Except it wasn’t really a hole, was it? Whatever Westlake had seen, however he’d contextualized it, he’d been wrong.
Its surface was darker than the sea beyond the wall; it shimmered like the placid surface of a lake stirred by a breeze. Upon casual inspection, it may’ve seemed solid—it held back the water, didn’t it?—but Luke knew if he were to touch it, his fingers would pass through into… his mind couldn’t grasp what might occur next. It couldn’t even form an outline.
The (not a) hole was rung by smaller ones, the same way moons ring a planet. A few were the diameter of nickels; others were quite a bit larger.
The hole—stop calling it that, Luke. A hole is ordinary and of this world; this is something else entirely—the hole-thing followed the curve of the walclass="underline" Luke could see a heating pipe running beneath it.
The hole-thing, the rift, glittered dully around its edges. It was growing. The smaller holes appeared to be enlarging, too, nibbling into the wall.
A new sensation: fishhooks sunk into Luke’s brain, tugging insistently.
He leaned toward the hole, the pain of his nose forgotten. He felt no danger; not an imminent sense, anyway. A voice buried in his subconscious warned him not to trust that sense of calm, but… yes, he trusted the hole. Oh yes, he trusted it completely. More than he trusted the structural safety of the Trieste, in fact. He tasted blood on his tongue but this, too, was a faraway sense. The hole—
It’s not a goddamn—
But it was a hole, wasn’t it? Sure it was. What was a hole, after all, but a, a …
Doorway?
A split in the surface of things. An absence of matter. You could fill that absence with any old thing, couldn’t you? Put a lid over it, keep everything precious hidden from sight. You could bury dangerous things in holes, too. Holes were good that way.
Holes kept secrets. Holes and standing pipes and Tickle Trunks, yes, those too. We buried bodies in holes, and the dead were the best at keeping secrets. If a hole was big enough, well, you could hide any old thing at all.
Something was coming through the hole now.
Its surface split as a wriggling tongue pushed itself out.
It’s ambrosia, Luke realized, icy splinters filching into his heart. This is how it gets inside the station. It’s how Clayton’s been collecting it.
The ambrosia slipped through the hole and dropped—
Thwwwiiiilllliiipppp…
—into a small collection vessel Clayton had affixed to the wall, which had also been hidden by the poster.
It was the first time since Luke had been down that he’d experienced something undeniably not of this world. Everything else could be fobbed off as the product of his overheated imagination, or of Westlake’s runaway psychosis. Even Dr. Toy’s death could have been a structural mishap. But this—the hole, the ambrosia sliming out of it—stood outside all earthly logic.
“Don’t look at it directly,” Luke heard Clayton say.
Luke was on his knees now, crawling toward the hole. He found this distressing in a distant kind of way.
Hey, Luke, your arms and legs are moving on their own. Isn’t that kind of freaky?
Something was drawing him forward, pulling him closer to the, the doorway. He was struck with the profound urge to touch it—reach into it. He imagined it would feel warm and embracing. It’d crawl lovingly up his flesh as some strong current drew him deeper, to the wrist and then the elbow and eventually the armpit.
And it would feel like home, wouldn’t it? Like the summer sunshine he remembered from childhood, slanting in golden abundance from a cornflower-blue Iowa sky, hot but not uncomfortably so—cockle-warming, as the old men at the Hawkeye barbershop would say. Yes, it would feel just glorious.
A hand closed over his wrist. Clayton gripped his arm fiercely. Luke wanted to rip out of his brother’s grasp and continue toward the door—it really was more of a door, wasn’t it? He’d open the door and see what was on the other side. It would be simply wonderful, he was certain of it.
“Look at me,” Clayton said. “For Christ’s sake, Lucas—look.”
It required an epic force of will for Luke to keep his eyes locked on Clayton’s. When he did, the pull of the doorway lessened the tiniest bit.
“I have to put the poster back up,” said Clayton, his voice solidifying. “Don’t look at it. I know it’s hard—it wants you to look.”
A relentless pressure in Luke’s skull was torquing his head toward the hole.
“Talk to me, Lucas. Sing a song. It helps.”
Luke hunted his mind for one of the silly kids’ songs he’d sung to Zach. There were dozens; their lyrics danced on the tip of his tongue. But something else inside his head, a persistent presence, had other ambitions.
Why not take a look, Lucas?
An insistent voice. The voice of the hole.
What’s the harm? Little door, little door, open me up! One quick peek. You know you want to. Or touch it, why not? I bet it feels just dandy.
The urge to look was almost sexual. Luke felt the need twisting in his groin with giddy excitement. His penis throbbed with it. There was an unpleasant burn high in his sinuses, as if he’d just dived into an overchlorinated pool. Except it was a dreamy feeling, too, vaguely childlike—the need to peer into a darkened closet, if only to assure himself nothing was inside.
But what if something was inside? And what if it could bite?
“The wheels on the bus go round and round,” Clayton sang. “Round and round, round and round.”
“The wheels on the bus go round and round,” Luke joined in. “All around the town.”
“The wipers on the bus go swish-swish-swish,” they sang together. “Swish-swish-swish, swish-swish-swish; the wipers on the bus go swish-swish-swish, all around the town.”
Clayton picked up the poster. He approached the hole, his posture that of a man walking into a gale-force wind.
“The horn on the bus goes beep-beep-beep,” he sang, “beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep…”
He hung the poster upside-down, punching the paper through the hooks. Einstein’s expression now appeared baleful, his tongue cocked at a lewd angle.
As soon as the hole was covered, Luke’s mind cleared. The brothers retreated to the far side of the room. They sat in silence, breathing heavily.
“I know this must be a lot to take in,” Clayton said finally.
“It’s just like Westlake said.” Luke’s voice was barely above a whisper. “His journals. You knew he wasn’t crazy. You knew all along.”
Clayton’s face, oddly compressed and sun starved, gave him the look of a man in the final stages of tuberculosis.
“He wasn’t crazy, Luke. He was just weak.”
6.
“WHEN DID YOU FIRST see it?” Luke said.
Clayton leaned against the lab bench. He shot a furious glance at LB.
“Keep that dog away from me, you understand?”
Luke grasped his nose and gave it a wiggle; the cartilage crackled. He tasted blood, thick and ironlike. He felt no anger, only a dull shock. But the shock was tempered by the sense, deeply buried but sincere, that the holes did exist—he’d known it even without seeing them, so the adjustment now was easier. He wanted to hit Clayton but there was something about his brother, expressed in his sick pallor and swaddled arm, that indicated he was suffering in a serious way. And what would anger solve? It would only rip them further apart and reduce their chances of survival—which was just what the holes wanted, he was sure of it. So Luke would stow his childish hurts and stay calm.