The window had been open all evening, it being such a sultry and close night. Grandma knew the drill, so Ruby told her good night and headed off to bed.
There was no noise. No almighty scuffling sound. No shrieks or protests in those early hours. Not one of us was woken up. We all slept till first light came flooding through the blinds.
Ruby was first downstairs. She went hurrying down in her night things – startled because the television set was still buzzing.
And the windows were open, letting in cooler air and street noise. It was obvious they had been open all night.
At that moment Ruby felt her old heart was going to burst right out of her chest. She knew something terrible had occurred.
Grandma was gone.
Only her leg remained.
8
It was late in our Martian autumn when we were allowed to hold the funeral for Grandma’s leg.
F.E. Baxter wasn’t a very reliable town sheriff. No one felt any safer because he was in charge of law and order. Now he said we had to hang on to that left-behind leg for ten whole weeks before we could legitimately bury it and only then could we assume that Grandma was officially gone.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ said Ma, with Hannah grizzling on her lap. ‘What does he think? The old woman went off on a whim? Dragging herself along on one leg just for fun? And that some day soon she’s gonna come hopping back to the Homestead and surprise us all?’
Da told her, ‘Hush now.’ Da was grim-lipped and subdued that autumn. Chill winds were coming in from the wasteland west of us. He never said much about Grandma’s Disappearance but what he said was enough. It was a bad business. An unfitting end to the life of an Historical Personage.
Of course he tried to say as little as possible in front of us kids. Al and me were as upset as our parents, but we were also secretly thrilled. Grandma was gone forever. The old Martians had taken Grandma away. We whispered this to each other at night and then lay awake, wondering what it could all mean.
Ma went about cleaning and baking and making the house nice for Ruby. The old lady was bringing a letter of permission from the sheriff to hold a small ceremony commemorating the loss of Grandma. The white-haired old lady also brought with her a parcel tied up in brown paper. At first we wondered what she might be bringing us, and then we realised. Of course. The leg.
Toaster shuffled forward and took possession of his owner’s last remnant. He took it away to the shady spot we had picked out, where he’d spent all of the previous Saturday digging a hole to bury her in. He was extra quiet. He’d been very attached to the old dame.
Ma saw to it that Ruby felt at home. She had fixed up Grandma’s room, making it fresh and habitable. Ruby couldn’t have been a more gracious guest, complimenting Ma on the comfort of her home and the excellence of her food – especially the feast Ma put on in her honour that night. We had all our favourite Sunday night foods: salted lizard steaks and hickory sauce and mashed taters. Ruby joined in as one of the family. She listened to stories and told her own and cracked jokes – and she never once got nasty-mouthed and crazy like Grandma often did. It was nicer having Ruby than Grandma with us. Al and me were starting to think it was a decent swap.
However, this old lady in her khaki fatigues and her soft sugary hair wasn’t ours to keep. As she told us, her place was in town and her own house off Main Street. Even the Disappearance of Grandma couldn’t put her off living there alone.
‘I told her,’ she said, looking upset for the first time. ‘I told her about closing the windows. Over fifty years I’ve lived in that house and shut the whole place up each and every night. I never thought to go on about it, in case it insulted her – of course she knew the windows had to be fastened tight. Not because I thought night creatures would snatch anybody away. No, it was on account of the vapours. I didn’t want the poisonous vapours leaking into my home.’
I saw Da roll his eyes at this old-timer superstition. The first-generation Martian settlers thought that the planet was a living organism that resented the very presence of human beings. It exhaled poisonous gases every night after dark, so everyone had to seal their homes up tight or face certain death. The dark fumes would creep into their lungs and drive them demented.
Of course, farming folk like Da and third-generation people like me – we all scoffed at such stuff. Why, we practically lived in the open air. We knew all about terra-forming and how our new world had been made safe for us to live and breathe. We camped out under the stars and by Earth light. We never had one whiff of these so-called ghastly vapours.
Da shook his head. No, something far more solid and real was responsible for making off with his much-missed mother, he said.
Hannah was packed off to bed and Al was drooping by now. I stayed awake later than usual and heard the grown-ups discussing important things in lowered voices. They had a nightcap of brandy and Ruby told them that, yes, there had been further Disappearances in town. Two more that she knew of. And naturally people were getting scared. There had been no public pronouncements yet. The Sheriff and the town Elders hadn’t said anything about the Disappearances at all. Even the weekly news-sheet hadn’t reported anything. They’d not said a word about Grandma, which had angered Da. He’d gone to the office and took issue with them, but still there was no obituary.
I lay awake in my room until all the adults were in bed and the house Da had built for us eight years ago settled down creakily into its timbers. All I could hear were the hot winds cooling as they blew over the dunes. Then I heard Ma and Da murmuring to each other in bed, in the room next to mine.
He said to her, ‘It’ll soon be time to start again. Can you bear it?’
Her voice – when she answered him at last – was so sad and desperately tired. ‘I’ll have to, won’t I, Edward? We’ll all have to start again.’
There was a long pause. ‘I think we will, yes. We have to go somewhere else.’
I heard Ma crying softly.
Da said, ‘We know this is happening, it’s happened before. This is what we heard about, isn’t it? The tales and rumours in those other towns. We knew that it could happen here. We knew it was possible … even inevitable.’
‘You’re right,’ Ma said. ‘I know.’
‘It’s already too late for my mother,’ he said.
9
One night – not too long after – Al shook me awake. I knew right away that something was up.
‘I dunno what it is,’ he said, looking worried. He was in his little-boy pyjamas, but his face in the starlight looked older than his thirteen years. You could see the softness was starting to leave his features. For the first time I saw that my brother was growing up. ‘Something is happening.’
The house was reasonably quiet. Squeaking timbers and the clink and hiss of the cooking range as it cooled in the kitchen below us. It was a still night outside with no wind. The house smelled of that evening’s dinner. Al was annoying me now, just standing there, ears pricked. I climbed out of my bed and he seized my arm.
Clunk. There was a definite clunking noise from downstairs. There it came again. Someone was moving around heavily. It’ll be Ma or Da, I thought. Or Aunt Ruby, who seemed to be living with us now after all. One of the adults would be up in the night, unable to sleep. Plagued by cares and vexations, the way that adults seemed to get.