Jen didn’t like that. “I’m looking for a place to live.”
“That, too,” Teresa said.
She hadn’t let go of Jen’s hand. Jen wondered if now was the time to pull away, if she wouldn’t be seen as too rude by doing so.
“Promise me something,” Teresa said. “Promise me you won’t go up there alone again. Promise me.”
Jen took her hand back, but smiled gently as she did so.
“It’s my family home,” she said.
“It was built by a man with secrets,” Teresa said. “He got more and more paranoid as he got older. He was wealthy. He had the ability to protect everything in new and creative ways. It’s like a dungeon—the kind we try to conquer. You might find great treasure. You might die. Promise me you won’t go alone.”
Jen shook her head. “I can promise you I’ll be very careful,” she said, because she knew it was the only promise she could keep.
The house seemed less foreboding the second time she approached. She had the odd feeling that it expected her.
She parked in an even more secluded spot, hoping that this time she wouldn’t be spotted.
Then she made her way to the path.
She had brought gloves this time, as well as extra food and water in a backpack. She didn’t want to be caught off guard in any way. She also had a disposable cell phone that she bought at a convenience store. The phone didn’t have a lot of minutes, but it had enough juice to enable her to dial 911 if she needed to.
She had heard Teresa’s warnings; she was just going to heed them in her own way.
Jen also made sure the weather wouldn’t surprise her either this time. Her new by-the-week room had a by-the-week television set. It had no cable, but it did get the local channels, and she watched the weather religiously, making certain she wasn’t going to get caught in a powerful spring storm.
The forecast looked bright for the next three days. If a storm showed up, it truly would be a freak.
She had no real worries. She wasn’t even worried that much about her job anymore. Dave had come in one afternoon to start her on the game. He’d walked her through her first dungeon, and taught her how to graph everything.
She felt like she was still in school. When she asked him if she could play the computerized version, he laughed.
“The game isn’t about scoring points and making hits,” he said. “It’s a social interaction. It’s about imagining the world—re-creating the world—with your friends.”
But she didn’t have any friends. She wasn’t sure she wanted any either.
It took her less time to get to the house, maybe because she knew where she was going. The lake glistened to the south, and the sailboats filled the water like friendly birds.
She slipped behind the main building. She’d studied it in old photographs and on some downloaded satellite imagery. There was an old path that led to the back, and she figured that had to be the main door.
She ignored that small door on the lake side. Instead, she walked through the flattened grass to the area she’d seen on the maps. A walk made of decaying brick twisted its way from the old road.
She stayed alongside the brick, careful not to step on it so that she wouldn’t hurt herself.
The path led to stairs, also made of brick, which looked sturdier than the sidewalk had been—probably because grass and weeds weren’t trying to grow between the mortar.
The brick stairs were interesting. As they went up, they widened to an ornate double door, the wood chipped by the weather.
But beneath them, another series of steps twisted, leading to a metal door, rusted and nearly invisible against the side of the house.
If Teresa were right, and Jen’s great-grandfather had been paranoid, then he would have booby-trapped the main door. The lower door might have been the one he used.
Jen eased down the brick steps, feeling a few of the bricks wobble under her feet. She paused for a moment, then took an old rag out of her backpack and used a broken bit of brick to hold the rag down.
If she did get trapped inside, someone would know what door she had used.
If someone came looking for her.
The thought chilled her. She reached inside the pack and turned on the cell phone. It took a moment, but then the phone’s service kicked in. There was good reception here.
She would be all right.
She put the phone back into the pack and went to the door. It was locked, like she expected, but as she tugged, it came loose on its frame. The wooden frame had rotted. The hinges were attached to nothing.
If she pulled hard enough, the entire door would come off.
She didn’t need the entire door to come off. All she needed was to pry it open and slip inside. She couldn’t get past the lock, but she could remove the door’s hinges by hand with very little effort.
She put on her gloves so that she wouldn’t get stabbed by random nails, and pulled.
The hinges came out like teeth from a broken jaw.
She used the edge of one of the hinges to pry the door from its frame. It didn’t slide open so much as peel back. A waft of dust-filled air floated out at her, and she sneezed.
Then she reached inside her pack and removed her flashlight. Clicking it on, she went into the darkness.
She was in a small anteroom. A rotting chair leaned up against an interior door.
She turned the flashlight back on the main door, and saw something that didn’t surprise her. A slide-back viewer.
This had once been an entrance to a speakeasy. The bouncer had sat here, and when someone knocked, he had pulled back the slide, peered through, and asked for a password or identification.
Her heart pounded. She felt like she had stumbled into history—but she was the only one who knew about it.
Maybe that was why the door was so badly rusted; it hadn’t been used since the 1930s. She wondered what other parts of the property hadn’t been used since then.
She would wager that as her great-grandfather got older a lot of it became abandoned.
The interior door wasn’t locked. She moved the chair and opened the door, stepping into a wide room that smelled faintly of beer.
Or maybe that was wishful thinking.
A counter—a bar?—ran along one wall, and the other walls had mirrors—or maybe those were the reflections of grimy picture frames on the walls.
The idea intrigued her. Old family photographs maybe, or pictures of her great-grandfather with Bugs Moran. She walked to the reflecting wall, tripped, and tumbled forward, landing on cushions that smelled of mold.
She pushed herself up, and rolled off whatever it was. Her stomach churned. She had to be careful. She had to think before she moved.
She turned the light on the wall, and instead of seeing pictures or mirrors, she saw eyes. Dozens of eyes.
She screamed, and something flew overhead.
Bats?
Inside a house?
In the basement of a house.
She covered her head and prayed she was wrong.
After the sounds stopped, she stood. A sound like a growl echoed behind her.
She turned—and something hit her in the head.
The smell of mold made her sneeze. She was lying on that cushion—or she thought she was. She put her hand on her forehead, and her fingers came away moist.
She sniffed. Blood.
Her head ached and as she tried to sit up, everything went black again.
It took concentration to open her eyes.
The handsome man—the one who was older than her father—shoved the man with the long fingers aside. Teresa leaned over them.
She touched Jen’s forehead, said, “Barely. We barely made it,” and the pain eased enough for Jen to realize there was pain.
Jen closed her eyes. She rose up, as if lifted on air, and floated forward.
Dave’s voice echoed in the darkness. “Careful, careful, you have no idea what’s down here.”
And then Tere
sa: “I can’t save her, Dave. She’s gonna die.”
They were sitting on the sloping lawn, Jen and Dave, overlooking the lake. The water glistened like it had earlier, but there were no boats. The sun was much too bright.
Dave handed her dice.
“You have to roll again,” he said.
“Why?” she asked.
“You need a new character.”
She frowned. Her head ached so badly that it was hard to think. But she was sure of one thing.
She didn’t need a new character. Her character was fine as it was.
“No,” she said.
He pressed the dice into her hands. “Hurry,” he said. “We’re too far from the store. We don’t have a lot of time, and I can’t bend the rules much more than this.”
“What rules?”
“Every game has rules,” he said. “Just because I’m the caretaker doesn’t mean I don’t have to follow the rules. In fact, I’m in charge of maintaining the rules. I can’t change them. I’m not the game master.”
“Who is?” she asked.
He looked sad. “If we knew, we’d appeal. But we can’t. Please, roll.”
Because he’d been kind to her, because he was here in this hallucination, keeping her company while she bled to death on a moldy cushion, she rolled for him.
The numbers were as strange as before. Only she understood some of them now. The dexterity—the thief number—was even higher than before. The strength, too. The intelligence score remained the same.
He whistled. “Magic and dexterity. No wonder the store liked you.”
“Liked?” she asked.
“Finish. Quickly. Then we’ll take you back.”
Back. She rolled the last—charisma—and it was lower than before. Or not. She couldn’t remember.
She couldn’t remember anything. The light was fading. The lake was turning black. Was a storm brewing in the distance?
She turned to look, but she could see nothing.
Not Dave, not the lake, not even herself.
When she awoke, she was on clean sheets. The room smelled of disinfectant, and something beeped above her head. She opened her eyes, and saw the plain white walls of a hospital. Steel bars lined the sides of the bed, along with tubes running out of her arm.
Her head still ached.
Spider sat on a chair beside her bed, but he hadn’t noticed her. He was playing a GameBoy, his thumbs moving so fast she could barely see them.
“What happened?” she asked.
He looked up. Then he pressed the save button, turned the GameBoy off, and set it on his lap.
He didn’t not look happy with her.
“What happened?” he repeated. “What happens to anyone who tries to go into a dungeon alone? Don’t you watch horror movies?”
“Horror movies aren’t real life.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You think that because you were wearing gloves and boots instead of a miniskirt and high heels. But the effect was the same. Didn’t Teresa tell you not to go in by yourself?”
“It’s my family’s house,” Jen said.
“Closed off for a reason,” Spider said.
She squinted at him. “What reason?”
He sighed. “I was hoping Dave would be here when you woke up.”
“Why isn’t he?”
“Game night. He’s got the store.”
She nodded, then wished she hadn’t. A wave of nau sea ran through her. “What happened to me?”
Spider sighed. “You’re not going to believe me.”
“Try me.”
“Lake Geneva is a portal.”
“Sure,” she said.
He glared. “You want to hear this or not?”
She might as well. She had nothing else to do. Someone else could tell her the truth later on.
“A portal,” she repeated.
“It always has been. There are stories that Gary Gygax used to go to the abandoned Oakwood Sanitarium when he was a kid,” Spider said. “He said it was great fodder for D&D adventures, but most everyone knew it was the original portal.”
“Rosehay is no sanitarium,” she said.
“Oakwood got torn down. The portal moved to some other building. We don’t know which one. Then it must have been torn down. Then your great-grandfather died, and your family abandoned Rosehay. So the portal moved again. At least, that was what Dave thought. But no one knew for sure, and he couldn’t figure out how to legally explore it. You know the Lake Geneva police are supposed to arrest and prosecute anyone who trespasses on that property?”
‘They didn’t arrest me,” she said.
“It’s your family’s property,” Spider said. “Teresa tried to warn you.”
“What happened to me?” she asked.
He stared at her. “Really happened? Or you want the story we gave the paramedics?”
The story they gave the paramedics was probably the true one. “Both,” she said.
“You went inside, turned too fast, and hit your head on an exposed beam. You did some serious damage. You were unconscious when Dave and Teresa found you.”
That had to be the paramedic story. “What’s your story?” she asked.
“The house sent the first big bad after you and you had no defensive skills. If you’d been in there with your party, like Teresa told you to do, someone would have seen the problem or stopped it or a full-fledged fight would have occurred. Or maybe you would have scared it off. But you were alone. You went in, got attacked, and nearly died.”
Either way, the story was chilling. Teresa had been right; Jen shouldn’t have gone inside by herself.
“How’d you find me?”
“Someone spotted your van. Dave insisted we search for you. He brought in the old-timers. He says they barely got you out alive.”
She frowned. Something at the edge of her consciousness—a high-pitched scream like a wail and bright light—the smell of fire and a voice reciting nonsense words with great conviction. The short muscular man stabbing something with a sword—and Dave, Dave holding the door, as Teresa held her hand. The handsome man guided them out, remaining behind to fight.
There was more screaming, and then a blood-curdling yowl.
She had thought—at the time—that it was a death cry.
Teresa said, She’s too far gone. I can’t save her, Dave. She’s gonna die. The white light hurt her eyes—and then it faded back into gleams of sunlight on the waves. Dave sat across from Jen, holding dice in one hand, a graph and pens in another.
Roll again, he had said. Please.
And eventually, she had.
He had saved her life.
Whether or not he had done so metaphorically or in reality, it didn’t matter. Dave and Teresa and the men who played games in the back room late at night had saved her life.
Spider watched her, almost as if he could see her memories unfolding.
“You’ll be different,” he said. “There’s no getting around it. You’re never quite the same after the first time you die.”
“My heart stopped?” she asked. She wanted the reality not the fantasy. She wanted the truth.
“Everything stopped,” he said. He picked up his GameBoy and stood. “Now it’s up to you to play a little smarter.”
She wanted to tell him she wasn’t playing. But he had already turned his back on her. He was leaning out the door, waving at someone at the nurse’s station, telling them that Jen was awake.
She closed her eyes.
The memories were as real as if they had actually happened. Maybe they had.
She didn’t know.
And she wasn’t sure she cared.
Because for the first time in her life, someone had realized she was missing. Someone had come after her.
Someone had cared enough to see what had happened to her.
No one had ever cared before.
She opened her eyes. A nurse stood over her, cool hand against her cheek. Spider stood beside her. He didn’t see
m as annoyed as he had a moment before.
He seemed worried.
Maybe that was what she had taken for annoyance. Worry.
Had anyone ever worried about her before? She had called her father from Washington, D.C., said she was in trouble, and what had he done? He’d berated her for leaving, for not calling for six months. He’d never asked what kind of trouble. Never asked what she needed.
He hadn’t cared.
But Spider had cared enough to sit beside her bed and wait until she woke up.
“What about the house?” Jen asked him. Her voice sounded raspier than it had a moment before. Or maybe that hadn’t been a moment. Maybe it had been longer.
The nurse wrote some information on a chart, then said she’d be right back.
Spider remained beside the bed. “We’ll close the portal,” he said. “Then you can move in.”
Close the portal. She didn’t know what that meant. But it sounded reassuring. Followed by the fact that she’d be able to move in.
It was only after a moment that she realized what else he had said.
He had said “we.”
There’d never been a “we” before in her life either. It had always been her or them. Never people standing with her.
Spider tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. He looked younger here than he did inside the store.
“I called Dave,” he said. “He told everyone you’re awake. We’ll be here, taking turns, until you’re better. Then you’re moving.”
“To the house?” she asked.
“The store,” Spider said. “It’ll take a while to get the house cleared. The store has a back room.”
“I know,” Jen said.
“Not that room,” he said. “A place for people to stay before they can go home. Until we close that portal, you’ll have a place to sleep. If you want it.”
She wanted it. She wanted it all.
Fantasy or not. Reality or not. She wanted to stay.
She wanted a place to belong.
And she had finally found that—in a town her parents had abandoned, beside a lake that seemed older than time.
She smiled at Spider.
“Thanks, wizard,” she said.
He grinned at her, a genuine look of happiness she had never seen before. “Our pleasure . . . thief.”
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