Chapter 12: Solid Earth

“He’s coming around, Lucille. Thank God for it!”

Jim opened his eyes. For a few moments he looked about him without understanding. Then the outlines of a room etched themselves against the clouded background. And in the foreground Lucille’s face. The girl was bending over Jim, one hand soothing his forehead.

“Where am I?” Jim muttered.

“Back on earth, Jim, the good old earth, never again to leave it,” answered Lucille, with a catch in her voice. With an effort she composed herself. “You mustn’t talk,” she said.

“But what place is this?”

“It’s Andy Lumm’s house. Now rest, and I’ll explain everything later.”

But the first explanation came from Andy Lumm. “Well, Mr. Dent, my wife and me sure were glad to be on the spot when you and Miss Parrish got bogged on the edge of the Black Pool,” he said. “Mean, treacherous place it is. Thar was a cow got mired thar last month, up to her belly. If us hadn’t found her, and dragged her out with ropes, she’d have gone clear under. Granpop Dawes says thar’s underground springs around the edge, and that it runs straight down to hell, though that seems sorter far-fetched to me.

“Yessir, and if I hadn’t heard WNYC giving Miss Parrish on the list of missing persons, and as having been seen near here, I reckon I’d never have found you. Made me and my wife uneasy, that did. ‘Andy, ‘ she says. ‘I got an inkling you oughter go to the Vanishing Place and see if she ain’t there.’ And there I found you two, mired to the waist, and Mr. Parrish dancing around and fretting, and his clothes burned to cinders.

“It sure seems strange to me, to think Mr. Parrish got away safe after that explosion five years ago, and of his wandering around with loss of memory, till you found him, and brung him back here to restore it, but thar’s strange things in the world--yes, sir, thar surely is!”

In the happiness of being back on Earth once more, Jim was content to let further explanations go. The return of Parrish had been duly chronicled in the newspapers, and had provoked a mild interest, but fortunately the public mind was so occupied at the moment with the trial of a night club hostess that, after the first rush of newspaper men, the three were left alone.

Day after day, in the brilliant autumn weather, Jim and Lucille would roam the tinted woods, recharging themselves with the feel of Earth, until the memory of those dread experiences grew dim.

“Well, Jim, I reckon I’d better tell you and get it over,” said old Parrish one morning--Parrish, quite his old, jaunty self again. “Tode had got the dials pointing to the fifth dimension--eternity, he called it, though actually I believe it’s nothing more than annihilation, a grand smash. Well, he pressed that lever. But something had gone wrong.