Cecil Baldwin

Who even knows what could be causing it?

Invaders from another world?

A scientific experiment on what is the worst sound all of us will put up with?

An attempt by our government to control the weather?

Hey, does anyone not hear that sound behind the sky anymore?

I thought it was bad when it was happening because it sounded like someone was tapping on the inside of my skull.

Or like the cracking of a building right before it falls down around you.

Like that.

But somehow,

It's worse now that the sound is gone.

The silence is like after the spin and crack of a car crash, when the people in the car try to tell if they are still altogether there.

It's the pause when something is said that cannot be taken back, and everyone is still sitting with the poison of the words.

Like that.

Oh, I'm getting a call.

It's from Stacey Jennings, the park ranger out in the scrublands.

There is no official state or national park out there, but as long as I can remember, Stacy has been out there in her park ranger uniform, shambling about, whispering nature facts to kids, and subsisting on insects dug from the ground with her long, blunt claws.

Stacy says there's some kind of to-do out in the scrublands, and she's never seen the like.

She says a hole has appeared in the sky.

Not like a black hole or anything cosmic, more like a hole kicked through drywall.

Now, she says, and she's screaming a little bit, try to keep a hold of yourself, Stacey.