Like everything else, rocks, too, experience weathering. When exposed to constant winds and rain your hardest stone can be worn down slowly. The rock hard foundation can disintegrate to nothing. The pieces that wear off will flow with whatever body of water that runs over. Perhaps a river or the undulations of a shore. Maybe a region with heavy rain. The river, with the sediment in tow, will carry it far until the energy of the river is too weak to carry it anymore. This can happen from a down hill river reaching a level plane. When the energy goes away, the heavy materials will fall from the bottom and be deposited by the river. This is fittingly called deposition and over the years enough deposition will form riverbanks, cross beds, graded bedding, and what have you. Sediment comes in all different shapes and sizes and when they get deposited, a very common form is the graded bedding. This is when you can see obvious layers in the sediment, the bottom layer being the coarsest clasts. It’ll rise up typically from gravel, to sand, to silt, to usually fine clay on top. That is how ancient tribes near the river would use clay to patch their own huts and make their pottery. It’s interesting to think that their pots were years and years in the making, but after it’s baked it can shatter from one fumble. The clay will not break though. Just the pot. The clay will never break. If anything happens to the clay, it’ll wear down only to be renewed again on top, forever.
Because many different rocks can wear down, many different sediments can be obtained – compositionally that is. Coquina, for example, is a sediment rock that is formed almost entirely from worn down shells, coral, and fish bones. The resulting mass is a grotesque amalgamation of rough skeletons. Essentially composed of calcite (which composes most under water skeletons), it will fizz rapidly when introduced to hydrochloric acid and that’s how you know it’s calcite. Some sediment rocks don’t fizzle and usually that means it is low in calcite which could mean any number of things, like that the cement is detrital, but as always, there is room for exceptions and anomalies.
In the case of South Run River, a mile east of town (it is called South Run River because it runs north to south through the county – a small thin water line often used for fishing or kayaking), the lithification process on the beds produced something quite unordinary. For years and years the deposition had slowly gathered and with more water, pressure, and temperature, natural geological processes unfolded. Cementation happened, sedimentation followed, and even, which is more common than realized, new minerals began forming. However, where a good amount of the bedding was detrital, with bands of biochemical sediment here and there, an altogether new organic mineral formed on itself. And by “new” I mean had never existed. Ever. Because, if you didn’t already know, the very notion of an “organic mineral” is an oxymoron in and of itself, seeing how the very definition of a mineral is “inorganic”, but as stated earlier, this is something that had never happened. Granted, you could have sediment formed of previously organic materials like plant matter with peat and what have you, but this was something different. Something not right.
But deep down underground a lot of things beyond comprehension can go on, and what occurred under South Run River, in the miles between the market and Old Pine Apartments, was something, quite frankly, otherworldly. The unidentified organic mineral, which will now be referred to as UOM, began to rapidly crystallize and bridge from one bed, across the stream, to the other, all underground beneath the gaze of the townsfolk. But who’s to blame them? It’d be unfair to expect of a small town the constant vigilance of all geological changes. But you may argue that they should know what’s going on with their county river. True. But in the miles between the market and Old Pine Apartments there is a bifurcation of the river making a nice capital D shape when the confluence appears shortly past the complex. It is here, under the weak little stream, the curved part of the D, where this UOM appeared.
Now the stream before was by no means a hazard to cross. It was about the width of a two-lane street and was maybe waist deep on a good day. The protrusions, the visible signs of this odd plutonic gate shape, poked out like little cabbage patch heads, through all of the layers of sediment, out of the fine wet muck of the streambeds. To show it, physically, extend your index finger and your pinkie (like the rock n roll sign) and the fingers in between would be the stream and the extended ones (not counting the thumb (is that a finger? Or a thumb?)) would be the crystalline protrusions. Silky purple like a fine amethyst – though no quartz at all present, or any silica based anything for that matter – glimmered in the autumn and the two lumps looked quite ornamental when the fine dew gathered on it in the early mornings.
Being behind the Old Pine Apartments, the stream was a constant play spot for the kids of the complex, though it was certainly against parental discretion. They were known to run and fish and the bigger ones, on calmer days, would splash across to the other side to prove their worth, only to splash back, wet and shivering, but proud of themselves.
Rudolph was nine years old and he was thin and pasty. When fall came around his nose began sporting a fine reddish hue that intensified with the dying of the trees and by winter his nickname proved true. The sleeves of his sweater often had strips of hardened glossy mucus from when he would wipe his nose with it. He lived in apartment 3013 with his father and only his father. He would bike around the complex and to school and he wasn’t the type of kid who had no friends, but he was also not known for having a plethora of them. He had one good friend named Brett who was taller and larger and their bond was the young type that was rarely broken, if at all.
It was in the beginning of November when our young duo stumbled upon the UOM. Upon finding it they did what most kids their age would do, which was poke it and kick it, but the rock (being connected deep down) did not budge. It was early on a Saturday morning and their hands were wet from the dew on the purple lump. Their bikes sat in the dead leaves from the trees over the bank and the two kids poked and rubbed it with the fervor of new explorers.
Quick to move on, the kids stood up and the light from the corresponding lump, on the other side of the stream, caught Brett’s eye.
“There’s another one over there!” Brett exclaimed pointing a dirty finger across the moving water. His blond hair was matted under his bright blue beanie. He moved to the edge of the water, the cold stream licking the toes of his shoes as it passed.
When Rudolph’s attention was brought to it, it was all he could see. The lump of purple crystal was hidden like a lawn gnome among the dead leaves and brown mud.
“You think it’s the same thing?” Rudolph asked. His voice was high and his gapped teeth sat over his pink chapped lips.
“It’s gotta be. We should go look at it. And maybe we’ll find more,” Brett said over the stream’s bubbling. But he knew the water was too cold and if he were to make it to the other side then he’d have to come back and he’d be soaked.
“Well how do you plan on it?” Rudolph asked, nudging the purple hunk with his shoe.
“Oh come on. It’ll just be a little cold at first. Besides, our home ain’t even far. We could get a towel after,” Brett explained more to himself than to Rudolph. There was no use in persuading Rudolph, he had made up his mind to not do it the second they saw it. And Brett respected that and would never make his friend do something he didn’t want to do. Besides, he liked being the adventurous wild one in the group, and having Rudolph’s pale and shy companionship only emphasized his wild streak. “If I get a good running jump, then I can land in the middle and just trudge the rest of the way,” Brett said measuring the width of the bank.
“You’ll just splash a lot of water and get yourself a cold,” Rudolph replied, “It’s not a good idea, I don’t think.”
“Rudy, what if it’s a discovery?”
And Rudolph was silent. A discovery? Like Indy? Well now that was something worth risking for. Quietly, to himself, Rudolph backed away from Brett’s running space, and day dreamed about the possibility of it being a secret gem, or a hidden treasure, or maybe if Brett touches one while he touches the other a passage will open and –
“Here it goes, Rudy,” Brett said, rocking back and forth, his butt against a tree.
“You can do it, Brett!” Rudolph said excitedly. Watching his best friend do adventures was his favorite way to spend his days. There was one time when the two went dumpster diving (and by two I mean that Brett did and Rudy was look out) and the two made off with some killer splinted hockey sticks.
And 3,2,1 go! Brett rocked from the tree and sprinted down the bank, through the dead leaves, his shoes sort of sinking into the wet mud more than he anticipated, and he leapt up – not far at all, he was ten – but far enough for Rudolph to cheer in excitement. But then Brett landed with a splash in the water and stood there. The current was soft and the water flowed around his belly. Brett looked at the distance he covered. Then at the distance he had to go. Then at Rudolph, and the two started laughing about the anti-climactic landing.
Rudolph clapped his cold hands together, they were white and ghostly. He wiped his nose with the back of one and cheered Brett on. Brett, in the water, teeth chattering and shivering, waded his away across the weak stream to the other bank. He climbed the other muddy side and gave two thumbs up to Rudolph.
“Cold?” Rudolph asked, not having to even raise his voice, that’s how near Brett was.
“No,” Brett lied.
And Rudolph watched Brett near the purple stump and Rudolph turned to his own stump and crouched down near it.
“See if you can wiggle that one a little bit,” Rudolph suggested and he dug his little fingers into the soil hugging the stump. He clawed away some of the mud and autumnal detritus but it was clear that the stump went down deep.
“I can’t wiggle nothing,” Brett said, and then he stood up and wiped his hands on his cold wet pants.
“Well what should we do with it?” Rudolph asked.
“I don’t know. We can go see if Mr. Yardly knows of it. But we’ll be sure to tell him we were the discoverers.”
“Perfect,” Rudolph smiled and he went back to his bicycle to get ready to ride. He watched Brett slowly enter the water again. The cold stream wrapped around his torso.
“You sure it ain’t cold?” Rudolph asked sincerely, “We can go get a towel before we see Mr. Yardly.”
“Maybe that’s a good idea,” Brett admitted, “And maybe some new pants.”
And then Brett, in the middle of the stream, started moving in between the purple stumps, which sat on either side of him like two sides of the same door way.
“I just really wonder what in the world these –“
And then he was gone. Not a splash for an exit. Not a sound. Nothing. He disappeared and the cold stream moved on between those two purple lumps and Rudolph sat there on his bicycle dumbfounded.
Returning with his father he had trouble warding the tears from flooding his eyes. He kept wiping the back of his cold white hand across them, keeping his other hand safe in his dad’s grip. Rudolph desperately tried to explain what had just happened to his father and his father took a knee on that dirty riverbank and looked at his son with the most sincerity a busied father can muster. He ignored the knee of his pants getting muddied by grass and pine needles. Rudolph cried and whined in his high voice about Brett and pointed at the river and then at the purple lumps sitting translucent and glossy like two lips to a maw.
Dad walked over to the nearest one and placed his work boot on it. He gave it a shove with his foot but it didn’t budge. Then he squatted low and looked at it closer, wiping the moistness off with his palm.
“This rock is the problem?” his father asked ultimately shrinking Rudolph’s concern. Yes. The rock was the problem.
“Dad, Brett’s gone and I think he went with the river, but I can’t be sure. He just sunk under.”
Then, with realized urgency, “You didn’t say that earlier. He was in the river?”
“Yes, dad, but he didn’t splash so I don’t know!” and the pressure mounted for little Rudolph and he broke down crying and his father took off down the side of the bank hurrying for the life of his son’s towheaded pal.
Down the coarse of the little river stream Dad ran hard, his boots sucking into the wet clay bank. He kept his gaze on the stream. It was far too slow to have taken down the boy, and if it had there’d be no chance he was taken this far. The Dad returned and jogged back to crying Rudolph. His chest wheezed. The cold air and panicked running was hard on his lungs.
“Maybe he crossed the river when you weren’t looking,” Dad said as he kicked off his shoes and socks and started wading across the slow stream.
Rudolph wiped his eyes more and cried for his father through his gapped ugly teeth, “Dad, no, come back. He’s not over there.” But his father was determined to not have to call Brett’s parents and explain that he just disappeared. The Dad waded around and splashed at the water and could easily see through the rippled, wrinkled current to his bare feet now going numb in the cold. Before he realized where he was wading he passed the threshold of the two crystals and, exactly like his son’s friend, he just disappeared.
Rudolph wiped his eyes once more and watched the slow water weave its way down. His lips trembled and he looked at the two crystals and he noted how much taller they were. How much more purple too.
“Dad?”
Maybe for centuries this UOM was appearing and disappearing all over the world, going unrecorded and unexplained since the creation of the rock we call home. Surely it isn’t that unbelievable for a mouth to appear from dirt and mud and swallow things whole like Charybdis once did to the great warriors of that dead time. Maybe this UOM finds its home in Homeric legend or maybe it goes back even further, denying all historical texts, and preceding all mouths before it.
Or maybe it isn’t a mouth at all, but a portal, a door way to another world. Not born from the earth but something quite opposite, in fact. Something celestial – manifesting itself to take take take and deliver in a frenzied goop on the other end of whatever birth canal it may be. Everyone’s in a womb until they pass through the purple lips. Then real life starts. Or maybe nobody will ever know what it is and if the voice of my narration could careen and dolly its way through the doorway and catch up with Brett and Dad then maybe we’d have an inkling as to what was going on. But I can’t, and I’m sorry. However, what I can tell you is this: Rudolph ran far away that day and has been since living with his Auntie. A rescue team did appear and start searching for the two and, not unlike the two before it, were being swallowed – excuse me, teleported? – to a new someplace. Sometimes it happened one by one when nobody was looking, sometimes it happened in droves. The point is, nobody found anybody that crossed that path and by New Years Eve the purple crystals stood like obelisks, thirty or so feet high, purple and throbbing, erect from the mud and moist on the tip.
It was an unspoken agreement of the town that they would just build a barbed wire and electric fence running the length of the small stream, cutting it off on the bifurcation and confluence. They did throw around some ideas on demolition but everyone that could have been suitable for the job was too afraid to get near it – and the town heads were very understanding about that. So the fence is what they did, and had it even patrolled by the bravest of the town. A guard at an outpost every half mile or so and even one patrolling the banks of the water. These men served their duty to god and their town and nobody could take that away from them, not even whoever lay on the other side.
So this was how the town of Mudberry functioned. It mourned its loss with flowers and pictures at the edge of the fence and then it kept a very tight lip disposition on the matter, not craving to have hordes of scientists peer in and poke and prod at the inner goings on of their Podunk lifestyle. And this course of action proved fruitful (if by fruitful we mean that disappearances stopped) until deeper into February when the night sky turned purple.
There’s much speculation as to why this started happening but the most common and agreed upon idea is that it got hungry. You see, around February 20th the purple obelisks started glowing – a gentle pulse of purple swirling like lightning inside the crystalline pillar. It was first noticed by Thrash, the patrolman that kept his ATV on the bank and made his living by riding up and down the spine of the stream by night and life guarding at the YMCA by day. This man was fit and young and hot. He had a drop down chin with blonde patches of hair and a darker, more bark colored head of it. His nose was sharp and his hands were big but his biggest catch were his eyes, deep and green but not soft, no, harsh and captivating. Like if you were drowning in the pool he’d rescue you and then his gaze would reprimand you. And he was the first to be attracted to the pulse and throb of these pillars. He stopped his little ATV next to the water’s edge and dismounted. He put his walkie talkie to his lips but then refrained (Why? Who knows?) and walked into that water as if no matter what he did in his life it would have always led him right there, wading through cold black water now glimmering purple from the reflection, wading on to the efferent halls of oblivion. And then, like every fool before him, he passed through and disappeared, the obelisks grew taller and deeper in hue and now, just peering above the trees of the woods, they sparked little purple flashes from tip to tip, and shot some into the sky like two telephone towers signaling some esoteric message to a greater beyond.
And it was in this way that the people of Mudberry were attracted to the damned mouth. It started first with just the people of close proximity, the guards at the outpost, the people with outer windows in Old Pine, but with each new morsel, the threshold grew taller and taller, licking the sky and illuminating it with an other worldly pigment. People on the roads, attracted to it, drove calmly to the wet purple lips and parked their cars and jogged to the stream. Everyone – and I mean everyone – was doing it. Parents brought their toddlers not so much as offerings but more as “You’ll understand one day.” And prepubescent daughters came fast wondering if it’ll hurt and older more experienced daughters came next assuring the littler ones it’s fine and only natural. By morning, the town of Mudberry was empty.
Rudolph was in St. Louis with his aunt during the exodus of Mudberry and consequently, he had no idea what was going on. During that night of February 20th no emergency calls left the town because nobody sent them. Everyone shambled to the gates voluntarily excited and aroused. However, when Auntie couldn’t get a hold of any town officials on the still stagnant whereabouts of her brother (nobody could get a hold of anybody) she took it up on herself to drive down there and see what it was all about. And if you’ve ever had to await more dead-end answers on a missing persons report, you can imagine how stressful and anxious and hopeless she was when she drove down the freeway, little Rudolph in the back seat. Auntie sped in her ugly little Pontiac, her mind reeling with all of the responsibilities her brother’s absence was making her abandon. Her own kids she’d need to feed. Her own husband she wanted to be with. Her own job she couldn’t pass up. But what could you do when your brother goes missing? Not take in the kid? For shame if you thought, “Yes” to that, for shame.
The ugly car with the ugly woman and the ugly boy sped its way and entered the ghost town from the east. Cars were abandoned and shops were wide open, the lights still on from late night, or off from closing. The front doors of houses were open too and a fine humming coursed through the streets and down the narrow alleys and across the back yards of small town Missouri. New cars from other worried relatives sat in the street, the engine still purring on a few.
“Auntie,” Rudolph squeaked out, pathetic as usual, “I’m scared. Where is everyone?”
“I don’t know, honey. I don’t know,” Auntie said as she rolled through the empty town. This life of silence continued until she turned the corner and saw it herself, rising even higher than the telephone towers, higher than the water towers too, two massive monstrous obelisks – a feverish display of purple flashes and lightning shooting between the two tips and also out in to the air like wild hair.
The Pontiac sat there like a turtle and Auntie gazed, bewildered, at the colossal gate way to oblivion that stood only a few miles north.
“Auntie, what is that?” Rudolph asked, fidgeting in his seat, leaning against the strain of his seat belt. And without an answer, Auntie accelerated her car towards it.
“Auntie, why are we going near it? Auntie,” Rudolph kept asking growing more and more afraid at the frantic driving of and acceleration of the Pontiac. The trees were barren and snowfall had begun taking place. Whirling winds and howling gusts of the icy snowflakes splattered the window and the streets grew whiter and whiter and Rudolph could see his breath in the car for it had no heating unit. He wrapped himself up tighter in his parka and scarf and Auntie’s knuckles got redder as she clenched the steering wheel.
When they got to where the metal fence was Auntie stopped the car and got out and began walking through the woods, the snow crunching over hidden twigs and branches, the bare trees looking like twisted legs upside down, contorted in sex. Rudolph hurried to keep up but Auntie was on a mission. She didn’t even close the wool coat she had on and had left her purse in the car. The snow landed softly on her steel wool hair.
“Auntie, I don’t want to be here,” Rudolph whined. “Auntie.” But she kept marching in her snow boots. When she got to the stream she stopped. She looked up higher and higher and higher and then she marched herself towards the opening.
“Auntie! Auntie, what are you doing?” Rudolph yelled and screamed and he tried to grab her hand and pull her back but she shook him off and he fell onto his back in the snow. “Auntie, stop!” But Auntie wouldn’t listen and she marched onwards to the opening and Rudolph began to cry and shake his head and he was terrified of the things and what they’ve done to everyone and then he watched Auntie walk on through, kicking up water, and then disappearing forever. And the obelisks of that UOM shook and vibrated and grew even taller and shot out purple fire into the sky.
Rudolph cowered and crawled through the snow behind a stump and watched in fear for anything else. The snow fell harder and got into his eyes and he wiped them with his gloved hand. He shivered violently. And the snow fell harder and obscured everything around him. Then he tightened his scarf again and watched the fire shoot from the pillars into the day sky. The purple fire and the white snow and the blue of the stream now freezing and the gray of the dead trees and his nose, always with his nose, running and sore from constant use with tissues and his sleeve, always sore and always raw and always red.