The Hole in One
Ball Field's Concession Stand
By Michael A. Clark
The wolf-gray March wind whipped around the
Little League concession stand, sending pebbles
skittering over the gravel parking lot surrounding the
concrete-block building. An ancient scoreboard tacked on
two rusted pipes beyond the centerfield fence clacked in
the stiff breeze.
“Can’t
believe we used to play baseball in weather like this,”
I said.
“Yeah,” Pat replied.
“Bat stung like hell when you got jammed.”
The naked trees between the field and the
vacant houses facing Tamarack Road bent, then groaned
erect. A
line of snow flurries was approaching from the Ohio
state line.
“Well, guys.” Burt pointed. “There it is.”
The
Hole.
“Polanski’s kid found it,” said Burt, as he
kicked at the crushed stone across from the drinking
fountain (shut off for the winter to save the pipes from
freezing). A
flight of geese honked overhead.
“Said he came by here last night, and...”
“What was Polanski’s kid doing here?” asked
Pat. He’d
been promoted to Chief of the Township’s three-man
police squad when Norm Robinson retired after 30 years
on the force. I
remembered Old Norm busting our keg parties when we were
teenagers. Never
thought Pat would be filling his boots one day.
“I dunno.
Getting drunk, looking for chicks, playing video
games,” replied Burt.
“Whatever the hell kids do these days.”
“YOU got a couple.
What do they
do?” asked Pat.
“Whatever they wanna do,” said Burt.
“Now will you two look at the damn Hole?”
And that’s what it was, a damn Hole.
Right on the side of the old, two-story
building. Utter
black, round edge perfectly delineated against the faded
cinder blocks. It
looked about a yard or so wide, and I got the impression
that it tilted down at about a 30-degree angle from its
… mouth.
“Don’t get too close, Robbie,” said Burt, his
voice tight.
I put
my hand out, a couple feet away from the Hole’s opening.
“Robbie …”
“It’s okay.
I just wanted to see …”
I was glad Burt didn’t want me to get any
closer.
Pat
backed away a few feet and picked up a stone from the
balding driveway. He
flipped it towards the center of the Hole.
Our eyes watched the chunk of gravel break the
invisible plane at the Hole’s mouth.
And
disappear. Just
like that.
“Christ,”
said Pat.
“That’s
what Polanski’s kid said.”
Burt moved around the front of the Hole, a gust
of wind ruffling his worn jacket.
“Said he tossed a couple rocks and a beer can
into it. Freaked
him out.”
“So
where did that rock go?” asked Pat.
“You’re
asking me?” I
stared at the Hole in the wall.
A patch of soft light rubbed through the clouds
above for a moment, and the wind died down.
A sparrow chirped, and the world looked a bit
brighter. A
truck drove past the barren trees hunched around the
entrance to the Township’s aging baseball complex. Faint shadows
crept by, hugging us for warmth.
“Well,
you’re the fucking scientist.”
The
light ebbed, the shadows fled, but the Hole was still
there. The
wind picked up again.
“Not
exactly.” I said.
Pat and I were
pot-smoking acquaintances in high school.
He was the best baseball player in town, not so
good academically.
A year or two after graduating, he wound up
getting Kathy Susi pregnant and having a kid. Now
Pat was the law around here.
He still looked like he could throw 90 miles an
hour.
“Scientist,
engineer ... Hell, whatever,” said Burt.
“Ever seen anything like this?”
The
first flakes of winter’s last snowfall pirouetted
towards us.
“Nope.” I hadn’t felt
this cold in years.
And I wasn’t an engineer anymore, until I got a
new job. Which
at age 50-something might not be anytime soon.
“Okay.
Polanski’s kid comes by doing something last night, I
don’t care what.” Pat
whipped out a small notepad from his coat pocket and
started writing. “The
kid says he noticed … that,”
Pat pointed his pen towards the Hole.
“And tossed a few things into it.
How long before you got here to take a look?”
“Polanski
called me this morning, and said his kid was pretty
freaked out about something he saw at the ball field.” Burt shivered. “I came over
and … kinda didn’t know what to do.
You don’t see a fucking Hole in the side of a
building every day.
So, I got a cup of coffee at the Township
building...”
Pat
nodded.
“And
Jan down at the Lock & Stock Barrel said Robbie was
in town and she had his mom’s number, so I thought I’d
…”
“Call
Einstein in to figure it out?”
Pat was really milking this cop gig.
“Did
you throw
anything into it?” I asked Burt.
“Well,
yeah. I
picked up a stone, just like Pat did, and tossed it in. Same thing
happened. Then
I took an old golf club out of my trunk and -”
“You
were going to stick it in there,” said Pat.
“Pat,
this thing’s freaking me out,” Burt said,
shoving
his hands into his coat pockets hard. “I mean what the
fuck! A
goddamn Hole in the side of a building, like some
weird-ass cartoon.
But it’s fucking there, and when you throw
something in it
just disappears. That
doesn’t freak you out?”
“I’m
trying not to get freaked out, Burt.” said Pat.
“Maybe
if you try shooting it …”
“Burt,
I’m not going to shoot it.”
“You’re
a cop! You
got a gun …”
“Let’s
not shoot the Hole, guys,” I said, edging closer to the
side of the concession stand.
The Hole looked stable – it didn’t seem to have
grown or shrunk since we’d arrived.
Its pure black was mesmerizing.
Like looking over the side of a narrow bridge
crossing a deep canyon.
Perspective seemed to fade, and there was just
the Hole and me and the chilly world outside.
“Robbie. Don’t stare in
the Hole.”
“It’s
okay.” If
Burt had
stuck his golf club into that thing, what would have
happened?
“Alright,”
said Pat. “I
don’t know what the hell’s going on here.
And I don’t know who to ask about it.
I call Frank Mistretta at the State Police and
he’s gonna say ‘There’s a what
in the side of the what?’” He stuffed his
notepad into the inside pocket of his coat.
“No shitting around, Robbie. You got any idea
what this is?”
“I don’t,” I
said, watching carefully as light snow floated down. The flakes
closest to the perfect blackness of the Hole’s yawning
mouth were almost imperceptibly curving into that empty
space, and vanishing.
“But
I think when we find out, it’s not going to be good.”
###
“Pretty
fucking weird, ain’t it?” said Burt.
I
stared at the blocky old monitor atop the phone book on
his office desk. It
looked like it belonged in Dr. McCoy’s sick bay on the
original Starship Enterprise. Funny how the future
looked to people back then.
All gleaming plastic, clean and efficient.
“Yeah,”
I said. The
real future hadn’t turned out that way.
I had
an odd feeling in my stomach.
A Hole appearing in the side of a building ... What time was
it in Zurich now?
I
typed on the grimy keyboard.
“I
thought about googling it, but what would I ask for?”
said Burt.
I’d
gone to college to be a scientist, but came out an
engineer. So,
I went to work for a company that built stuff instead of
doing research in a laboratory.
Classified work on satellite-ground targeting
systems for Harris Systems in Melbourne, Florida, then
to NASA at Cape Canaveral supporting the Hubble Project.
“I
mean, if I typed in ‘Hole’, what would I get?”
Burt lit a cigarette.
After
funding for that non-warfare-related program dried up, I
went back to Harris. Three months ago, the company’s new
CEO ordered a round of layoffs, and the gray ceiling
came crashing down on me. And now I was back home in
Sharpsville, Pennsylvania.
“‘Hole in the
side of a building’?”
Burt was halfway through his crumbled pack of
Marlboros. “Some
kind of home-repair video?”
“When’d
you start smoking?” I asked, frowning at the dusty
screen.
“Since
I got divorced. Google
‘Hole’. What
the hell would you get?”
“I
don’t know. A
link to Courtney Love’s website?”
“Is
that some porn star?”
The
Township building’s internet connection didn’t rate as
“high-speed”, but I finally got to Ferran’s MySpace
page. I
clicked Update Status and typed from memory the access
password he’d given me into the toolbar.
We’d been grad students at Georgia Tech
together and crossed paths again while I was at NASA. Ferran’s
career had gone far better than mine. He
was a big player at the CERN Hadron supercollider
project. Surprisingly,
he’d said this was the most secure way to contact him.
“She
was married to the dead guy from Nirvana.”
“Oh,
yeah.” Burt
took another drag.
A
portal, simple and direct, opened on screen.
I typed in a brief description of what I’d seen
at the ball field.
“Would you say the Hole was about the same size
as when you first saw it?” I asked Burt.
“Damn
thing looks about the same,” he said.
“But I didn’t feel like putting a tape measure
to it.”
Event horizon dimensions appear stable
I typed. Why
didn’t I take some pictures of it?
Burt’s archaic computer didn’t have a USB port
to upload the shots. I
will send photos when possible.
Quality will probably be poor.
I
could hear Burt pouring another cup of the battery acid
he brewed into his Steelers coffee mug.
Ferran, what are the chances of this being related to the
artificially generated quantum singularity you
discussed in that paper you presented at the
International Physics conference in Stockholm last
year? Have
you continued working on how an event could occur? And how
could we deal with such an event if it DID?’
I hit
Send and then wondered if he still had my phone number.
“We
need to go back and take some pictures of the Hole,” I
said.
“I’ll
call Pat and tell him to meet us back there,” said Burt. He sipped his
coffee and looked at me. “Maybe he ought to set up a
barricade or something, to keep people away from it ...”
“That’s
not a bad idea.” Ferran was researching the possibility
of sub-quantum particle experiments (like CERN’s)
generating tears in the space/time fabric.
If that’s what was happening here …
Burt
pulled his old hunting jacket on.
“You getting any ideas on what it
is?”
“Maybe,”
I said. “Don’t
forget to bring a tape measure this time.”
###
Pat
was waiting for us at the ball field.
His police cruiser’s trunk was open, and he was
digging out a thick roll of celluloid tape when we
pulled in. “Thought
I should close off the field for the time being until we
figure out what we’re dealing with here,” he said, as he
loosened the “Caution Do Not Cross” tape’s end.
“We
were thinking the same thing.”
“I’ll
say a water main broke or something, and that’ll be good
for a day or two,” said Burt. The
snow flurries had passed.
Off to the north, the Brookfield Dairy grain
silos loomed, and the gnarled crabapple trees behind the
Senior Division outfield fence hunkered like goblins
awaiting prey.
“They
already had Little League tryouts this week,” said Pat. “But Girls
Softball is supposed to start Monday, right? I
got to know something before I can let anybody
in here.” He
looked around the three rundown ball fields that made up
the complex, then back at the Hole.
“You come up with anything yet, Robbie?”
“Not
quite,” I said, walking towards the Hole in the
concession stand. Gravel
crunched under our feet.
“Who
was that guy you emailed?” asked Burt.
He had a Stanley FatMax in hand, but I figured
I’d be the one doing the measuring.
“An
old friend from when I worked at NASA,” I said,
immediately feeling guilty about namedropping.
We were all old enough to remember the moon
shots from when we were kids.
“Does
he know any astronauts?” asked Burt.
“Yeah,
I’ll bet he does.”
“Do you know any astronauts?”
“I’ve
met a couple. They
all look like accountants.”
We
stopped before the Hole.
I took a couple quick, futile shots with my
aged flip Nokia. Pat had a camera, which he used in an
efficient, workmanlike way.
Burt pulled the end of the measuring tape out
of its housing. His
hands were shaking.
“I’ll
do it,” I said. “You
don’t happen to have a magnifying glass or anything, do
you Pat?”
“I
got this,” he said, producing a small lens in a
retractable housing from his coat pocket.
“Five-X power. Will that help?”
“You
came prepared,” I said.
“Always
do.” Pat
rolled his thick shoulders.
I
knelt to the right of the Hole, focusing the lens on the
curved perimeter around the gaping blackness.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.
A dog
barked, far off in the cold wind.
“Heard
you busted Lonsinger for DUI,” said Burt, lighting
another cigarette.
The
paint was gently flaking off the concrete wall, near as
I could tell. Tiny
pink and gray specks were slowly rolling into the
yawning Hole and disappearing.
“Yeah,
I had to. Christ,
was he fucked up,” Pat snorted.
“Ran up over the curb on Ridge by St. Bart’s
and almost hit a fire hydrant.
Old Norm would’ve chewed Daryl out and driven
him home. These
days you gotta arrest ‘em, or the MADDs and the D.A.’s
office will give you hell.”
If
the paint was being sucked off the wall into the Hole,
wouldn’t the next logical step be for the wall to be
sucked in?
“You
know he’s been banging Augie Delfratte’s daughter,” said
Pat.
“Augie’s
daughter?” said Burt.
“Is she outta high school?”
“A
couple years, yeah.”
And
after the wall
got sucked in, what then?
“Lonsinger
always was good with chicks,” said Burt.
“Wish I
was banging some twenty-something right now.”
“You
and me both,” said Pat.
“What are you seeing there, Robbie?”
“Not sure,” I
said. “How
long ago was this painted?”
“Probably in the
last five years,” said Burt.
Another
flight of geese honked on by.
After
tucking Pat’s magnifying lens into my pocket, I pulled
open the tape measure.
Gingerly, I extended it across the mouth of the
Hole. I
half expected the thin metal to start twitching in my
hands.
“It’s
bigger, Robbie,” said Burt.
“Huh?”
“It
looks … bigger than it did yesterday.”
I glanced back at him.
An old man in a worn jacket staring at
something bizarre that he couldn’t understand.
Worrying about his job, his alimony payments,
and his mortgage. Like
a million other guys our age.
But
Burt was standing in front of a Hole to nowhere.
And
so was I. How
did I look to him?
“Pat,
can you take this down?” I asked, steadying the tape in
front of the Hole.
Pat
whipped out his notepad.
“Yeah.”
“Thirty-nine
& 2/10ths inches across horizontally.”
I shifted the tape, reorienting it up and down.
Did
the thin metal bow a little in the middle?
“Thirty-nine
& 2/10ths inches across vertically.”
I held the tape measure right before the
gapping maw. “Looks
like a perfect circle to me.”
“Yeah. It does,” said
Pat. I saw
Burt nod out of the corner of my eye.
And I
felt something, just a tiny twinge in the tape measure. I snapped the
tape back into its rugged housing.
Pausing a moment, I pulled back out about a
foot of tape and tentatively pointed its angled end
towards the Hole.
“Robbie…”
The
burnished-steel lip of the tape measure wobbled towards
the opening of the Hole.
I held the FatMax’s housing firmly with one
hand while keeping a light touch on the thin tape
itself, right around the 13-inch mark.
The front of the tape nosed into the Hole, and
I let it.
In a
flash, the tape slid out of its cast-metal housing,
sizzling into the hypnotic well of the Hole.
I grabbed the FatMax with both hands as Burt
shouted, “ROBBIE! Let it go!”
I
fought the urge, wanting to know how much force was
sucking this down.
The tape wound out way too fast.
“Damn
it, Robbie! Let it go!”
Thin
metal spun, burnt steel sizzling in the air. The FaxMax
bucked in my hand.
But I held on.
“Drop
it, Robbie!” shouted Pat, in his most authoritative
voice.
And
then I did, but the FaxMax’s body never hit the ground. Without a
sound the tape measure’s case went into the void.
That
dog howled again, right on cue.
“Goddamn,”
said Pat.
“This
is fucked up,” Burt muttered.
“This is just fucked up …”
I
rubbed my fingers together.
Yeah, it was.
“Where
the hell did it GO?”
asked Burt. He
looked about to cry.
“It’s
okay, Burt,” Pat said.
We
all knew it wasn’t.
A
candy bar wrapper faded by the elements drifted on the
wind towards the Hole.
It rolled over and up … and was gone.
“Robbie
…”
“Easy,
Burt,” said Pat, not sounding that much more stable.
You
didn’t need a physics degree to figure out that if tape
measures and candy wrappers got sucked into the Hole,
bigger stuff could follow.
“Okay.”
I needed to think but didn’t know about what.
“Let’s try figuring out what we’ve got here so
far.”
“A
fucking Hole that’s gonna suck us all to Hell!”
“Burt! We’re not
gonna get sucked to Hell!”
Pat fingered his radio mike and then dropped
his fingers to his holster.
“We’re going to stabilize the situation.
We’re going to report to the proper
authorities. And we’re going to keep our heads on
straight!”
Burt
swallowed weakly. “Okay
… right, Pat.”
My
cellphone rang.
We
all jumped at the tinny buzzing.
With numb hands, I flipped open the screen. An
international number …
I put it to my ear.
“Robbie! It is Ferran!
How are you?” His
voice was surprisingly clear.
“Ah,
okay, Ferran,” I replied.
“You got my message?”
“What
kinda name is ‘Ferran’?” whispered Pat.
“Something
foreign?” Burt whispered back.
“Yes,
my friend, I did.”
Ferran sounded like he was standing right next to
me. I
guessed he was using a better carrier than Verizon. “I am very
needing some specific details on the phenomena you did
described. What
is the possibility you can view this event soon?”
“Well,
I’m about six feet in front of it right now,” I said. “What do you
need me to tell you?”
A
moment of silence, then Ferran’s voice dropped.
“Please back your distance from the event by a
factor of at least three.”
“Okay.” I eased back
from the black circle, Burt and Pat moving with me.
“We’re
about 20 feet from the aperture, Ferran,” I said.
“About
six meters ... We?”
“I’m
here with two old friends from high school.
Pat’s the local police chief and Burt is the
township supervisor.”
I
wondered why I’d introduced them.
Because if something bad happened, there would
be a record of their names?
“There
are no others present?”
“We’re
on a baseball field in Western Pennsylvania.
It’s been snowing, and no one’s here but us.”
“Baseball
… a sports complex?
Please to describe the appearance and any unusual
occurrences you’ve observed recently.”
I
went through a short rundown of what I’d witnessed, as
Pat and Burt nervously looked on.
The wind ebbed around us.
“Thank you,
Robbie. There
is only so much I can talk of over this … line.”
Even through my cellphone I could tell he was
in a large room. And
not alone.
“Understood,
Ferran. Is
this a phenomenon like I asked about earlier?”
“No. It is not
a quantum singularity. You can trust the men by your
side?”
A
direct and not entirely unexpected question.
“Yes.”
I said. “What
can you tell me about what we’re looking at?”
“This
not a minute black hole or rip in space/time continuum. You are
looking at a communications portal.
Any material through its aperture transmits
information. Robbie,
please be very careful about what does flow into the
opening.”
“Why?”
“Your
close proximity to the portal means you are a
determinator of what The Others learn about us.”
“’The Others’?” My voice rose.
“I am sorry, but
I cannot elaborate further details now.
About which you are doubtlessly curious.
I am with our team of specialists here.”
There
was crosstalk I couldn’t make out. Pat and Burt were
shivering, pawing the cold gravel. Afraid.
So
was I.
“There
are planning’s for a rapid response to your location …
but diplomatic matters need arrangement.
Carefully please listen, my friend.”
“Okay,
Ferran.”
“If
your friends are in positions of authority there, please
inform this is a potential dangerous event.
No one else should be allowed near to the
Portal. If
there a way to …”
There
was more cross talk across the airwaves behind Ferran’s
voice.
“If
there be a way to … restrict
the Portal from random materials entering, please make
it so.”
“You
want us to keep anything else from going into the Hole?”
“We
wish the Others to have a limited knowledge of our
environment before we can understand how best to engage
in interactive communication.
I am sorry for the nebulous discussing, Robbie. But you may
have a stronger grasp of the issues involved here then …
how do you say? The
average bear?”
“Ferran, what can you tell me about what we’re dealing with here?”
“Not
enough to satisfy you I am afraid, my friend.
But I can say other similar events have been
recently reported.
You are in a location with good cellular access,
and relatively stable politics. This is beneficial.”
Relatively
stable politics …
More
cross talk in the background, as frigid air folded
towards The Hole.
I
shook my head. Air
doesn’t fold.
“What
if something comes out of It?” Burt asked.
“Damn
good question,” said Pat, his hand on his pistol.
“Maybe
we can put a tarp over it …?”
“I
don’t think a tarp will do the trick, Burt.”
“There’s an 8 x
8 tarp at the Township Building,” Burt said.
“It’s pretty thick. That might cover...”
“Burt
…”
Slush-colored
sky flowed slowly above us.
“Is
this Portal a one-way opening, Ferran?”
“The situation
is difficult for all of us to understand, Robbie.
Many things may go wrong if mistakes will be
made.”
He
hadn’t answered my question.
My cellphone shook in my frozen hand.
“Ferran,” I
asked. “What if those “Others” try to send something
through our way?”
“I
mean, if we tether it with some lag bolts and …”
“Burt! We’re not
gonna try tarping over the Hole!”
“Guys,”
I said, pulling the cellphone from my frostbitten ear. “I don’t know
what is going on here.
I don’t know if my friend I’m talking to does
either. But
I do know this is serious shit.
And we gotta keep ours together.”
Pat
looked at me and nodded.
Burt
shivered again. “Right, Robbie.
Christ, this is fucked up.”
“Yeah,”
said Pat. “But,
we gotta keep our shit together.”
He stared at the Hole like a boxer steeling for
a punch.
“Robbie!” Ferran’s voice
croaked from the phone pressed in my waist.
“Yeah,
Ferran?” I replied.
“We
have some diplomatic arrangement for a team to
arrive at your locale.
But it will be a quarantine situation, and very
problematic.”
High-pressure
murmurings, half a world away.
How
different that world was, only a day ago.
My personal problems were so important ...
“What
do you need us to do?” I asked Ferran.
“We
need to be calm, and … accepting the changing situations
as best you can.”
“Okay,”
I said, unrelieved. “We’ll
do the best we can.”
There
was a deep rumble from The Hole. Then it bulged out from
the concession stand.
The building trembled; and then The Hole
returned to its flat, gaping position.
Bert
and Pat backed away; Pat drawing his Glock.
I
thought how useless that display of human force would be
to …
The
Hole rumbled out again, longer and firmer …
“Pat!
No!”
A
shot rang out.
The
Hole paused, air swirling around its intrusion into our
planet.
Then
the alien disturbance spit the bullet out, falling with
a thin ‘tink’ on the crushed stone ground.
The
Hole retracted again, not as far.
“Oh
shit, oh shit, oh shit…”
“Shut
up, Burt!” Pat
looked up at me from his semi-squatting firing pose. “So what the
hell do we do now?”
“Robbie, is
there a disturbance happening?”
“You
could say that, Ferran,”
I replied.
The
Holes appeared across the globe, and much fell into them
before The Others came out. And things changed
very quickly. Whether or not The Others meant to
disrupt
our way of life, They did. Holes sucked out Lake
Erie and the Eiffel Tower. The Mississippi River
dried to a trickle, and the Sinai Peninsula turned into
a mangrove swamp.
And
so Burt, Pat and I found that our Little League complex
had become the epicenter of a decidedly one-way
conversation between us subjects, and our new masters.
-30 -
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