The Spectral Link Read Online Free PDF Page B

passed each other, my father looked in the rearview mirror and said to me, “So, did you see them?” I didn’t say anything. I was defiantly silent.
    “Your father asked you a question,” said my mother. “You should answer him.” But I maintained my silence. And if I had spoken, I wouldn’t have said anything about what I saw in that car. I wasn’t even afraid at that point. I was bitter and resentful that my father could have asked me in such a bland tone of voice if I saw them. I wanted to scream at both my parents, scream murderously and also with some puzzlement, a plea for understanding. How could people, big people, have such a complacent attitude toward the smalls? How could they give certain presents to children for their birthday or any time presents were in order when those presents might look like that little car and the small people inside it? They were travesties of real people, that’s all they were—two older small people, like a father and mother, in the front seats, and two young small people, whose gender I couldn’t tell at a distance, sitting rigidly in the back. How could there even exist certain toys, for instance an imitation baking oven—a play version of the real thing, yet one that quite probably replicated the actual baking ovens used by the small people? Even if the resemblance wasn’t one-to-one between the two miniature ovens, the thought could still enter a child’s head, “This oven must be something like those the small people have in their kitchens.” Who could be so stupid or malicious that they could ignore the possibility of such a thing—that an object some children might have in front of them, or even in their little hands, could have a counterpart in small country? It was too monstrous to contemplate that at a certain age children can and do become cognizant of the likeness of their toys to entities in the small country world, including the small people who live there, if they are even alive. Why didn’t they react, as I had, with fear and hatred once they came of a certain age?
    Naturally, I knew that for practical reasons the world of the smalls and the real world were securely set apart, just as borders between places of divergent laws and customs were partitioned and even guarded with powerful weapons against each other. But it wasn’t the same between the smalls and everyone else. This was something I felt deep inside me, though I risked being stigmatized as a shameful little bigot not only by my parents but also by most anyone wherever I went.
    For the rest of our vacation that year, I was miserably anxious as well as miserably hateful. From the moment my father asked me if I saw what was in that little toy car, my hatred for the small people that grew out of my fear of them reached its zenith and held there. Of course, I had seen them, idiot father of mine. Why did he ridicule me, taking their side? At one point, all of the occupants of the little car suddenly swiveled their heads toward us, then abruptly swiveled them back to their previously fixed positions. To my mind, they did this as if to say, “We know you are looking at us. Now we are looking at you. Now you know that we knew you were looking at us. And henceforth there will be no escaping this mutual knowledge.” Those damn swivel-heads , I thought, even though I could only imagine what went on in their heads, because in fact they appeared to have nothing going on inside them. They were just hollow, empty things.
    Not long after this encounter, my father pointed out the window. By the side of the road was another sign with one of those simple faces on it. Below that face were the words: LEAVING SMALL COUNTRY.
    “All clear,” my father said with a vexing condescension in his voice and a slight smile on his face.
    “Oh, leave the boy alone,” my mother said, but only as a sort of warning that my father was taking things too far. Right then, I could have thrown a fit the likes of which my parents