The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Rebekah Bergman
- Language: English
- Genre: Magical Realism
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
A QUARTER CENTURY OF SLEEP
THE GROUND IS NOT YET SHAKING, AND THE CAVES ARE solid and unmoving as
the doors of the Marks Museum of Human History open and the audience
files in.
Seats are found in the central hall. Coats are placed on chairbacks.
Programs are picked up and paged through. Throats are cleared.
The air is damp and musty and holds the scent of sweat and impending
rain. Old neighbors from Jacob’s Circle gesture with chins to avoid pointing
as they whisper, “Look—there’s the father.”
The father smiles his goofy, sad smile at no one. He appears the same, if
older.
Beside the father, there is a woman with vacant brown eyes that dart
around. She holds the arm of a man with a very serious expression and
perfect posture. The two strangers and the father make their way to three
empty chairs at the front of the room. The man holds a hand to the father’s
back. This, presumably, is to support him, though it is also a gesture not
unlike a puppet master’s.
In the aisles, the former Congregants reunite and greet one another.
Their traditional orange robes are faded from too many washings. They say
hello and hug, but their eyes are fixed on the caves before them.
They have been waiting for this for a long time.
Inside the caves, once, there were the remains of prehistoric humans.
Inside the caves, now, there is Maeve Wilhelm.
Maeve has been sleeping, breathing, and not aging for twenty-five
years.
At the front of the line, a large man in a gray suit pushes through to find
a seat with an unobstructed view.
And outside, a woman driving a rental car pulls into the parking lot.
She’s going to be late, she knows. She holds a stone in her fist and reminds
herself what she has come here to do.
-2-
Ten years before Maeve’s sleep
THE MAN WAS SHORT WITH A SAD-LOOKING MUSTACHE, but a mustache was not
a permanent feature, so the singles event at the bar where Naomi Clarke
met her future widower was not as bad as she had feared it would be. The
songs were playing at a reasonable volume. She could hear him over the
music, but she could use the music as a topic of conversation if they began
floundering.
She asked the mustached man what he did for work, realizing a half
second later, with some dread, that this question was bound to bounce back
at her. He was telling her of Curious Critters, the insect and arachnid
museum he had recently opened. It was in the shopping center next to the
hair salon right off the exit to Marks Island City. The storefront that still
looked like a deli, did she know it?
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