“You press the button to open the slot, and I’ll go in. Then you jam the bucket in the slot so it can’t close up again. I’ll study the machinery above my head in the slot, and if I see something we want for a closer look, I’ll tie the rope around it and use that to yank it out.”

“Why do you get to go? I want to go, too! The slot is big enough for both of us if we squeeze.”

It was, although just barely. Although Pete didn’t like the idea of being jammed that close to Ravi.

Ravi added, “It’s only fair that I get to go in the slot, too. You already had a turn! You went all the way Outside!”

“I thought you didn’t even believe me about that! And stop whining!”

“I’m not whining!”

Glaring at each other, they got into position. Ravi pressed the button. Pete scooted in. Ravi jammed the bucket into the opening and then crawled past it so that he and Pete lay side by side on their backs. The flashlight was necessary because their bodies blocked nearly all the light coming from the funeral room. Pete swept the beam over the ceiling a foot above them.

The Tesslie machinery wasn’t pipes after all, as he had originally thought. It was hard to say what it was. Rounded bumps, irregular indentations, two protrusions shaped vaguely like small bowls. These were easiest to tackle. Pete looped the rope around one. “I’m going to pull on this, just a little bit.”

Ravi said, “I want to go Outside.”

“Ravi! That’s not what we’re doing! Besides, I promised McAllister I wouldn’t do that again.”

“I didn’t promise her that. And you had a turn Outside so it’s only fair that I do. How do I get the other door to open?”

“Ravi, no, it won’t open until you—”

Ravi kicked away the bucket.

Pete tried to hit him but there was no room to swing his fist. Pete took a huge gulp of air, knowing what would come next: the air whooshing out of the slot, the outer door sliding open to push him and Ravi out on top of Xiaobo’s rotting body… Let Ravi get his own air!

Nothing happened.

The boys lay in the glow from the flashlight. The air did not leave the chamber; Pete could hear Ravi’s breathing. Finally Ravi said in a small voice, “When does it open?”

“It isn’t going to, you fucker! The Tesslies must have changed the machine! We’re trapped!” All at once Pete, who had never minded small spaces before (but when had he ever been in one this small?) felt his heart speed up. Sweat sprang onto his forehead, his palms. Frantically he jostled Ravi, trying to get more space, get more air, get out…

“Ow!” Ravi said. “Stop it! Hey, everybody in the Shell, we’re trapped inside the funeral slot! Terrell! Tommy! Caity! Hey!”

Pete joined him in screaming. He yelled until his throat hurt. How thick was that slot wall? What if no one ever came?

After what seemed days, weeks, Pete heard a voice on the other side of the wall: “Lord preserve us—ghosts!”

“It’s Darlene,” Ravi whispered hoarsely.

Darlene began to howl one of her songs. “‘Save us from ghosts and demons that—’”

“Darlene! It’s not ghosts or demons, it’s Pete and Ravi! We’re trapped in here! Let us out!”

The howling stopped. Darlene said, “Pete?”

“Yes! Press the funeral button!”

Silence. Then Darlene’s voice again but closer, as if she now squatted close to the low slot. “You want to come out?”

“Yes!” Of course they wanted to come out—why did it have to be crazy Darlene that found them?

She said, “I’ll let you out after you repent of your sins. You, Pete—you say you’re a sinner for sassing me and for disobedience and for setting yourself above your elders!”

Pete’s teeth came together so fast and hard that he bit his lip. Ravi snapped, “Do it! Or she’ll never let us out!”

He could wait for someone else, anyone else. But now that escape was at hand, the thought of waiting even one unnecessary minute longer in this place was intolerable. Pete snarled, “All right! I repent of my sins!”

“Name them!” Darlene said.

“I repent of sassing you and disobedience and setting myself up above my elders!”

“Now you, Ravi. You repent of fornication with McAllister, who is another generation, and of sassing me and disobedience.”

Ravi yelled, “I repent! Open the fucking slot!”

“That ain’t true repentance, but I’ll take it. Now both of you sing with me a cleansing hymn of—”

“What is going on here?”

McAllister’s voice. Pete’s heart leapt and then sank, a reversal so quick it left him gasping. Ravi yelled, “McAllister, Pete and I are in here! Let us out!”

The slot slid upwards. Pete and Ravi scuttled out on their backs. Pete felt dizzy. Blood streamed down his chin from his bitten lip. McAllister stared down at the flashlight in his hand, the rope trailing out behind him, the bucket on the floor. From this angle, her belly jutted out like a shelf. Pete had never seen that look on McAllister’s face. He felt four years old again, except that no adult but Darlene ever glared like that at a four-year-old.

Ravi, the great lover, hung his head. In a tiny voice he said, “I saw a cat outside, McAllister, running past the Shell. Really. I did.”

JUNE 2014

Geoffrey Fanshaw did not get the notoriety he’d hoped for.

Julie finished the analysis he wanted and sent it to him. She expected to hear back from him, but—nothing. On reflection, she decided she’d been dumb to expect acknowledgement. She had served her purpose to Fanshaw and he had discarded her; that was what narcissists did. She was left with his check and her own fears.

At night she dreamed of plants dying, all over the world.

Two more jobs came her way, and she took them both. Around the consulting work she fit a separate, obsessive routine: Wake at 5:00 a.m. Coffee, banishing the lingering night dreams with wake-up caffeine. Care for Alicia. Bundle the baby into her pram and, before the streets of D.C. got too hot, make the long walk to World Wide News to buy newspapers. The Washington Post, the New York Times: the on-line versions left too much out. Also a host of small-town papers. The rest of the day she stayed inside, bathed in the air conditioning that divided her and Alicia from the steaming D.C. summer. She worked and then she read, barely glancing at the wide variety of usual disasters available in the world:

FOREST FIRES OUT OF CONTROL IN BRAZIL

MAN KILLS WIFE, SELF

ECOLOGICAL BALANCE SEVERLY THREATENED BY OVER-GRAZING

ILLEGAL STRIP MINING CAUSES ARMED STAND-OFF WITH LAW

She was looking for something unusual, and she would know it when she found it. No, not “it”—“them.” She searched for two things, and on the first day of July she finally found one of them. Only a small item far inside the Times, bland and inoffensive:

SCIENTISTS SOLVE PLANT MYSTERY

A team of scientists led by Dr. Simon Langford of the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that the “mystery plague” affecting plants along the Connecticut shoreline has been stopped. “It was a random, natural mutation in one specific microbe,” Langford said, “but relatively easy to contain and kill off with appropriate chemicals. No mystery, really.”

A section of shoreline in the Connecticut Wetlands Preserve has been closed to the public for several days while the botanical correction was carried out. Preserve officials announced that the wetlands will remain closed for the near future, “for further monitoring, as a purely precautionary measure.” Disappointed tourists were turned away by Security personnel but given free passes to other local attractions.

“This sort of thing happens routinely,” Langford concluded. “We’re on top of it.”

“Bullshit,” Julie said aloud to Alicia, who gurgled back.

It was a cover-up—but why? And of what?

Julie knew, or thought she knew, but she didn’t want to know. Not yet. She could be wrong, it was a fancifully dumb idea, in fact it skirted the edges of insanity. Just one of those stray ideas that crossed the mind but meant nothing....