Before he could give it much thought one way or the other, the vent began to disintegrate. In a matter of seconds, it had splintered into millions of minute particles, each particle evaporating almost as quickly as it had been formed.
The vent disappeared.
Will sank back against a light pole.
Somewhere inside him it felt as if a hole had opened and it was slowly devouring any hope he might have of ever finding Chantal again. He felt that and he felt something else. He felt a strange weariness working its way into his bones like a strain of super flu. It hadn't hit him yet, not fully at least, but it was—
Half-a-block up, the Abductor came running around the corner. He was wearing his goggles—the monochromed version of sunglasses, Will imagined—and carrying a small rectangular box in his hands. No sooner was he around the corner, than he glanced down at the box and suddenly dropped out of his sprint. He walked a few steps further, then came to a standstill, visibly disappointed.
Too late, Will thought. The vent's already closed. That's what that little box of yours just told you, isn't it?
The Abductor turned around, his shoulders slumped, and headed back the way he had come.
Will took after him.
11.
They ended up not at the old railroad station or the Haberstock Mill as Will had originally thought they might, but at a private residence one block over from the city park. On the colorized side of Kingston Mills, this was a house that used to be occupied by Henry Bascom and his wife, Edith. They had packed up and moved south to the Bay Area after the mill had shut down. To the best of Will's knowledge no one had occupied the place since. That was on the colorized side.
On this side, things were apparently a little different.
The Abductor climbed the front steps of the old Victorian and entered the house, stopping only a moment to check the box in his hands one last time. Will went through a side gate to the back of the house. In the far back corner, at the end of the gravel driveway, sat an old, detached garage. He peered through the window at the darkened interior, looking past the car (which resembled a Plymouth Duster), and finding nothing much else of interest.
The house, assuming the layout didn't stray far from the Bascom house, was a beautiful two-story Victorian with three bedrooms and a bath upstairs; the living room, a parlor, a kitchen and a huge walk-in pantry downstairs. There was also an attic and a basement.
Will leaned against the corner of the garage, feeling slightly short of breath and wondering what was wrong with him. Through the back porch windows, he watched the Abductor fiddle around in the kitchen, then disappear back into the depths of the house. A moment later, the light in the basement went on.
That's where you've got 'em, isn't it, you crazy bastard?
Two short casement windows had been mounted just above ground level on either side of the back porch. Will got down on his knees, then his stomach and peered into the basement. He would never admit to being surprised, because surprise was only the tip of the ice berg. They were all there. Elmo Stanton. Chantal. Mrs. Schuster. All of them. The Abductor had them sealed off in a corner of the room, caged liked animals. But at least they were there and they were alive.
The casement windows were locked. He looked around for something he could use to break them open, and when he found nothing, he took a more direct approach. He sat back and landed a solid right shoe to the centerpiece of the sash. The frame collapsed into the room, followed almost immediately by both panes of glass.
Will went through, driven more by adrenaline than thought.
The Abductor, who had been toying with the rectangular box at his work bench, turned, the startle unmistakable. The box slipped out of his hands and landed on the concrete floor, somehow remaining intact. One hand shot up to cover his eyes, while the other grabbed for the goggles which were hanging around his neck. He worked them into place, then seemed to gain control of himself again. He smiled sardonically.
"Out of your element?" he asked. His speech was marked by that same drone-like, low-pitched slur that seemed to mark all the sounds in this place.
"You're the one wearing the goggles."
"Minor inconvenience. Temporary. Until I adapt." He was a nervous little man, full of high energy, rocking from foot to foot. It was hard to imagine him ever relaxing, ever closing his eyes and sleeping.
"Adapt?" Will asked.
"To your side. Yes."
"Then the vents that keeping popping up everywhere, they're ... yours?"
"Apertures. Yes. Mine." He smiled, almost to himself. "There's here ... and then there. All bright sights and clear sounds. You don't appreciate it. Yes. Can't appreciate it. No."
Behind him, someone stirred. Will didn't turn to see who it was because he didn't want to take his eyes off the Abductor. Not for a second. But when he heard the voice, even in that low-pitched slur, he knew immediately that it was Chantal.
"Daddy, you're here. How did you get here?"
"Are you all right?"
"I'm just a little tired, that's all."
The Abductor grinned at him. "Tired? You, too? Yes?"
He was feeling tired. Not sleepy tired, but worn-out tired. And it was something he preferred to keep to himself. "Tell me ... why all the people?"
"Think of your bodies, then of mine. Think of physiology. Yes?"
It made perfect sense once he thought about it. Chantal and the others ... they were test subjects, guinea pigs, a means of understanding how the body handles all the sounds and colors. The stimulus was like a narcotic to him. There was the pleasurable experience, and then there was the overload. He was trying to master the overload.
"This is all on your own, isn't it?" Will asked quietly.
"Of course. Who else?"
"No one else even knows what you're doing here."
"No one."
Will glanced back at Chantal, who was standing now, with her hands wrapped around the monochromed bars. Her face was drawn, deep lines that didn't belong there etched into her cheeks, shadows beneath her eyes. He didn't want to stretch this out any longer than necessary.
"It's time to let them go," he said calmly. "They have families and—"
"No. They stay."
Then someone from behind him said, "He keeps the key in the drawer there, under the work bench."
Will made the mistake of turning to see who was talking – it was Elmo Stanton. In that instant, the Abductor closed the distance between them and struck Will hard across the side of the face with something that felt like a baseball bat. Will fell back against the door to the cage, hitting his head against the metal bars, and thinking distantly to himself that he knew better than to take his eyes off this guy. How could he have been so stupid?
Somewhere far away, he heard Chantal scream, "Daddy!"
The Abductor closed again, and Will could see this time that it wasn't a baseball bat he was holding in his hands. It was a gardening hoe. He swung it again and it landed near the crown of Will's head, leaving behind a strange numbness that seemed less painful than disorienting. Will backed into the bars and curled up.
It shouldn't hurt this bad, he thought from faraway.
"Not so big on this side. Not so strong," the Abductor said.
"Stop it!" Chantal screamed. "You're hurting him!"
The Abductor reached back for another swing, and this time Will was able to get his arm up to block it. The handle of the hoe landed flush across his forearm. It hurt, there was no mistaking the hurt, but he was still able to grab on.
"Let go! Let go!"
He didn't have the strength to wrestle the hoe away, but he managed to hook his arm over the handle and lock the blade behind him. With a violent tug, the Abductor dragged Will across the concrete floor, away from the cage, as if he were nothing more than a house dog with his teeth clenched around one end of an old rag.
"Not strong here. Just a tired old man. Yes."
It was true. Will hated to admit it to himself, but it was tru
e. For whatever the reason, every movement he made seemed to drain his strength a little more. This little, five-foot troll was going to overpower him, and there wasn't much he was going to be able do about it.
The Abductor dragged him another couple of feet across the floor, Will holding on for dear life, and then he stopped and bent over in another attempt to wrestle the hoe from Will's grasp. Instinctively, Will fumbled for something to grab onto –a hand, an arm, a fistful of hair, anything. What he came up with were the goggles.
The Abductor let out an immediate scream that sounded like pure agony. He dropped the hoe and fell back, shading his eyes with his hands. For a moment, as he was stooped over and trying to rub the pain out of his eyes, he resembled the Hunchback of Notre Dame – a sad, almost sympathetic, little man.
Will climbed to his feet, sucking air and feeling like a man twice his age. It was all he could do just to toss the hoe aside and pick up the goggles.
"The keys!" someone yelled from behind him.
He found them in the drawer, where Elmo had said they would be, and tossed them to Chantal, who unlocked the cell. "Why don't you take everyone upstairs," he said. "And wait for me out front. All right?"
"What are you going to do?"
"Just say good-bye, that's all."
The Abductor, who had huddled into the far corner with his hands still covering his eyes, peeked through the thin splay of fingers like a child checking to see if the monster was still there. "Can't go," he said. "No."
Will crossed the room and picked up the rectangular box that had earlier been dropped. It was what he had expected – some sort of electronic grid, all done in monochrome and three dimensions, similar to a relief map. He ran his fingers over the surface, trying to decipher the landmarks, and suddenly the box began to put out a low-pitched vibration. A moment later, a small square, enclosing an X, rose up out of the grid in what could only be construed as some sort of electronic marker.
"I do believe you've got another vent opening up," he said. He thought their current location was landmarked by a circle within a circle, which meant the vent wasn't more than a block or two away. "Guess it's time for me to be getting back home. I appreciate the map."
"No. Leave the map." The Abductor made a feeble attempt to reach out and grab him with one hand.
Will pushed him away with almost no effort, which was a good thing, because he didn't have much effort left. The fatigue wasn't getting any worse, but it wasn't getting any better, either. "Sorry. No can do."
"Please! "
"Maybe next time." On his way out, Will stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back. The Abductor had crossed the room and was standing at the bottom, looking up through splayed fingers, still cringing from the blinding colors.
He isn't going to give up, Will thought. This is all he has, all he is.
Out front, he met up with the group again. Lily Hanover was leaning against a four-by-four porch support, looking as tired as he had ever seen her. "Don't you hate it?" she said.
"What?"
"Everything painted this silvery metallic color. No blues or yellows or reds. No rainbows. No flat white. No glossy black. It's enough to drive a person insane, don't you think?"
Will nodded and looked down at the map in his hands. He didn't think the new vent could be far from here, and when he glanced up to gain his bearings, it was a pleasant surprise to find it across the street, only two houses down.
Chantal came up beside him and put her arm around his waist. "How do we get out of here?"
"Right there," he said, pointing at the vent. Only she wouldn't be able to see it; he had forgotten that little fact. If he hadn't fallen and struck his head, he wouldn't have been able to see it, either. "Come on, I'll show you."
They crossed the street as a group, moved down the sidewalk, and came to a stop in front of a rundown Victorian that Charlie Weaver had inherited from his father two years ago. He hadn't got around to renovating the house yet, but it was something he said he had always wanted to do. The vent was at the foot of the front porch steps, shimmering black, open for now, but for how long no one knew.
Will stepped up next to it. "Elmo, why don't you come on up here. You were the first one to have to endure this nightmare. Let's see if we can't get you home again."
"What the hell you talking about, Will Cassidy?"
"Just trust me, all right?"
Elmo stepped forward. Will took him by the arm and guided him up the first step and through the vent. He crossed over one piece at a time, with his right leg
disappearing first, followed shortly by his left arm. In less than a breath, the black, watery vent had closed in around him and he was gone.
Bobby Cutler came up and stood next to Will. "Where'd he go?" "Home. He went home, Bobby."
"Can I go next?"
"Sure." He ushered the boy up to the steps, his hand resting in the small of Bobby's back. "All you have to do is climb the steps."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"Will I see you on the other side?"
"In a few minutes. Now, go on."
After Bobby, Lily Hanover went next, and then Teresa Saunders and Mrs. Schuster, until one-by-one they had all stepped through the vent—Chantal being the last—and Will was the only one left behind. He glanced down the street, then down at the grid map in his hand. The emblem for the vent—the square with the X in its center—had begun to vibrate again. That could only mean one thing. The vent was getting ready to close.
Chantal called out from the other side. "Daddy?"
"I'm coming, baby." He took the first step up, then the second, and suddenly found himself straddling the two worlds, caught half-here and half-there. Something had caught him from behind. When he turned and stuck his head back through the vent, he discovered that the Abductor had taken hold of the tail of his jacket. The little man was tugging for all he was worth.
Chantal, who was standing at the foot of the steps in front of him, reached out for his hand. "What's wrong?"
"He's got hold of my jacket," Will said, acutely aware that the outer edges of the vent had begun to break into thousands of tiny, swarming specs. In a matter of seconds, they were going to start flying off, tens of thousands at a time, and he didn't want to know what that would do to him. "You've gotta help me through!"
"Someone help!" Chantal screamed. "He's caught!"
Adam Walker, a man Will had never met before today, came running up the walkway from the street, as did David Winters and Emily Sanders. Chantal motioned to Walker, the closest body. "Grab his hand!"
He grabbed Will around the wrist, using both hands, and together with Chantal, neither of them actually able to see the vent, they managed to pull him free. Or at least free of the vent. The Abductor was still holding on, half-in, half-out of the opening, his eyes clamped shut to the sudden brightness.
"No! You stay!" he was screaming.
It was too late to shed the jacket.
Too late to pry his hands loose.
The vent completed its disintegration in a matter of milliseconds.
Whoosh! It was gone.
The Abductor let out an agonizing scream.
His upper torso, from just above the shirt line, separated from the rest of him and fell to the ground in a lifeless heap. What remained behind was anyone's guess. It had either disintegrated with the vent, or it was lying on the ground in a similar heap on the other side. Either way, what was left here was a horrific mess.
For a long while, Will found himself holding Chantal against his chest, trying to spare her the gruesome sight. It was only later that he realized she couldn't have seen it anyway.
12.
Will doesn't talk about it anymore, but he worries sometimes.
The vents have never stopped opening and closing. They still pop up out of nowhere every once in awhile, and Will is still the only person who can see them.
And while no one else besides the Abductor has ever come through, he dreads the
thought that someday that might change.
Ice Songs
Record Searchlight
August 28, 1961
Mysterious Chunk of Ice
Falls From The Sky
Cottonwood, California
Local experts in astronomical and meteorological phenomena were questioning a report yesterday that a large piece of ice fell out of the sky and landed in the back yard of the Hollerman family.
Michael Hollerman, 11, said the ice block was larger than twelve inches square when it first hit. The strange chunk of ice crashed to earth only a few feet from where the boy was playing baseball with a neighborhood friend, Leonard Perry, also of Cottonwood.
According to the National Weather Service, the skies over Northern California were clear yesterday, temperatures ranging in the high nineties, low one hundreds.
The two boys were the only witnesses.
Dallas T. Morgan, the regional director of the U.S. Meteor Society said the ice could have come from a comet. In somewhat similar circumstances, a 50-pound piece of ice fell in French Gulch in 1954. Another chunk of ice reportedly fell out of the sky over Shingletown as recently as 1958.
“A lot of people who consider themselves intelligent, like to say it just can't happen,” he said.
William Bickert, a professor of astronomy at Shasta Community College, discounted the comet theory.
“It certainly wasn't from a comet. It would have melted. Ice particles are vaporized by the heat of the sun,” he said.
Bickert believes it was more likely that the chunk of ice was either picked up from somewhere else and carried on the turbulence of a small thunderstorm, or came from a jet engine high in the atmosphere.
I keep that newspaper article in my wallet, behind my California Driver's License, face-to-face with my last four-year extension. It's yellow now, and ragged at the seam of the fold. But I've carried it around with me all these years, every now and then reading through it one more time, because the story never seemed to have an honest ending. Not if you were there. Not if you were Michael Hollerman or Lenny Perry. I don't think the story's ever ended for either of us.
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