The Hands

Artis looked down into infinite nothingness, squinting. There were no edges to the hole. He had expected to see the walls of it stretching down and down into the darkness until it became nothing, but had been surprised to find that the nothingness began right away. No shadows, no signs of depth. Just blackness.

“Throw something in,” Griffin suggested. It seemed like the next logical step. Artis sighed and looked around. The wooded glen that they stood in was seemingly devoid of stones. Lime green grass spanned the roughly football field sized space, interrupted only by the small lump of a hill or the twisting form of a cedar tree. And of course the perfectly circular void that took up most of it.

He spotted a stick, and jogged over toward it, suddenly extremely careful with each and every step. There could be another circle, a smaller one, perhaps, just small enough to be shielded by the tall grass, but large enough to swallow him whole. Bending down slowly, he took hold of the stick and started back, trying to place his feet in the depressions he’d made in the grass on his way there.

Without any ritual or discussion, he tossed it in, and both boys watched as it fell.

“Is it falling?” Griffin asked.

“It’s getting smaller,” Artis replied, and they pointed their chins outward as they leaned over the hole as much as they dared. In its center the stick spun, and each second it got smaller and smaller, but its shrinking size was the only indication that it was moving away from them. No shadows were cast upon it, and it seemed to stay perfectly in the center.

“If it were a hole, it would have reached the bottom by now,” said Artis, placing his hands on his hips.

“What do you mean, ‘if it were a hole?’ Of course it’s a hole! Look at it!” Griffin argued, gesturing at the thing with his arms, his school bag shaking on his back.

“There’s no edge,” said Artis.

“Doesn’t matter. The stick fell.” said Griffin.

“How can it be a hole if it has no edge? It looks like someone just laid down a black carpet,” said Artis, and he crouched down onto one knee next to the thing. If it were a carpet, it would have been the most perfect carpet in the world. Completely without markings or stitches or fibers or anything that could reflect light at all.

“I bet there’s an edge, we just can’t see it,” Griffin suggested. Artis’ brow scrunched.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll touch it.”

“No, don’t.”

“If you dare me to touch it, I will,” Griffin said. Artis shook his head. Yet it seemed that Griffin didn’t need a dare at all, because he knelt down next to it and placed his hands in the grass not more than an inch from the void.

“Griffin, don’t!” Artis begged, but he knew that Griffin would even as he said the words. Griffin was that kind of kid, and it was part of why Artis, and the other kids at Laughlin Elementary, admired him so much.

Griffin stuck his hand in it, right on the edge, his fingers curling as if to grab at the rim of it. Artis winced, expecting his friend to be sucked in or for his fingers to be sheared off by some dark power, but nothing happened. Griffin’s hands just floated in the nothingness, grasping at the edge of the circle.

“It’s nothing,” the boy concluded, pulling his hands up with all of his fingers still attached. Artis let out a long breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in.

“I can feel the edge of it but only at the very top, like the edge of a piece of paper. Below that, there’s nothing.”

“What should we do?” Asked Artis. Griffin shrugged.

“Should we tell someone?” Asked Artis.

“Like who?”

“I don’t know. My dad would know what to do with it, maybe. Or the Mayor. Or Mrs. Inton.”

Griffin scoffed.

“We just found a magic dot and you want to tell Mrs. Inton? We can’t tell anyone about this! This is our thing!” Griffin exclaimed. Artis felt a swell of pride burning in his chest. It was their thing, wasn’t it? This clearing was their spot, after all. Enough of the trees around here bore their club’s carved initials to prove it. The fact that the hole appeared here meant that it was for them, didn’t it?

“I have to get home for dinner. Think about some stuff we can throw into it after school tomorrow, and bring it with you. This is going to be awesome!” Said Griffin, and Artis smiled ear to ear. The two members of Club Snake parted ways, leaving the hole behind, their minds full of ideas.

Griffin awoke covered in sweat, his hands burning like they had been dipped in fire. He screamed and cried and wailed for his parents but his bedroom door did not open. Stumbling over the edge of the bed, he crawled across the carpet toward the door, his hands boiling with pain, his skin glowing white hot with a pale, swirling mist clinging about his outstretched, trembling fingers. He reached for the door’s handle and tried to turn it, but the movement only caused his glowing white skin to slough off like a sheet of melting snow on the edge of a roof. He screamed and made a fist, the muscles and tendons pulling on his wet bones and clacking them together. With his other hand he clawed at the door, his fingernails etching grooves into the wood and leaving behind streaks of blood and skin.

Artis arrived at Mrs. Inton’s class with his lunchbox in his hand and a backpack full of things. His sister’s things, mostly. After many hours of thinking about what he could throw into the hole, a Barbie revealed itself to be the best option. He imagined it spinning slowly in the hole’s center, shrinking and shrinking and eventually disappearing. In his mind’s eye he could see it getting smaller and smaller until it was taken into invisibility by a pair of small, sparkling hands.

“Hey, Artis,” said Griffin as he sat down next to his friend. Artis blinked and smiled at the boy, but Griffin did not smile back. His eyes were ringed with darkness and his hands were shaking slightly as they sat on the desktop.

“Are you okay?” Artis asked.

“I didn’t sleep very well.” Griffin replied.

“Did you bring anything to throw in?” Artis asked. Griffin shook his head, his eyes staring off somewhere vaguely toward the front of the classroom.

“What about what you said yesterday?” Artis asked, shocked. Griffin shrugged.

“I think I forgot,” he said.

“Well I brought enough for us both, probably,” said Artis. Griffin nodded, but his eyes still stared forward, unfocused or hyperfocused, Artis could not tell.

After school, the boys met at the white tree, the one with the long branch that drooped nearly to the floor. Beyond its olive colored leaves was the forest, and the entrance to their trail, hidden between the big bush and the rock that looked like a baby’s head. Artis couldn’t wait to throw what goodies he had into the void. Griffin was there, too, trying his best to act enthused.

“Are you pretty tired? Since you didn’t sleep?” Artis asked as the boys wedged themselves into the gap between the big bush and the rock.

“Not really tired, I guess. My head just feels…” Griffin got to his feet beyond the bush, paused, “exhausted.” He said finally.

“That’s the same thing as being tired.” Artis said, shaking his head. Griffin shrugged, cinching his backpack higher up on his back as they tramped through the forest. They’d walked the trail so many times before that it seemed nearly every tree on the way there bore the ‘S’ of Club Snake, the cool kind of ‘S’ that every kid learns to draw in school.

“What if it isn’t there?” Griffin asked.

“That would be horrible. We haven’t thrown anything good in yet.” Artis said, his pace quickening.

“I hope it isn’t there.” Griffin said. At that Artis stopped, and Griffin crashed into his back.

“Why are you being such a baby?” Artis asked, and as soon as he said it he felt a lump in his stomach. Griffin was usually the one calling him a baby when he chickened out of things, and the opportunity to give his friend a taste of his own medicine was too good to pass on. The lump only got heavier when Griffin only looked down at his feet, his hands writhing unnaturally near his waist. Artis placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s just throw this stuff in and then go home. You should go to bed early tonight.” Artis said, swallowing, hoping it would take the guilt away. It didn’t. But Griffin agreed, and they continued.

Around the ridge and down the slope until the forest cleared and the glen was revealed.

Sure enough, the center of the glen was occupied by a perfect circle of dark nothingness, just as it had been the day before. Artis threw his bag off of his shoulder and unzipped it, emptying its contents onto the grass.

“I’ve got a couple Barbies, a few building blocks, some forks, and a pudding cup. What do you want to throw in?” Artis asked. He raised an eyebrow when he noticed Griffin’s hands twitching, his fingers snapping this way and that as if they were no longer confined by their joints.

“I don’t want to go in, Artis!” Griffin suddenly wailed, a sound that raised bumps on Artis’s flesh.

“What are you talking about…” Artis replied, taking a step toward his friend, whose hands still twitched and snapped.

“My hands want to go back in. They’re going to go back in!” Griffin yelled, and fell to the ground. He held his hands close to his chest, his finger bones snapping, his flesh ripping.

“Griffin, you’re scaring me.” Artis stammered, but the other boy just screamed as his arms stretched outward at their own command, gnarled fingers gripping the grass covered ground.

“Artis, help me!” Griffin squealed as his body was dragged forward, closer and closer. He reared his head away, kicked with his legs, but his hands were determined and filled with an unnatural strength. Mist swirled about them, yellowish white and beautiful, and chunks of grass and dirt flung up as they clawed ever closer to the void.

“Help me!” Griffin screamed again, and Artis sprang forward, taking hold of his friend’s waist as tightly as he could.

But the hands would not be interrupted. They slapped backward at Artis with unexpected force, and the boy cried out with pain as they struck his forearms.

At that moment, Artis let go, and the hands dragged Griffin into the dark.

Artis watched his friend fall, only he wasn’t really falling, only shrinking as he twirled slowly, softly, in the center of the blackness. His look of horror and anguish was gone from his face and now only a satisfied expression lived there. A face that said it was content with where it was and knew exactly where it was going.

Artis couldn’t stop looking at that face, and nearly missed the edges of the circle folding in on themselves, the nothingness compounding, replacing itself with grass and stones and everything else that had been there before. As it became smaller and smaller, so too did Griffin, until his face twisted into a smile and his eyes welled with tears, and his body glowed brighter than a star and became nothingness.

And just like that, Artis was alone in the glen. He stood a moment, considering what he’d seen, what he’d felt. It smelled like spring and the wind was picking up, flicking his hair into his face. He’d waited long enough. Taking the Barbies and forks and blocks in his hands he walked to the center of the field where the circle had been and began to dig. He dug and dug and dug until the sun began to set and the ground became hard, and when he was finished he stood on the edge of the hole and stared in.

It was dark, but it was not nothing. The walls of the hole stretched downward about a meter, and roots jutted out and rocks shined in moonlight. But it would have to do.

Artis tossed the Barbies first, watched them land with a clunk in the bottom of the hole. Then he tossed the forks, and finished with the blocks. They did not spin, they did not glow, and they did not disappear. Artis turned and walked into the night, not toward home, not toward anywhere.

He'd completely forgotten his pudding cup.