Keep Quiet - 1. The Bolide

I often wondered, in the years following Charles’s disappearance, whether the friendship which linked us had been the inescapable product of fate, random happenstance, or something much more sinister. In hindsight, however, I now see that circumstances surrounding us both were such that it was all but inevitable that we should become close companions since childhood.

He and I came from very different backgrounds, but the business relationship linking our two families linked us as individuals as well. Charles was the sole heir to the Wentworth fortune, the amassing of which was due entirely to his father, Abraham Wentworth. Through shrewd business dealings, Wentworth the elder had managed to secure his position as the sole transport provider for machinery for Standard Oil in the entire Midwestern United States. His business grew exponentially and so did his notoriety. By the time Charles was born, Abraham Wentworth was easily one of the five richest men in Albany and he did not hesitate to proclaim this fact through ostentatious shows of magnanimity and frivolity. While it was true that the Wentworth name was largely considered nouveau riche by the more established families in New York State, the sheer magnitude of the influence wielded by Charles’s father opened all doors for his young son. He was born into opulence and comfort, and yet these luxuries were always to be tempered by the emotional poverty brought on by his isolation from others. Charles would often confide in me that he never knew quite where he belonged. It was not at home among the rich old families, which looked down on him simply because of the fact that his fortune was less than a generation old. Neither was he at home among the members of the middle class, with the exception of myself. His fabulous wealth made such a thing all but impossible and he forever felt trapped between the two worlds. Maybe that is why our bond grew so strong from the very beginning. He was the quiet intellectual type, almost stereotypically awkward when it came to social occasions. I was loquacious and outgoing, a yin to his yang. By all accounts, we should have had a very hard time tolerating the other, but instead the opposite happened and we came to rely on our differences almost as much as on our eventual similarities.

My own father was nowhere near as rich as Abraham Wentworth, but he was a very capable attorney at law and he had always worked very closely with Mr. Wentworth, even before the days when the latter had become fabulously rich. My father was always an honest man, pious, and not envious in the least, qualities which Mr. Wentworth very quickly learned to prize highly as his fortune grew and he became ever more constantly besieged by people who were after his money and nothing else. Mr. Wentworth entrusted him with the most sensitive manners, and my father repaid this confidence with capable work, professionalism, and a genuine sense of justice. As a result of this, it became commonplace for our two families to meet at the Wentworth mansion in Albany all through the years of my childhood. It was in this manner that I came to know Charles, who shared my age, and we quickly became playmates. Even despite everything that happened afterwards, I cannot help but allow myself a wry grin as I recall our childish adventures, as we called them, running around together through the enormous mansion pretending we were explorers or pirates or soldiers. Charles had a never-ending supply of toys, and there were always sweets of various kinds to be found in his bedroom, a space so big that the entire lower floor of my house could have easily fit inside. Nevertheless, and this is undoubtedly a result of my father’s stern moral guidance, I do not recall having ever coveted anything of Charles’s. In fact, during my visits the two of us made it almost a point to fashion our own playthings from random materials found either in the mansion or around its huge gardens. I remember always finding it curious that Charles appeared to be almost ashamed of the many things he had, but his dismissive attitude towards the evident social and economic differences between our two families always made me feel at ease and I quickly learned to treasure my friendship with him, independently of who he may one day be and what he may inherit.

My parents always encouraged my friendship with Charles, frequently stating how I should learn from him and be thankful for the many opportunities which presented themselves to me simply by virtue of being Charles’s only friend. I remember attending science fairs, going to museums, seeing wondrous beasts at a private circus, and puzzling over curious inventions throughout the many occasions when I was invited to go with him so he would not be lonely. By the time we were ten years old, we were as close as two children could ever hope to be, and so it was all but natural that I should receive an invitation to spend the holidays at the site of what would become the Wentworth Grand Hotel, tucked away in the mountainous wilderness that stretched between Albany and Montréal. Keenly do I remember the thrill upon receiving permission from my parents to go with him. A suitcase with my best clothes was packed the very next night, and I left with Charles and his family, two weeks before Christmas, my excitement mirrored only by Charles’s own, since it was to be his first time at the hotel site as well.

This Grand Hotel project was the subject of much talk back in Albany. Supporters of it lauded Mr. Wentworth’s willingness to stimulate the local economy by committing to such a gigantic enterprise. It was to be, once finished, a combination of skiing resort, luxury hotel, and entertainment center. I later read articles concerning the construction plans, where optimistic reporters described the Hotel with no shortage of superlatives. It was to rival its luxurious counterparts in Switzerland, while sporting all the comforts of the modern age. It would be a place where only people of notoriety would gather, a social and business locus for the influential and the visionary. It was to be almost entirely self-sufficient in the summer, and during the winter its insatiable need for foodstuffs and fuel would bring much-needed jobs to that mostly undeveloped rural region of the state. There was even talk at one point of founding a satellite town for the small army of staff that would be required to keep the compound working smoothly while at full capacity.

Nevertheless, the derisive voices outnumbered the hopeful ones by quite a large margin. As Abraham Wentworth’s personal attorney, my father was from the very beginning outwardly supportive of the enterprise. I now suspect he might have had inner misgivings about an undertaking which essentially jeopardized the entire Wentworth fortune, but he would not tolerate criticism in his own home and on three separate occasions was forced to terminate business relationships with clients because they shared the sentiment of the educated elite – that Mr. Wentworth was a fool who wanted to create demand for luxury where there was none. The mere concept of a hotel so far removed from civilization seemed laughable to some, as I later discovered through readings of the newspapers of that era. It was an act of hubris, many wrote. Others thought it was an ill-conceived attempt at integrating the Wentworth family into the larger sphere of the established influential and the rich, while still others believed it to be the ultimate expression of naïve American entrepreneurship, laudable up to some extent, yet hopelessly doomed to fail.

None of those things were known to me at the time, however. All I knew was that I was on my way to a magical place, a kind of castle in the middle of the wilderness, which Charles had described extensively even though he himself had also never visited it. When we arrived, the weather was bitterly cold, but our shivering was quickly forgotten as soon as we caught sight of the – to our eyes – magnificent work in progress. The hotel grounds were surrounded by forests that appeared to be ancient, as if they had stood there from the very beginning of time. There were mountains on every side, but the hotel itself was nestled inside a wide valley that appeared to have been made for the express purpose of hosting a castle, fortress, or large building. When we visited, work had been going on for about two years at the site, and the entire lower floor of the enormous edifice had been finished and made suitable for habitation. Though I did not know it at the time, Mr. Wentworth had apparently drawn heavy inspiration from the palace of Versailles in modeling his hotel. The main building was surrounded by geometric gardens, wide and shallow artificial lakes, and statues everywhere. There were plans to build a golf course, a hedge maze, a tropical greenhouse to rival those at Kew in England, and an observation tower complete with its own little restaurant from which the night sky would be observed by the guests on clear nights of fair weather. Of all of them, the tower was the only one that neared completion. Everything else was still only very roughly outlined, when at all. Nevertheless, I very clearly remember the feeling of awe that came over me as I took in the scenery and marveled at the fact that everything I saw belonged to Mr. Wentworth – and, by extension, to Charles as well.

We wasted no time in exploring. Despite the fact that the weather was not at all willing to cooperate with our daytime exploits, we quickly became familiar with the entire ground-level layout of the future hotel and the grounds surrounding it. The place was a dreamland for two boys eager to discover new and interesting things. We would often escape the supervision of the various servants tasked with watching over us and would don our warmest winter gear to go outside in the snow. Sometimes we would go into the gardens and build forts surrounding this or that statue, to later have snowball wars with one another. Other times we dared each other to walk out on the precariously frozen ponds and artificial lakes – one time, we both fell in when the ice gave way under us, but we did not grow ill and the incident only emboldened us to go further out in search of strange rocks, hidden places, and the little wildlife that ventured out into the cold at that time of year.

Of particular fascination to us was the observation tower. Entry was barred to it, however, as we discovered to our mutual dismay. When Charles brought this up at dinnertime about a week into our stay, Mr. Wentworth mentioned that it was too dangerous still, particularly considering that the seasonal workers he had hired had left behind all of their tools, scaffolding, and various other implements of their trade inside, in preparation for next spring, when they would come back to finish. To our ears, that only made the place seem more mysterious and alluring. We became convinced that the tower was full of treasure waiting to be plundered, and as the days crawled ever closer to Christmas time and the terrible tragedy which would engulf Charles’s entire family, we became more and more obsessed with breaking into the tower and watching the stars from the rudimentary observation deck which had already been partially built.

Nighttime was my favorite at the hotel site. Charles had always had a fascination with the stars, and the suite we shared throughout the holidays was generously outfitted with no less than three different telescopes, each one of them exquisitely crafted. Two of them could be easily carried wherever we wished, and we used to take them out as soon as the sun set to catch glimpses of Mars, Jupiter, and even far-off Andromeda. The pristine mountain air made such observations much more rewarding than among the murky lights of Albany. It was a joy to watch the craters on the surface of the Moon with such detail that I almost felt I was there, standing on the barren Lunar wasteland. Every now and then there would be meteor showers, and even without telescopes, the spectacle was breathtaking. There was something majestic about the solitude surrounding us, the untamed wilderness all around, and the heavens above us with all of their mystery and their unknowable beauty.

It soon became our objective to find a way to sneak out unseen in the hours of the night and find a way to set up the telescopes on the observation tower. We imagined we would be able to see wondrous things from that vantage point, and spent many a night fantasizing about perhaps discovering a comet or a planetoid which would bear our name. Charles was passionate about the entire enterprise of scientific endeavor and discovery. He kept a somewhat chaotic journal of all of our noteworthy observations, and would speak for hours about his many thoughts concerning the inner workings of the universe. Despite his young age, his grasp of Newtonian mathematics was excellent, and he was able to come up with complicated predictions, diagrams, and models which I scarcely understood. I did grasp the greater picture, however, and I believe it was during that holiday that my love for astronomy was truly born. I was nowhere near as bright as Charles was, but I was diligent and meticulous where Charles tended to sometimes be absent-minded and disorganized. Even back then, I think we both knew that we made a good team when working together. Nothing we set our minds to could offer successful resistance in the long run - or so we believed.

An inevitable corollary of this overconfidence was the fact that we eventually came up with a plan to break into the observation tower for an entire night of stargazing. Charles had been observing a particular area of the sky with great interest, believing that a certain tiny object his telescope was able to show him was a comet heretofore unknown to science. Based on his – to me – unfathomable calculations, he had concluded that this object would make its closest approach to Earth two days after Christmas. Over the days, we planned our nighttime sortie with great care. It was a thrilling adventure, and one in which I proved my worth as a partner by securing the keys to the locked doorway of the tower at ground level. It was not easy, but I have always had the gift of persuasion. I used the fact that I came from a middle-class family to befriend the servants, and eventually learned where the keys were kept when one of the teenage maids was showing me around the big rooms which would, when the hotel was finished, house dozens of cooks, gardeners, janitors, and the like. On the night we had decided to carry out our daring adventure, all I had to do was grab the keys from where they hung – nobody questioned me because nobody saw me. They were all busy, besides. A big family event had been planned.

This was the other part of our own plan. There was to be an important reunion on the very night of the comet’s closest approach to Earth. Mr. Wentworth had invited most of his close relatives and a few select acquaintances for a banquet and a night of entertainment which would helpfully serve as the first of many important social events to build the renown of the Wentworth Grand Hotel. We were of course supposed to attend, but both Charles and I knew that, once the event started, we would scarcely be missed since it would be mostly adults talking about business or politics or other boring topics. We, as the youngest children around, would be all but invisible and sneaking out after dinner would be quite easy. The location of the banquet helped us as well: it was going to be held in a smaller building somewhat detached from the main compound, a low but wide open edifice which bordered the largest lake in the vicinity. Although many of the more luxurious touches were absent from this future ‘Great Hall’, as it was called, it was already a remarkable feat of engineering. The Hall had windows on every side, offering unparalleled views of the surrounding forest and, of course, the lake as its focal point. It was big enough to comfortably hold about two hundred people, and it had its own kitchen and a ludicriously ornate fountain at its center. All around the marble-tiled space surrounding it, tables could be set or taken away as needed, the space swiftly transformed from a sumptuous restaurant into a dazzling dance hall, with plenty of space for guests, musicians, cooks, and more. Simply keeping the space heated in the wintertime cost a fortune, or so I had heard over breakfast a couple of times already, but Mr. Wentworth wanted to use it as a showpiece for what his Hotel would eventually become. As such, the banquet was incredibly important and everybody felt the pressure.

On the night of the event, most of the servants were diverted towards that secondary building to prepare everything. Guests arrived either on the day itself or the night before and were quickly shown to suites similar to Charles’s. Both he and I were pestered by his mother to make sure we would be presentable for the evening, but everyone was so busy that we were easily overlooked amidst the bustle of activity. It was no trouble at all to help myself to the key ring which would grant access to the tower. After dinner, just as we had predicted, we slipped away from the restaurant unnoticed and went straight to our suite to grab the telescopes, warm clothing, and food which we had previously stashed away. We then exited the building through a side door and, scarcely feeling the bitter cold, made our way through the snow straight to the observation tower.

It is odd to have two diametrically opposite interpretations of the same event in one’s mind at the same time. I can remember clearly the excitement I was feeling. I was an adventurer, doing something forbidden, about to engage in exploration of the heavens with my best friend. I was sure we were going to make an exciting discovery. Perhaps we would make it into the papers. As my shoes crunched through the snow, I distinctly remember imagining how proud my father would have been to discover he had a brilliant scientist for a son, a gifted astronomer – even if most of the actual thinking had been done by Charles. But there is also another interpretation of this event, and it brings the dread that comes with hindsight. That night, our lives changed forever and mine has since been marked by terror. I lost my childish innocence in being confronted by death so suddenly and so brutally. I saw my first corpse that night – I saw many corpses, in fact. I don’t remember crying too much, but I do remember the nightmares that plagued me for weeks afterwards. I remember the way I would scream myself awake in my bed, tangled in my own sheets, shaking. I was young enough to be able to process the tragedy and move on, or so I thought for the longest time. Now that I know reckoning is upon us all, however, I realize with grim disappointment that I never moved on. I simply thought that the mad stroke of luck which had saved my life would keep protecting me indefinitely. This is not so. After all, how can I call it luck to have witnessed the things I saw?

That fateful night started out very well, nevertheless. Getting into the observation tower was surprisingly easy with the proper keys in hand. Inside, we were greeted by a wide and cluttered space that had been stacked, floor to ceiling, with construction material and various implements, only some of which I was able to distinguish with the help of the lamp we carried. I was curious about the tools and containers all around, but Charles was adamant that we needed to make good use of the time before we were discovered, and so he led the way towards a spiral staircase in the center of the main room which led straight up. The climb seemed to me so long in going up, and yet I seem to have gone down it in just a couple of panicky hops a few hours later, when disaster struck. The first time, though, I was mesmerized by the interplay of shadows which swung this way and that in the wake of Charles’s handheld lamp. The staircase reminded me strongly of those which can be found in lighthouses, and the effect was compounded when we finally came to a landing several dozen feet above the ground, where a sturdy door barred access to the observation deck.

The keys made short work of the nearly frozen locks which stood in our way and the door creaked ominously as we pushed it outwards. We were greeted by a burst of frigid winter air, and I remember thinking that perhaps we were not dressed warmly enough for several hours of silent contemplation of the sky. I said nothing, however, not wanting to appear a coward in Charles’s eyes, and made my way with him onto the deck. Despite the cold and the ferocity of the wind at that height, I could not help but gasp in childish awe at everything I could see.

The valley stretched out in front of me, majestic. Behind us, the bulk of the hotel was visible only as dim lights here and there flickering from small square windows. Much further back, by the lake, the Great Hall was blazing with light in comparison, so brightly, in fact, that I worried all that light would make our observations difficult. Faintly, carried by the wind, I could hear distant strains of music from the celebration that was already underway, enlivened by the many guests that would be attending. I must have looked back for longer than necessary, because Charles came to me and told me that we were missing nothing – it would be boring to just sit around in the party unable to leave. Here, we had total freedom to do science.

I needed no further coaxing. We set about preparing our telescopes. Charles made sure that everything was aligned properly, and in the meantime I protected our chosen spot from the wind as best as I was able to, dragging wooden boards and other bits of furniture to create a very rough and improvised shelter from which we could watch the heavens above.

Soon, I forgot about the cold. There was a meteor shower and never have I seen something as spectacular as the one that night. The mountain air, true to its promise, was so clear that I felt as though I barely needed a telescope to see fascinating details in the celestial bodies around us everywhere I looked. While Charles was busy locating his elusive comet, I dedicated myself to the telescopic observation of Jupiter and marveled at the fact that I could almost see such a gigantic world from so far away. I then set my sights on Saturn, hoping to see its rings, but the telescope I had was not potent enough and all I could see was a blurry dot of light, which nevertheless amazed me. Everywhere I looked, the sky was ablaze with light. I saw Sirius and Betelgeuse, the Pleiades and Orion’s belt. I saw shooting stars as bright streaks, gone so quickly that I doubted they had ever been there in the first place. I looked far and wide, fascinated. It was only when Charles called me urgently to his side that I snapped out of my reverie and realized my hands and face were already numb.

My friend’s excitement was palpable. He directed me to look, quick, through his own telescope. I immediately recognized Charles’s proclaimed comet – only it was much bigger now. I pointed that out to him excitedly, mentioning how much larger and clearer the glowing body could be seen… And it was only as I was about to finish my sentence that the true reason for Charles’s excitement dawned on me. The object was much bigger than before. The increased clarity and great vantage point of the observation deck were not enough to justify this increase in apparent magnitude.

“It is coming this way,” Charles said. “My comet is headed for Earth.”

I aligned my telescope with his and we spent nearly an hour observing. Charles produced a notebook out of the folds of his jacket and quickly began a series of calculations that I could not follow. It was only when he looked up, wide-eyed, and pointed towards the last few scribbled numbers on the page, that he explained the conclusion he had arrived at. The comet would pass very close to Earth – perhaps close enough to skim the edge of the atmosphere. He explained that, while he had initially thought the object to be much further away due to its small size, the rapid changes in size and brightness which we had recorded could only be explained by the fact that it was actually very small, half a mile in diameter at most, and already very close to the planet.

I recall asking him if the comet would impact with our world. He laughed and pointed to a confusing diagram that he claimed showed the comet’s orbital path. It would come very close, he repeated, within a few hundred miles or so, but the probability of a collision was astronomically small. He pointed at the stars, squinting as if he could see the object without a telescope through will alone. As long as the object’s path remained unchanged –

I have often wondered whether fate has a sense of humor, because, and this remains crystal clear in my memory, as soon as Charles uttered those words while we looked up at the sky, we both saw the tiniest flash of light coming from the direction of the comet. Charles’s sentence trailed off to be swallowed by the wind. I could hear the music coming from the party much more clearly now, and yet it seemed to me like Charles and I were all alone on an island of darkness, the last two people on Earth. We both remained motionless for a heartbeat. I wondered whether I had imagined the flash of light, but when I looked to my left and saw Charles’s frown, I realized he had seen it too.

We all but dived for our telescopes. And what we saw…

At the time, I was much too young to jump to the conclusion which all but froze Charles in place. All I saw through my own telescope was that the tiny point of light had become several much smaller points of light, moving away from each other like a fireworks explosion in slow-motion. I did notice, though, that after only a few seconds one of the points of light grew so much in brightness that, looking up at the sky with my own eyes, I distinctly saw the trail it left as it arced across the heavens. A shooting star.

I was smiling as I looked at Charles, pointing out the fact that we were incredibly lucky to have witnessed such an event. What were the odds?

The expression on Charles’s childish face froze the remainder of my words in my throat. He was evidently terrified. He, too, was looking up, but instead of wonder I only saw fear. I asked what was wrong but he only shook his head and lifted a trembling arm to point above us.

I witnessed a beautiful spectacle which was slow to unfold. That first shooting star was long gone after an hour or so, but soon afterwards there were dozens of shooting stars trailing across the sky with brilliant flashes. I must have gasped in awe, but I did not come to share Charles’s prior terror until nearly two hours later into the frigid night, when the number of shooting stars grew to such proportions that I began to worry that something was not right. True fear took hold of me when one of the shooting stars passed directly overhead, burning up in the atmosphere with such ferocity that it lit up the night sky for an instant, like a flash of lightning.

I asked Charles what was happening. He was looking at his notes frantically, mumbling, and the only meaningful words I could make out were ‘unnatural speed and trajectory’.

I was going to ask more, but then the bolide came. It was sudden – it was terrible. It brought death upon us all.

It started out as yet another shooting star, but this one did not trail across the sky. It was a dot which simply grew larger and larger. First it was as bright as Sirius. Then it was as bright as Venus at dusk. A minute later, it was brighter than the Moon when full. And then, with seconds left before impact, my brain finally understood the fact that this was a projectile from outer space which was headed directly for our position.

I was not smart enough to try and seek shelter. The thing flashed bright before I had made up my mind and so I stared, rooted to the spot, helpless, and saw night turn into day.

The light came first. It flooded the valley, cold and white, as bright as the sun. The sky overhead turned blue for an instant as the bolide passed overhead and then the projectile exploded in the atmosphere. An even brighter flash of light blinded me completely. Then there came the noise. The sound of the explosion was the most painful thing I had ever endured. I lost a significant portion of my hearing from that day on, as did Charles. I remember screaming but not being able to hear myself – and then I was thrown to the ground by the shockwave. Scorching heat slammed into me. I could not breathe. I was lying on the ground and I did not remember how it had happened. Everything had been too sudden. When the ringing in my ears and the painful after images in my eyes faded enough to permit rational thought, I struggled to sit upright and looked around.

The first thing I did was crawl to Charles. I shouted his name but could not hear my own voice. He was still unconscious, and I could not make out whether he was wounded in any way or not in the flickering yellowish light that came from below. I rubbed my eyes again and again, trying to focus, uncomprehending. As the minutes went by and Charles did not awaken I began to fear the worst. I was also coughing incessantly, and it took me a long time to understand that I was doing so because of the smoke. Confused, I looked round and for the first time cast my gaze upon the valley below.

The forest around us was on fire. This was the source of the yellow flickering light. I tried to stand up for a better look but was quickly overwhelmed by nausea and dizziness. I settled back down next to Charles and nearly cried with relief when his eyes fluttered open. We stayed together for what might have been an hour or more, there on the blasted observation deck of the tower. We did not feel cold – the flames saw to that. Strangely, it did not occur to me to fear them. The shock of the explosion was all I could think of. I kept looking up at the sky in case the event were to repeat itself, but above us there was only darkness and nothing more.

Charles kept repeating something but I could not hear his words. It was only after he recovered enough to become agitated that he seized both my shoulders and all but shouted in my face:

“The party!”

It was a couple heartbeats before I understood what he was saying. Once I did, though, we both helped the other so we could stand up and look further out. I saw the blazing desolation that the explosion had left behind. Although it had felt as if the bolide had disintegrated immediately above my head, in fact I saw that the enormous blast zone it had left behind, the rim of which was clearly outlined by burning trees, was actually nearly a mile back, where the lake was.

Where the Hall had been.

Again, my mind was slow to comprehend. It was only when Charles began sobbing uncontrollably next to me while looking at the dark wreck of what had been a building full of people that I realized what had happened. The bolide had obliterated the Hall. When the morning came, I would also see that it had also vaporized the lake itself.

By this time, my hearing had recovered enough for me to hear Charles’s heart-wrenching wails of anguish. I tried to hug him but he pushed me away.

“They are dead,” he whispered, his voice trembling in terrible fashion. “They are all dead.”