The vortex was a hole, basically. It was like a funnel on the surface of the earth. Like gravity. If you got too close, you’d never come out.
It was shaped like a well, like a spiral well. It was like a tornado, except not in the air. It was a tornado whose top was at the surface of the planet, and whose bottom was somewhere at the center. Or, at least: its bottom was underground. They don’t know how far down it goes.
It can suck you in if you get too close. That’s why people didn’t find out until recently that it’s there. Because everyone who knew about it, went into it. So unless you’d been there (and got sucked in) you didn’t know about it. And if you did know about it—if you had ever known about it—you got sucked in, because you went too close. People tried to keep their distance. They said: I’m going to go there and see what it is. I’m not going to get too close. I’m going to keep my distance. But they couldn’t. Once they were there, it didn’t seem dangerous. It seemed beautiful. They had to see it just a little bit more.
Since no one who had seen it was around to talk about it, getting description of the vortex was difficult. There were conflicting ideas. Some people said the earth turned into an ocean, and it was like the water in a bathtub drain. Some people said it was like a black hole, where as you got closer and closer the gravity became stronger, and it was harder and harder to go back the way you came. People said the ground was cracked, at the outside, where it started. You could go into the forest around it, you could drive some distance along the road that led to its center, but the moment you thought you could see it—even see evidence of it—you had to turn back. It was that slippery. You could see it on the horizon, but the minute you saw it, it was too late. You would be in the forest. You would think: something is wrong. The grass should not be like this. The ground..I’ve never seen the ground like this. They said it makes the sky purple. That it’s like lightning. Like purple and orange lightning, right over the hole. They say that the orange above it is like no other orange you’ve ever seen—that it opens up a new part of the spectrum, and your eyes see a range of color that they’ve never had a chance to see before.
I don’t know. I’m just telling you what Jules told us. MJ had heard it before. She said there was a website. She said it was dangerous to think about. The more you thought about it, even conceptually, the closer you got to it. People who documented it, died—and their documents never got out. There was a van, a news van, that had broadcasted on their way in, and some of the video was saved. Jules had seen it. People said it was fake. It looked fake. It had to, because video couldn’t capture the vortex. It had to look fake, because if it had looked real, the vortex would have captured anyone who saw the video, and believed.
“Do you believe that? Can you imagine it? Do you see the picture that I’m painting in your mind?” Jules is about an inch from me.
“No,” I say. I don’t.
“That’s why you’re safe,” she says, and she closes her eyes.
We had to hold her upright to get her back to Ashley’s house, because Jules could hardly stand.