The Secrets my Mother Kept

"Have you heard from him?" Gran asked, keeping her voice low as she dried another dish. She'd been asking the same question every few hours since the birthday lunch.

Her soaps All my Children played on the small box radio telly TV on the counter across from them. She was trying hard not to get sucked into what was going on with Mateo in the episode when Sydney answered. 

Sydney shook her head, tucking her phone back into her pocket. "Still straight to voicemail. I tried his work number too, but-"

The china cabinet rattled, cutting her off. For a moment, both women stared at it, uncomprehending. Then the whole kitchen began to shake. Coffee cups danced in their hooks. The dish in Brittney's hands slipped, shattering, on the old tile floor at her feet.

"Alexander!" Sydney's voice cracked with panic. She was already moving toward the stairs when the second tremor hit, stronger than the first.

Brittney grabbed the counter's edge as another wave of tremors rippled through the house. Her soap opera crackled with static, then went silent. Through the window, she could hear car alarms starting to wail down the street.

The faucet sputtered, then burst to life on its own. Water sprayed in an arc across the sink, but something was wrong about how it moved - it didn't fall like it should, instead swirling in impossible patterns before disappearing down the drain. 

Above, she could hear Sydney calling Alexander's name, her footsteps thundering up the stairs. But Brittney couldn't look away from the water. Another tremor shook the house, stronger than before. The pipes in the walls groaned like they were being twisted. 

"Alexander!" Sydney reached the top of the stairs as another tremor hit. The floor rolled under her feet like a wave. 

His door was closed. Of course it was closed. She grabbed the handle just as the lights began to flicker and swung the door open revealing Alexander sprawled on the floor between two open notebooks, unmoving. The window behind him rattled violently in its frame.

"Alex!" She rushed to him, nearly tripping over soaked, scattered, papers covered in strange symbols. His skin was soaked like he had been swimming in the lake moments before,  cold and clammy under her fingers as she checked his pulse. "Alex, baby.” Sydney motioned, patting his cheek gently. “Wake up, baby.” She continued. “Brittney! Marcus!" she screamed downstairs. "Call an ambulance!"

The earth went quiet. 

"What happened?" Grandpa Marcus's heavy footsteps thundered up the stairs. "Sydney? What's-" He stopped in the doorway, his face draining of color at the sight of his grandson.

"He's breathing," Sydney said quickly, still cradling Alexander's head. "But he's soaked through, and I can't wake him up."

Gran appeared behind Marcus, one hand flying to her mouth. But there was something else in her expression - not just shock. Recognition. She pushed past her husband, kneeling beside Sydney despite the water seeping into her dress.

“Whats happening?” Marcus asked. noticed something that made his blood run cold. The rain outside Alexander's window wasn't falling down anymore. It was floating upward, like gravity had reversed. 

“What the Hell?”

Grandma Brittney looked up at Marcus and turned to face the window, gasping at what she saw. Sydney was the last to look up, her attention remaining fixed on waking Alexander up. 

“Lochlehm” Alexander murmured.  

“What?” Sydney asked, gently shaking him aware, or at least attempting to. “What did you say?” She asked again. Grandma Brittney broke away from the wibdow to look down at Alexander and Sydney.  

~☆☆☆~ 

Alexander found himself swimming. A few moments before he had been reading the rythmic lettering that had started to make sense o him as his eyes danced around the forebodding pages of what he had discovered to be notebooks left by his mom after and leading up to her deat. 

The water around him fet cold, ike he was swimming in the dead of winter. Alexander thought he was swimming toward the surface but when his fingers gently brushed the surface of rocks, he knew he had been swimming down into the deth of what felt to him as familiar as the lake in his dream, which this could very well bejust a dream. How long had he been swiming? An eternaty it felt like. His arms were sore, his body heavy with fatigue and frustration as he twisted himself upward and kicked the lake floorbed with the balls of his feet.

The sky aboe him was black and endless, like the bottom of the lake had been. Panic started to set in as he reached for the surface of the water only to be greeeted with the floor of the lake again. 

How long had he been doing this?