will stay with you, I promise. But I am doing many things, little Christabel, and it may take me a moment to reach you. Don't be frightened. Just wait." The light was moving now, dancing, spinning. It made her head hurt. She tried to reach up and take the sunglasses off but for some reason she couldn't find them. She could sort of feel her head but it seemed to be changing shape—first her hair felt funny under her fingers, then it didn't feel like hair at all. Then the light swept away from her, pulling her with it as if she had been sucked down the drain of the bath, and the light had a noise, too, a moan like the wind or like children crying.
"Stop it!" she yelled. She was really frightened now. Her voice sounded wrong, close in her head but strange and echoey and far away, too. "I don't want to. . . !"
The light was everywhere. Then the light was gone. Everything was dark and she couldn't feel herself touching anything. For a few seconds she was all alone, as alone as she had ever been in her life, like in a bad dream, but awake, and there was nobody else anywhere in the whole world, not Mister Sellars, not Mommy, not Daddy. . . .
But then there was someone else.
Scared, she held her breath, but it was more like thinking about holding your breath because she couldn't feel her chest get tight. She felt like she was about to pee all over herself, but that didn't feel quite real either. Something was looking for her. Something big. It was in the darkness.
It touched her. Christabel tried to scream, tried to hit, but she had no mouth, no hands. It was so cold! It was like all the black had frozen, like she was in the refrigerator with the door closed and the light out and she couldn't get out and nobody heard her and nobody heard her and nobody. . . .
The big, cold something touched her inside her head.
That story on the net, the one I wasn't supposed to watch, about a giant gorilla that picked up a lady and smelled her and looked at her and it was so scary, and I thought he's going to throw her down on the ground or put her in his mouth and chew her with his teeth, and then I peed my pants and I didn't even know it until Mommy came in and said Ohmygod what are you watching Mike you left the screen on and now she's wet herself and ruined the couch because of your stupid monster I told you she was too young. . . .
And then it let her go. The big, cold something passed through her like a wind, and she could smell it, but she was smelling how it thought, how it felt, and it was tired and sad and angry and even very very frightened but it didn't care about little girls anymore and it let her go.
She was hanging in darkness. She was lost.
"Christabel?"
When she heard Mister Sellars' voice, his kind, hooty-soft voice, she couldn't help it. She started to cry, then she was crying so hard that she thought she wouldn't stop, not ever, not ever.
"I w–want . . . Mommy." She could barely make the words.
"I know," he said. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean for it to happen this way." She couldn't feel him, not like she had felt the freezing dark, but she could hear him, and in all the blackness that was a tiny, good thing. She tried to stop crying. She had hiccups. "I'm with you now," Mister Sellars said. "I'm with you, little Christabel. We have to go. I need your help."
"I didn't mean to do it. . . !"
"I know. It was my fault. Perhaps it was meant to be—but perhaps not. In any case, it will all be over soon. Come with me."
"I want my Mommy."
"I know you do. And you are not the only one." Now she wasn't quite as scared as she had been and she could hear how much he was hurting. "Just come with me, Christabel. I'm going to take you to meet someone. I'm sorry this happened but I'm glad you're here, because otherwise I would have had to send your friend off to meet him by himself."
Then she heard a new voice—a surprising voice, because she knew the person the voice belonged to couldn't be talking, because he was asleep on the bed like a dead person. But Mister Sellars was also asleep like a dead person, wasn't he?
Am I asleep like that too? Won't Mommy and Daddy be frightened?
"Get me out of here!" the voice shouted. "Not doin' this mierda no more!"
"Cho-Cho," she said.
For a moment, he didn't talk. Christabel hung in the blackness and wondered if this was what it felt like to be dead. "Weenit?" he said at last. "That you?"
"Yes." Mister Sellars' breath was all funny and rough, as though he had stepped away for a moment and then run back. "That is her, Señor Izabal. And we are going somewhere together. You two are going to find a little lost boy. And afterward . . . and afterward I will do my very best to take you both home."
"You all crazy," Cho-Cho's voice said. "Not gonna do nothin'!"
But as the darkness began to turn into light—a gray like a morning sky, but everywhere at once, below as well as above—Christabel felt someone reach out and take her hand.
"You okay, weenit?" Cho-Cho whispered.
"I think so," she whispered back. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," he said. "Ain't scared of nothin', me."
Whether that was true or not, his fingers tightened on hers as the gray light grew and grew.
Paul and Orlando carried Martine down the twisting ledge until they came to where the others were blocking the path. "Move!" said Paul in a loud whisper. "Didn't you hear that madman? He's coming after us."
"The path is gone," Florimel said. "It has dropped away. Melted. Something."
"Like the mountain," Sam murmured as she staggered up behind Paul and set Cho-Cho down on the stone. "All gone."