City of Ports

by Jeff Deck

  Their sedan heads not for I-95 and the wider world, as I expect, but instead down Islington back toward the downtown. Intrigued, I follow. Having killed two people, are Wallace and Neria now going to grab a late-night coffee at Breaking New Grounds, or what?

  They don’t stop for coffee. They drive to Marcy Street and park the car.

  Then they get out, curiously bringing only one of the backpacks, and the two college students head into Prescott Park.

  The police are still set up at the bridge area. Now the TV news crews have arrived, or at least the first couple of vans. It’s becoming a carnival, flashing lights chasing the darkness from the waterfront.

  I’ve managed to find a spot not far away from where Wallace and Neria parked. A small miracle bestowed by the parking gods of Portsmouth. I follow the students, now more confused than ever. In my experience, criminals usually don’t return to the scene of the crime. Their concern is to get the fuck away and stay away.

  Wallace and Neria cross through the formal garden with its bubbling fountains. I track them among the pink flowering crabapples, passing the beds of coleus and creeping zinnia and fuschia. On the other side, the couple heads east—rather than southeast toward the bridge to Peirce Island. Instead, their destination is the wharves, where a three-hundred-year-old warehouse overlooks the water. They’re in a hurry. I’m not; I’m just a petite brown woman out for a nighttime stroll in a public park.

  They open the door to the warehouse. Funny, I assumed the building would be locked. After a long career of storing fish and grains, the Sheafe Warehouse functions nowadays as an art gallery. I consider calling Agent Jeong—I’m not confident that I can corner both of them in the warehouse. I recall there’s a door on the river side, too, offering another exit.

  But I leave my phone in my pocket. I don’t want anyone denying me the chance to squeeze Graham’s friends for information.

  I open the warehouse door a crack. I peer inside.

  The kids have their backs to me. Artwork lines the walls on either side. In the wall facing the river, rather than a door, there’s a large, fiery hole. A hole with darkness inside.

  I shake my head—I simply don’t know what I’m looking at. Some kind of trick mirror? A modern-art display with a video screen?

  When I view it at a different angle, moving my head, it doesn’t seem to move. I’ve got a strange, cold feeling in my stomach. Marsters’s words swim back into my head: Portsmouth is a special place for reasons you can’t even imagine.

  The guy, Wallace, is digging in his backpack. Neria is leaning over him anxiously, while stealing occasional glances at the burning hole-thing. With them both distracted, now is the perfect time to announce myself. I’ve decided by now that I don’t give a shit about what I have the “authority” to do. I’m just going to do it.

  I creep up to them. Just as the wooden boards creak under my feet and betray me, I grab the girl by the arm. “Stay where you are!”

  Neria jerks in my grip. But I’ve got a good hold on her with both hands. Wallace stumbles upright, fumbling, and a plastic Hannaford bag drops out of his hands to the floor. He’s holding onto his backpack, though. He looks at me with wide, scared, angry eyes. “Let her—”

  “Run!” Neria screams at him.

  Wallace hesitates. He’s a big guy. He could try to overpower me through sheer mass. Or at least knock me away from his girlfriend. But he’s torn. His eyes rove the warehouse. He’s looking for my backup.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” I growl, “but I need to talk to you about Graham Tsoukalas. And that. Stop struggling, kid.”

  Again, Neria screams at Wallace to run. This time he takes her suggestion and bolts. I almost let Neria go and chase him, just because I fucking hate to see someone get away. But this bird’s in my hand.

  She still makes a valiant effort to get away, twisting in my grip and clawing at my face. I treasure both of my eyes, so I use my knee to slam her down and then I get on top of her. She’s a skinny thing. I can manage this.

  “Ugh,” she says against the boards. “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “I’m not a cop,” I say. Surprising how it still stings to say. “But I am investigating Graham Tsoukalas’s death. I reserve the right to turn you over to the actual police if I determine that you’re a murderer and/or a pain in my ass.”

  Neria grunts. Presses against me in a feeble attempt to get me off her. At the physical contact, I have a sudden, unwelcome mental picture of Neria in the video, getting double-teamed by Wallace and Graham. Willing participant, or coerced into it? What kind of woman is this?

  I’d better make my fact-finding quick. Milly, Ulrich, and who knows however many other Portsmouth cops are within spitting distance. Not to mention the rest of the media camped out at the bridge. Anyone outside might have heard Neria’s screams.

  “Why are you investigating this if you’re not with the police?” she says, lifting her head.

  “I’m doing this for Graham’s parents,” I say. A half-truth. Mrs. Tsoukalas did give me her blessing.

  Did I just hear one of the cops calling out? Is someone coming in this direction? I’ll have to take Neria and relocate, much as I hate to leave behind this . . . burning hole thing.

  I poke her between the shoulder blades. “I’ll let you up, but you have to promise not to attack me or try to run.”

  “I promise,” Neria says.

  Right. The faults in this plan are obvious, but I haven’t left myself with any choice. I should have called Jeong. Reluctantly I ease off the girl, keeping a careful eye on her. Neria climbs to her feet and dusts herself off.

  “Who’s the body on the island?” I ask.

  Neria stares at me. She has pretty, shimmering dark eyes. “What?”

  “The body the police found,” I say. “It sure as hell isn’t Graham, so who is it?”

  “It is Graham,” she says.

  “Don’t give me that . . .” I say, but I check myself. I’m out of time. Ulrich, or Akerman, finding me here with a hostage would be a disaster. Clearly we’ll have to explore Neria’s mistaken belief in further detail elsewhere.

  But before we leave the warehouse, I have to ask her one other thing. I jab my finger at the burning hole. “What the fuck is that thing? Some kind of slideshow projection?” I try to lead her closer so I can inspect it further, but Neria stiffens and resists me.

  “Don’t go near it,” she says.

  I try forcing her forward again, but she fights me. Then a siren whoops, and we both jump. It sounds like it’s right outside. It’s not—just a distortion bouncing off the river—but Neria takes advantage of my grip loosening and breaks away from me.

  She’s off. Gone. Before I can contemplate leaving this floating, burning hole behind.

  I know I could catch up with her if I pushed myself. But the projection, or whatever it is, has mesmerized me. Just now I think I hear a sound coming from the hole, a kind of high whistling like wind. It’s not real—openings don’t just appear in the middle of the air—but it fascinates me.

  Approaching it, I trip over something. It’s the plastic grocery store bag that Wallace dropped. Inside are several large pieces of . . . coal. Odd. Someone’s getting screwed by Santa this Christmas, but it’s only May. What would the kid need coal for?

  I leave the bag of coal and walk around the hole. Behind it, I do see the door to the river, giving a view of the shipyard lights across the water. The burning hole looks the same to me from every angle, which should be impossible. I’ve never seen any kind of art display that involves a fucking 3D hologram, or whatever. It’s uncanny. Wrong.

  You’d be even more fascinated by this thing than I am now.

  Neria warned me to stay from the hole. But she might be a murderer, and I need a closer look. I put my face up next to it. Looking. Listening.

  It’s not darkness inside. There’s—another place. A place that isn’t Portsmouth.

  I catch a glimpse of stone. Stone surface. An altar
? The flicker of some fire deep inside, different from the burning fire surrounding this hole. I don’t feel any heat on my face from the fire bordering the hole. It’s like that part’s a trick. But I do feel, and hear, wind whistling from the place within the hole.

  “A Little Bit Enormous,” indeed. Portsmouth stretches in directions I hadn’t imagined. Would Councilor Stone approve?

  I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t. But it strikes me that this, uh, phenomenon—this otherworldly shit happening right in front of me—could factor into my case after all.

  Maybe it’s a self-destructive urge that propels me forward, the same urge that Kathryn tried to help me quell over all these long months. In taking a step forward, I’m really taking a step back. To the old, mad Allard. But in this moment, I don’t fucking care.

  In this moment, I pretend I’m you. Flying free and without a goddamn worry in the world. Everything an adventure.

  I step through the hole, the door, with you in my heart.

  7

  Sensations tug at me as I go through. Not burning, thank God, but tingling. In the back of my brain. In the pit of my stomach. In my fingertips. Between my legs. For a moment my mind tumbles into pure sensory reaction.

  Then I remember to breathe. And I’m standing in a faded grey stone chamber with a ceiling that comes together in a point. Like I’m standing inside a pyramid. A pyramidal temple? There is an altar in the center of the chamber, made of the same pitted grey stones as the walls of the temple. topped by a grotesque, ten-foot-tall dark creature that I’m really hoping is just a statue. Glowing yellow stones are set into the walls between the grey bricks at regular intervals, the only source of light here.

  I command my hands to stop shaking, but it’s no use. I’m going to be in half-seizure mode until I can wrap my tiny little mind around what the fuck just happened, and what is happening now. Where I am now.

  I turn to take a look behind me. Where I’ve come from. Thankfully, I see a burning hole on this side of the universe, revealing a distorted view of the interior of the Sheafe Warehouse. Here, the hole isn’t floating; it’s set into a wall, in the center of a vast and intricate mosaic depicting several pairs of fanciful flying beasts that resemble serpents or dragons, twisting around each other in combat or maybe embrace.

  I can go back. I’m not trapped here. With that thought, I’m able to take a few more breaths, and get my shaking under limited control (still would be a pretty shit typer on a smartphone right now, though).

  “Okay,” I say aloud. “Welcome to Planet What-the-Hell.”

  Population: Allard, and who else?

  The sound of my own voice fails to comfort me, though it’s the only familiar element here. My legs are trembly as I walk forward. The altar seems like a logical first stop. I wait for the triangular black thing to show a hint of movement, but it remains still. I circle around it and examine the glossy surface of the statue: if I had to guess, I’d say obsidian. Same material that constitutes the darkest parts of the mosaic on the wall, in fact.

  The statue depicts a: hmm: the only thing I can think is “giant slug.” Nasty fricking creepy-crawly rendered in as loving detail as the mosaic. Why? Clearly a master artisan created these works, but who? And why? The giant slug hardly has what could be termed a face, yet it seems to be looking at me regardless of my viewing angle. I shiver, look down, and notice a far more mundane object at its base.

  My first crazy thought is it’s a welcome guide and a map. Or a feedback form (Would I recommend this venue for conferences, yes or no?).

  Instead, what lies on the rough grey surface of the altar is a small sketchpad. It’s not from around here, I’m guessing. I pick up the sketchpad. It opens to a drawing resembling the flying-beast mosaic behind me. I flip to a drawing of the giant slug statue. Someone from my world came here as a tourist before I did.

  Graham?

  It looks like there are other drawings and notes as well. I tuck the sketchpad into my jacket pocket. I’d rather leaf through it at a later time, when I’m not in a strange alien temple.

  I touch the strange glowing yellow stones set into the wall. They feel warm. I’m completely baffled about what these are made of.

  The sound of whistling wind registers in my ears. Sounds like a hell of a storm outside. What’s outside? Unfortunately, there are no windows in this chamber, but there is a doorway on the far end. The doorway is oddly vaulted into a triangular shape, just like the shape of the temple itself (and the rough shape of the giant slug). I pluck up my courage and go through the doorway.

  Now I find myself in another stone room. The sloped ceiling is lower and the room is broader. The sound of the wind is much louder in here. A set of huge, shiny black (more obsidian?) doors form yet another triangle in the front of this foyer, if that’s what the room is. And now, yes, there are glassless windows, eight or nine on both my left and right. They’re looking out onto—what I can only mentally process as a hellscape.

  Much as I’d care not to, I approach the nearest window, feeling the wind whip my face. I need to have a closer look … to know if this is real or not.

  The window shows me a view of a blasted, barren landscape under a sky too full of stars. When I say too full, I mean that there is a seemingly impossible depth of white light up there, more than I’ve ever seen on Earth. The brutal wind washes over the land, scrubbing it of vegetation. But there are things out there definitely enjoying the wind—playing in it. Rolling in the gusts, in the air. In tangled pairs. They let out terrifying crackling screeches, full of hard consonants that almost sound like language.

  Flying beasts. Horrible dark scaled flying twinned and twining beasts. They look much like the creatures rendered in the mosaic.

  Some of them soar and dart off in the distance. Some of them are—much closer. Bigger in my field of view. I think one pair of them has just noticed my face in the window.

  I whisper a curse to myself and backpedal. I stumble away from the window, into the center of the temple foyer. It looks like the winged beasts are coming closer to this place. But I find I can’t move my legs anymore.

  Fuck. Run!

  What breaks my paralysis is a quick glance over at the other wall of the place. I see oily yellowed eyes peeking in through those windows: another pair of flying beasts has arrived. They’re even closer, now, just outside the temple, seizing the window frames with their claws and breathing foul miasmas into the space. Maybe they all smelled me. That’s four of the long, twined serpents with their hooked claws and their rows and rows of katana-sized teeth.

  Their hard, crackling shrieks—no, exclamations—box my ears.

  Terror frees my legs to run. I go back through the triangular doorway. I don’t dare look behind me. I have only one destination, and it’s the burning hole framed by the mosaic.

  I make it there without either of the monsters eating me from behind. And I close my eyes as I enter the hole. I feel that same tingling as before as I pass through, spreading throughout my body. This time it doesn’t feel as bad. Or maybe I’m just getting used to it.

  I step out onto the solid floorboards of the old warehouse in Prescott Park in Portsmouth in New Hampshire in the United States of Planet Earth.

  I breathe a huge sigh of relief. In the clear. No more other world, no more incomprehensible horrors to contend with.

  Until I remember that the burning hole behind me is still open. Has been open this whole time. It’s too small for any one of those flying beasts to fit through—but just one of those hooked claws would fit, and that’d be enough to kill me.

  Please let this be over. I take a few trembling steps away from the hole and then feel brave enough to whirl around to face the sight of where I’ve just come from. I need to see if any of the beasts has torn down the grey stones of the temple to chase me. Could they rip the burning hole wider? If they destroy the temple’s mosaic wall on the other side, what happens here?

  I catch a glimpse of dark skin. A shadowed someone is standing
right in front of me. That’s when the fist hits me, full in the face, and I go down. Blackness descends.

  When I wake up, I’m lying on the floor with a tremendous headache. It’s still nighttime. I’m still near the burning hole. But now I’m completely naked. Agent Ethan Jeong crouches over me.

  “Allard?”

  He must have slapped my face just before I came to. My cheeks are ringing almost as much as my skull. I nod wearily at him. “Ugh. Beast of a night. Would you mind not staring at my tits?”

  Jeong coughs and struggles to meet my gaze. Failing to do so, he stares at the floor. “You okay?” he hisses. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “I . . . have no idea,” I admit. I’m not mentally ready to talk about the things I just saw in the—other place. “How did you get here?”

  “Been continuing to follow you. Marsters is yearning for updates. Do you want my coat?”

  “Please.”

  Jeong takes off his coat and drops it on the floor without looking at me. I put it on and stand up. It almost does the job, because he’s taller and broader than me. But the bottom of my ass is still hanging out, and anyone who wants a look at my bush doesn’t have to dip their head very far. This will not do. Also, I’m still cold.

  “Did Riggs and Francoeur do this to you?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know. Somebody got me from behind. But it wasn’t somebody as tall as Wallace Riggs. And Neria had run off—and she was afraid of the hole, so she wouldn’t have gotten that close to it.”

  “The hole,” Ethan Jeong says. Now he’s contemplating that gateway to nightmares. He tilts his head just as I did, trying to see it from a different angle. “That’s . . . not good.”

  He isn’t as surprised as I’d expect him to be, looking at a portal to another dimension. He just looks worried. Bells of suspicion clang in my battered head. Operation Stargate. Project GRILL FLAME. What do he and Marsters know?

  “Do you know how to close that hole?” he says.