by T S Wieland
The handle on the front door below her began to turn. Ally panicked. She quickly stepped back through the doorway to one side and peered around the corner to catch a glimpse of the intruder.
An older woman walked in. She had light gray, curly hair, and wore a long, green, old-fashioned dress. She held a silver tray covered with a white cloth.
“Otto! Sem! Lunch is here!” yelled the woman, her voice echoing throughout the home.
She walked over to the table in the middle of the foyer, placed the tray down on it, and removed the cloth to unveil two plates of sandwiches, a smaller plate of fruit, and two bowls of soup. She stared at another silver tray still resting on the table, seemingly untouched, with mold growing on the sandwiches and curds floating in the soup.
“Honestly, I don’t know why I even bother…” she said to herself. “If you're not going to eat it, at least throw it away or next time I’ll thump both of you!”
Ally watched the woman purse her lips, grab the tray with moldy food on it, and carry it into the next room. The sound of dish water running from the other room filled the foyer. Ally continued to watch from her hiding spot, trying to stay low out of sight.
“And at least do the dishes while you're at it!” yelled the old woman as she came back into the entrance hall carrying the tray with her.
“Sem! Otto! Lunch!” she yelled once again. She looked up towards the balcony. Ally swiftly pulled her head back and hid around the corner.
The older woman noticed the corner of a white sheet on the floor atop the balcony. She smiled and placed the tray down on the table next to her, then made her way over to staircase.
Ally heard her footsteps coming up the steps. She frantically scurried back into the bedroom and closed the door quietly behind her. She ran towards the bed, only to have the sheet be ripped away from her, leaving her exposed in the middle of the room. She looked back to see the corner of the sheet was caught in the door jam.
Ally hurried over to the door and began pulling on the sheet. It was stuck. She stood in the room tugging frantically at the sheet in a quiet panic, hearing the woman’s steps on the stairs getting closer.
“Crap, crap, crap,” Ally whispered to herself as she continued to tug at the sheet.
The old woman turned the corner at the top of the stairs to see the door to Ally’s room closed. The corner of a bed sheet stuck out from below the door, wiggling back and forth. The woman stood there for a moment, trying to contain her laughter.
Ally gave the sheet a final, hard tug and managed to whip it loose from the door.
“Yes!” she whispered to herself as she ran back over to the bed, falling clumsily onto it and pulling the sheet and comforter back over herself. Ally closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep.
The old woman waited for the sound of frantic movements to cease on the other side of the door. She stood at the door with a grin and waited a few seconds longer.
After the long pause, the older woman opened the door. She walked over to the opposite side of the bed and reached down to grab Ally’s wrist. She could feel her heart rate beating faster than a rabbit’s foot. She glanced over to see the IV resting on the nightstand next to her.
“Best sleep a little longer, dear,” the woman said quietly.
Ally continued to pretend to be asleep, despite wanting to ask the old woman questions. The woman walked back over to the door and turned around to see Ally still lying there.
“Welcome to Asphodel dear,” said the old woman. She turned and closed the door behind her.
The woman’s words left Ally bewildered.
Ally sat up again and turned her head towards the door to make sure the coast was still clear. She wrapped the sheet around her body again, then tiptoed back over to the door and cracked it open again to watch the woman descend the staircase.
“Otto! Sem! Lunch! I’m not telling you again,” yelled the woman as she turned the corner from the staircase and stuck her head through the doorway below the balcony. The woman strode back to the table at the center of the foyer, grabbed the empty silver tray, opened the front door again, then left.
Now confident that the coast was clear, Ally made her way back out onto the balcony and over to the staircase. She wandered down the steps to see a large living room to her right piled with books that were scattered across the floor, surrounded by book shelves. A red velvet couch sat at a careless angle in the middle of the room. A suit of steel medieval armor stood at attention near the entryway.
Stepping lightly across the marble floor, Ally waved her hand in front of the suit of armor and tapped on the metal chest plate. The suit was empty. She wandered through the living room, noticing the large collection of ancient and historical artifacts scattered around the room, like a small private museum.
Back beyond the entryway on the other side, Ally saw a dining room table with dirty plates strewn across it. She shuffled her way over to the table, noticing two of the chairs had been knocked to the floor as though two people had left in a hurry.
The sound of voices suddenly caught Ally’s attention. She turned back to see the wooden door below the balcony halfway open. She walked over to the doorway and pulled the door open. The voices grew louder.
“Wait! Wait, wait, wait . . . I got it,” said an echoing voice from below.
Ahead of her around a corner to her left lay a wooden stairway that seemed out of place compared to the rest of the house. Ally crept down the staircase, attempting to step as softly as possible. Step by careful step, as she made her way down the stairs, she determined the voices below to be two men arguing.
“I’m telling you, it’s not a transmitter issue. It’s the receiver,” said the younger of the two voices.
“No. No. No. I’ve checked it already. If I check it again, I’ll break it on purpose just, so I can diagnose the problem,” replied an older voice.
“Well, why not at least try and set it to a double frequency? Then I’ll admit you were right.”
“Kid, you’re not listening. I’m telling you it’s the delay. Parallels aren't a matter of distance, it’s about timing. Your transmissions are always going to have a delay. Every time we get a hiccup on this end, your signal has to wait till the time is right again.”
“We hardly had any delay the other day when I went out dressed up in the suit, so what did you do?”
“Nothing. It was just a coincidence,” the older voice replied.
Ally continued to creep down the stairs. As she approached the point where the wall no longer blocked the railing, she poked her head around the corner and saw the two men arguing. She sat down on the stairs just out of sight, wrapping herself in her sheet.
The taller, young man was facing away from her. He was dressed in a white, collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, with tan-colored pants, and brown-leather work boots. His dark brown hair was spiked up in the front, and finely cut in the back.
The other man was older, in his forties or fifties. Ally could see his trimmed beard plainly from the stairs. His light brown hair was peppered with gray, and he wore a long-sleeved, button-up, green shirt over an orange undershirt. His blue jeans looked dirty with grease and white powder on them, as did his black leather shoes.
“You had to have done something. There’s no such thing as coincidence,” replied the young man, still looking away from Ally.
The older man leaned back against a desk with an old computer monitor on it.
“So, you're a skeptic now? I see…” replied the older man. “Odds are, we were in a progressive flux. The problem is telling when we’re in the process of a degrading flux. You can’t predict something like that here.”
Ally peeked further down the stairs. A series of large pipes and wires ran from the area around the computer across the basement walls to the far end.
“Could we use the ARC? Unless you think that’s a dumb idea too.”
Ally leaned forward to see an odd-looking machine at the other end of the room. Four
metal arms, connected by large steel cables and wires, hung from the ceiling and floor, surrounding a set of four metal inlayed rings at the very center. Ally stared at the strange machine for a moment in wonder.
“Alright. What do you mean, smartass?” asked the older man.
“If we tie the transmission signals into the ARC, would that eliminate the problem? Erland always said it was bound here, too. Maybe it can predict what we can’t.”
“Maybe. I’d need Merek’s help, though. If we use too much amperage trying to scan this end, I won’t be able to open the gateway again.”
An amber light flashed over the desk above the computer, and an alarm wailed. The older man turned around and studied the screen. The young man whirled around and faced Ally as he hurried towards a locker near the stairs. Ally moved around, unable to see the young man’s face as he opened the locker door now blocking her gaze.
“Is it high energy?” asked the young man as he pulled on a brown vest from the locker and slipped it on.
“I don’t know yet. Hold on. Give me a second, kid,” replied the older man while he typed on the keyboard in front of the computer. “No. She’s real quiet.”
“What are the conditions like?”
“Dry, really dry. Probably a desert of some sort.”
The young man reached into the locker and grabbed a pair of black welding goggles. “Can you at least get me close?”
“I’ll try, but that new code is finicky. Doesn’t always work the way we hope. I can get you closer than normal, but it won’t be much of an improvement.”
“Guess we’ll work on that to when I get back,” said the young man, as he wrapped a teal scarf around his nose and mouth. He closed the locker door and looked up at Ally as she stared right back at him from the stairs. His eyes were two different colors—the right eye deep blue and the left a dark shade of brown. He watched her for a moment, seemingly unalerted by her presence as he slipped the goggles on over his head.
Ally pulled her head back around the corner. Her cover had undoubtedly been blown.
“You’ll have seven hours, max,” said the older man.
The young man turned around and looked back at the older man. Ally peeked her head back out from around the corner. The young man walked over to the desk and unplugged a small wrist piece from the table and clipped it around his wrist, then grabbed a black backpack off the table and slipped it on over his shoulders. He adjusted the teal scarf over his nose and mouth, moved to the center of the room, and planted his feet facing the strange machine like he was about to take off into a sprint.
“Hit it,” the young man said, as he stretched his neck. The older man typed on the keyboard in front of him before turning back around.
The cables around the room sprang to life, buzzing and humming. Ally leaned forward, putting all her weight on her front foot.
The four metallic rings in the middle of the machine began to spin. One by one, they each spun faster and faster as the four metal arms around it moved inwards towards each other at the center of the rings. The young man stood at the other end of the machine, ready for whatever was about to happen.
“You sure you don’t want to take sunscreen?!” shouted the older man over the sounds of the machine.
“Won’t be there that long!” the young man yelled back, clearly not in the mood for his partners jokes.
The older man reached around behind him and grabbed his own pair of black goggles from of the desk. He slipped them on over his head and adjusted them around his eyes.
“Good luck, kid!” yelled the older man.
“Keep it!” the young man yelled back. From within the center of the four metal arms, Ally saw a small bright white light form. The light slowly began to grow, bathing the room in its own sunlight as the arms stretched back. The shadows in the room grew and stretched. The light grew wider and wider.
Ally placed her hand over her eyes, desperately trying to see what was happening beyond the blinding light.
A rush of warm, dry air blew in through the room, blowing the papers off the desk and causing the machine cables hung around the room to sway back and forth. Ally peered through the cracks between her fingers to see the shadow of the young man suddenly take off in a sprint towards the light. His silhouette disappeared into the starlight.
Looking away, Ally could hear the machine begin to power down.
The light faded as the shadows in the room slowly started to retreat. Several dark spots lingered in Ally’s eyesight. She rubbed at her eyes and looked back over at the machine. A small silver star remained at the center, with the rings around it still spinning at different speeds. Ally gazed at the bright star, no bigger than a small coin, in astonishment.
The older man walked over to the middle of the room and looked down at the floor as he lifted the goggles away from his eyes. He waved his foot across the floor, revealing a large amount of sand that was now spread out across the stone floor.
“Well, this will be fun to clean up,” he said to himself, his voice laced with annoyance.
Ally’s heart raced. She scanned all around the room and saw no sign of the young man.
Panic began to fill her. Each breath grew deeper and faster as she hyperventilated. She could only think to do one thing—run.
Ally turned to run up the stairs. She pushed off against her back foot, only to feel the bottom of her foot slip on the sheet over the slick wood surface. Her weakened legs couldn’t hold her. She stumbled backward down the stairs, tumbling down the steps until she slammed her head into the wall at the bottom of the landing.
She laid on the floor and she stared helplessly at the older man. The man rushed over to help, grabbing a medical kit from off the wall before bending down next to her.
“Don’t move. I gotcha. Just stay right there for a minute,” he said to her.
Ally lay motionless.
The man worked his hands around her shoulders and behind her neck.
“Well, I don’t feel anything broken,” he said as he helped her sit up against the wall. He pulled a small flashlight from out of his shirt pocket and peered into her eyes.
“It’s alright. Now look up for me.”
Ally complied. She turned her eyes towards the ceiling.
“Now down. Now to the right. Now the left.”
Ally did so with ease. The man sighed with relief.
“Not concussed either. That’s a bonus. Scared me for a minute there.”
The man reached into the medical pack and pulled out a small ice pack that he massaged with his hands.
“You okay, kiddo?” he asked.
Ally put her hand up to her forehead. She could feel a large bump forming. Looking up, she realized the sheet that had been wrapped around her was now lying crumpled on the stairs. A wave of embarrassment fell over her.
“Oh, hold on one second. Hold this on your head,” said the man as he handed her the ice pack and got up to grab the sheet. He leaned over and picked the sheet up, then draped it around Ally as she held the ice pack on her head. “Sorry, all the clothes are at the wash. Normally we would have given you something to wear right away.”
Ally squinted in pain as the pulsing in her head grew stronger and more vigorous.
“Can you tell me your name?” asked the man as he stood back up and dragged the office chair over to the stair landing from his desk.
“Ally.”
“Is that short for Alice?”
“Allison actually.”
The communicator resting on top of the computer beeped. The man turned around and rolled the office chair back over to the desk. He picked up the communicator and tapped on the touch screen.
“Hot as hell out here. It’s like looking for someone in a giant sandbox,” came the young man’s voice over the handheld communicator.
“You said it wouldn’t take you long. Care to roll over and admit you were wrong? Our newest guest took a doozy of a spill down the stairs after you left. Luckily, she’s alright,” said the
older man into the handheld.
He moved back over to Ally and clipped the handheld communicator on his belt loop. “I’m Otto, by the way. Sorry for the delayed introduction.”
“Who are you people?” asked Ally as she rubbed the cold pack on her head.
“Tell you what. Let’s get you back upstairs, then I’ll explain everything. Deal?”
Ally looked over at Otto as he extended his hand out to her. Ally nodded and shook his hand. Otto stood up and helped her stand up, offering her a helping hand up the treacherous, slippery staircase.
Chapter 6
A World Between Worlds
Otto helped Ally up the stairs and back into the living room by the hand. He removed the books from the couch, offering her a place to sit on the red velvet couch. Ally lay back on the sofa, continuing to hold the cold pack to her head. Seeing the silver tray on the entry table, Otto sauntered back over to the table and lifted a plate of food for him to inspect.
“Looks like Vila was here,” he said as he placed the plate back down and picked up the smaller plate of fruit. “That woman couldn’t make a chicken salad sandwich to save her life. But thankfully, she can’t mess up fruit.”
Otto put a piece of apple in his mouth and chewed. Still holding the plate, he walked back over to the living room and sat down on the chair across the sofa from Ally.
“Would ya like some?” he asked, holding the plate out to her.
“Uh, no thanks. Food doesn’t sound very appealing at the moment.”
Otto sat back in the chair and continued to eat the fruit off the plate. His handheld beeped as he picked it up and pressed the accept button on the screen.
The young man’s voice crackled from the other end of the handheld. “I saw her watching us from the stairs earlier before I left. Think of it this way. Now’s your chance to start answering questions like we talked about yesterday.”
Ally raised her eyebrows, sensing there was a delay between now and the previous message Otto had sent.