Glimmering

He went into his bedroom. Darkness was falling quickly through the old house, low heavy clouds in the west streaked with vermilion. Jack found matches and lit the lantern, went to his night table and squirted some Fusax beneath his tongue, chased it with stale water from a plastic tumbler. For several minutes he sat at the edge of the bed, watching sheaves of light ripple across the windows, black and scarlet and silvery grey. The light oppressed him, made him think of Good Friday, the altar stripped of everything save shadows and candles guttering in red glass holders. It was like that now, he thought, seeing the world without her makeup was not a pretty sight. Wind tore at the shingles, a rattle of rain or hail swept across the roof. From somewhere down near the river echoed laughter, the explosive roaring of an engine that grew ominously silent. A sense of something terrible about to happen swept over him, certain as the rain; but what could be done? There was no one to call for help, no one to wake; nothing to do but ride it out.

His mother had always said, No matter how bad things are, they will look better in the morning. But now morning never came. The glimmering had stolen the promise of dawn. He could only take a deep breath and wait for the horror to pass.

It did, slowly. He was not conscious of having shut his eyes, but it seemed he must have—when he blinked, the room had changed. The wind had died. A sharp, foul smell clung to the air, as of burned hair or feathers. The light had shifted. It was no longer black and scarlet but a lambent red, the deep lurid red of blood, so brilliant it cast no shadows. It was like staring at the world through an infrared lens. He stumbled to his feet and lurched to the window.

The sky was in flames. Not clouds that resembled flames, but fire, huge explosive gouts of fire stretching from horizon to horizon, roiling and expanding as though they would devour the entire sky. He watched in horror, looked down but saw nothing—no trees, no earth, not even the walls of the house beneath him. Only a vast cauldron of molten light, seething like some monstrous bacillus. The light tore at his eyes, made them stream and burn. He turned and staggered to the door. He crashed against the doorframe and all but fell downstairs, blinded.

“Grandmother! Grandmother—”

He stumbled into Keeley’s room. The heavy jacquard curtains were drawn, as always. They filtered out the light, so that he could see his startled grandmother sitting up in bed, still wearing her fisherman’s sweater, a sleep mask pushed up over her white curls.

“Jack! What is it—”

“The fire! Are you all right—”

Fire? Keeley started to climb from the bed. “Where, where—”

“Grandmother, don’t! Please—”

Someone appeared in the doorway: the blond girl. She yawned and shook her head, staring at Jack through sleep-slit eyes. “Fire? There’s no fire. What, you have a dream or something?”

“A dream?” He shook his head. “No, I…”

His voice trailed off.

“There was a fire.” He cleared his throat. “Outside. There was a fire.”

Marz walked into the room, arms crossed above her waxing belly. She went to the window and fiddled until she found a heavy sateen cord. She yanked on it. The curtains opened.

“You were dreaming ,” she said. “See?”

The window framed the same view as his own did—dark trees, carriage house, sloping lawn, sluggish river. All untouched by any flames save a few bright brief flashes from the evening sky, silvery purple and acid green.

“No,” Jack said, but the girl had already crawled into bed with Keeley, grinning.

“I have dreams like that, sometimes.” Marz shivered, and Keeley draped a blanket over her thin shoulders. “Like I’ll see the sky at night, there’ll be words written up on the sky, but I can’t understand them. And bridges—I have this dream, a lot, this dream about a bridge…”

Jack walked to the window and looked out. She was right, there were no fires. He rubbed his eyes.

Jesus fuck, it seemed so real.

“I never remember my dreams,” Keeley said. “Not anymore. Your father, he used to have dreams. And nightmares…”

Jack turned, thinking she spoke to him. But the way Keeley smiled at Marzana, the way her hand traced the headboard’s carven whorls—as though another palm moved there beneath her own—told him that she spoke to the girl. That she was seeing the girl, again, as Mary Anne. Your father was his grandfather.

“… one time he thought the hotel was on fire! He jumped up, and—”

Lightning exploded within the room. Jack cried out, and Marzana; but Keeley stared at the ceiling, where the lightning stayed, trapped within the trumpets of an Art Nouveau ceiling lamp.

“The power!” shrieked Marz. “The power’s on!”

She flung herself from the bed and raced across the room, flicking the light switch on and off. “It’s on, it’s on!”

“Stop!” Jack yelled. “You’ll blow the bulb—”

But Marz was already gone, stampeding to her own room, where he could hear the sudden joyful blare of a radio.