by Brian Harmon
After all he’d seen and done, all the horrors he’d survived, he was becoming more and more convinced that when he was finally killed, it would be by something stupid.
That was just his kind of luck.
And yet nothing happened as he made his way along the base of the bluff. He saw no monsters. He saw no ghosts. He didn’t even see any little gray men.
Was it getting colder? He checked his watch and found that it was already approaching dinner time. Soon it would start getting dark and the chill would only get worse. And he had a bad feeling he wasn’t going to finish up here before dark. He might not even be home in time for breakfast the next morning.
He climbed a hill and descended the other side. The bluffs shrank again and gave way to a rocky hillside. The path became a crooked game trail snaking along a narrow, wooded valley.
As the trees began to thin again, his cell phone chimed at him, alerting him to a new text message.
I FEEL SOMETHING STRANGE
“What kind of something?”
CAN’T TELL. HARD TO FEEL ANYTHING THROUGH ALL THAT ENERGY
“Can you tell if it’s a good something or a bad something?”
He waited, but she didn’t respond.
“That a no?”
But his phone remained quiet.
“Isabelle?” He stopped walking and frowned at the screen. “You okay? Hello?”
He waited. He thought this might be the same thing that happened earlier, when they first arrived in the area. The spiritual energy had been so intense in this place that it had struck her like a wall, disorienting her. But she’d bounced back quickly enough. This time, she wasn’t responding.
Now he was afraid. He could feel icy panic welling up deep inside him. He glanced around at the forest that surrounded him. Had he walked into an even more intense area of spiritual energy, one that had not just disoriented her, but had rendered her unable to respond to him at all?
He still seemed to be alone. More alone than he’d been in a very long time. Isabelle was always with him. He couldn’t stand the thought of moving on without her.
But the phone remained eerily silent.
He closed his eyes for a moment and forced himself to take a calming breath.
It was okay. It was nothing. Probably a glitch in the phone or something. He’d get through this.
He opened his eyes again and saw that nothing had appeared while he wasn’t looking. But this strange luck couldn’t hold out forever. It was only a matter of time before something terrifying happened to him. He had to keep moving.
Gripping the phone in his fist, he walked on.
Isabelle was probably still with him. She was always with him. He just couldn’t hear her right now. Maybe the spiritual energy had increased to a level where it interfered with the cell phone. Or maybe the cheap little thing had had the cell phone equivalent of a stroke. It wasn’t as if he’d spent a fortune on the stupid device. He refused to spend any more than absolutely necessary on it, no matter how many times Karen offered to buy him a better one.
Up ahead, he glimpsed something in the trees. A building stood in his path, its roof just visible through the branches. As he approached it and the trees thinned between it and him, it began to reveal itself in more detail and Eric realized that the more he saw, the stranger it became.
To begin with, the building was extremely yellow. It was covered in cheerful yellow siding, with gold-tinted shingles and bright orange shutters. Even the front door was varnished, yellow pine.
The building stood in a tiny forest of colorless, concrete yard ornaments that were a stark contrast to its brilliant, sunshiny hues. There were gray bird baths, fountains, tiny windmills, angels, deer in all manner of poses, wishing wells, full-sized bears, giant toadstools and miniature bridges that spanned no water, only shaggy, weed-choked lawn. And inhabiting this tiny, concrete forest were small, motionless creatures. He saw stone squirrels, birds, toads, turtles, hedgehogs, pigs, cats and even a couple of skunks mingling with little fairytale gnomes, pixies, leprechauns and baby dragons. He even spotted a smurf, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, a grinning gremlin, some fancily-dressed mice and a life-size E.T. Not one single item was painted. All of them were as colorless as the house was yellow.
Eric had seen this sort of stuff before, of course. One didn’t have to go far to find someone who loved this kind of thing. His own grandmother had owned a little herd of realistic, ceramic deer that continuously and silently grazed the back corner of her yard. But he’d never in his life seen so many in one place, except maybe in those little outdoor shops where they were actually sold. (And at least there they were always neatly and conveniently arranged to accommodate shoppers.)
He didn’t own any of these things, himself. He found them creepy. All those dead, colorless eyes. All those little faces peering blankly up at him.
He walked through the overgrown grass, careful not to touch the weird little stone menagerie, and tried to decide whether he should laugh or cringe. It was absurd. There wasn’t even anything resembling a theme. It was as if some old woman had simply bought every lawn ornament she’d ever seen during the course of her life and obsessively surrounded her home with them.
“How do they even mow their grass?” asked Eric, looking down at his phone again.
But Isabelle still wasn’t answering.
He didn’t like this. Something felt terribly wrong here. A nervous knot was forming deep in his belly, making him feel like he might throw up, which wasn’t good because he didn’t see an empty patch of grass big enough to do so. These things might be creepy, and whoever lived in this house could turn out to be anything from a crazy old hermit to snaked-haired Medusa, herself, but puking on someone’s lawn decorations just seemed rude.
Where was Isabelle? What happened to her? Why wasn’t she answering him? There had been a few times when she was slow to pick up the phone—she wasn’t always lurking in his thoughts; that would just be weird—but she was always there when he called for her. She didn’t need the phone. They shared a connection. And in her strange, trapped state outside of the normal flow of time, she didn’t even sleep.
“If you can hear me,” he said, lowering his voice as he eyed the cheerful little house, “call Karen.” He still had a signal, meaning there must be a tower somewhere nearby, so Karen would be able to contact him and let him know that Isabelle was all right. But Isabelle was a bright little girl (and also a very wise old woman) and probably already would’ve thought of that. Either something had severed their connection or his phone was broken.
Or something had happened to Isabelle.
He pushed the thought aside. There was no use worrying about it right now. Holly’s spell told him to look for the purple giant and the purple giant had brought him to the land of tacky, concrete statues. This was no doubt where he was meant to be. But why? Who was waiting for him in this place?
His eyes swept the yellow house, the two small windows, the pine door. Any other time and he might have circled around to the front of the building, taking in more of his surroundings, getting a better feel for the place, but the purple giant had brought him here. And he’d lost contact with Isabelle. He couldn’t afford to keep wasting time.
He approached the back step and steeled himself for whatever he was about to encounter. It wouldn’t be the first time something horrible burst from an unfamiliar door with the intention of ruining his already bad day.
But even as he lifted his hand to knock, the door unlatched itself and swung inward.
He took a step back, panic bubbling up inside him, his fists balled at his side, ready to defend himself from whatever terror was crouched there.
But no monster leapt from the shadows behind the door. Nothing ripped off his face. Nothing spilled his guts all over the step. Nothing even shouted, “Boo!” at him.
Instead, he found himself standing before a young woman with very long, black hair and big, inquisitive eyes.
“You’re here,” she told
him, as if he might have been mistakenly thinking that he were somewhere else instead.
“I am,” he agreed, confused.
“I was worried you’d be late.”
Eric glanced around, making sure that she was, in fact, talking to him. He even glanced at each of her ears, looking for one of those annoying Bluetooth devices that people used to make it look like they were talking to you when they were actually on the phone with a friend, apparently just to make you feel stupid. She didn’t seem to be wearing one. “I’m sorry,” he said, when he was sure she must be talking to him. “I didn’t mean to…um…worry you.”
“Come in,” she told him, stepping aside and gesturing at the gloomy interior of her little, yellow house. “We still don’t have much time.”
Chapter Eighteen
Seeing as how they apparently didn’t have much time, Eric decided to just go with it and stepped inside. Hopefully, this strange woman would quickly explain everything to him if he just kept his mouth shut.
He followed her through a cramped kitchen and into a small living room, where she gestured for him to sit on an old, leather couch.
The inside of the yellow house was equally as contradicting as its surroundings. It was neither cheerfully bright-and-colorful like the exterior walls, nor as eccentrically decorated as the lawn. In here, the walls were covered in dark wood paneling. The furniture was black leather. The floors were stained hardwood. There were almost no decorations. No pictures hung on the walls, no knickknacks collected dust on shelves. There were no rugs, no throw pillows, no artwork of any kind. The only touch of color was a bright red afghan draped over the back of the couch and a curious, ornate clock on the mantle of a stark fireplace.
The woman sat across from him, facing him. She wore a pale-green, full-length dress and bright orange flip-flops. Several ring bracelets hung from her slender wrists and a large pendant dangled by a thick, gold chain around her neck and came to rest above her small bosom. She was small and mousy, sort of plain, very ordinary. Her only distinguishing feature was her hair, which trailed almost to her knees in frizzy, kinky curls.
Eric made a mental note to remember this woman the next time he was waiting for Karen to finish getting ready in the mornings. He didn’t envy anyone who had to wait for her to finish brushing that hair before using the facilities.
“How has it been so far?”
He stared back at her, wondering for a moment if he should know this woman. “How’s what been?” he asked her.
“The anomaly,” she said, as if it were silly of him not to know what she was talking about.
He realized that she meant the triangle, and supposed it probably was a silly question. Why the hell else would he be here? “Right. That. It’s um…” He glanced around the room. “I’ve been seeing a lot of…um…ghosts…I guess.”
She nodded. “Of course,” she agreed. She had such a small voice. She seemed almost fragile, and yet something about her told him that she was far stronger than she looked, probably far stronger than he could ever hope to be.
“And…um… That hellhound…”
Again, she nodded. This time she also sighed a little. “That poor creature…”
He wanted to comment that it hadn’t seemed so pitiful when it was trying to tear out his throat, but there was something in this woman’s voice that made him bite his tongue.
“What else?”
“The um…spaceship thing…?”
He thought that this time she would at least pause to give him a strange look, but once again, she only nodded and asked, “What else?”
“Um… Nothing, really. Except that…bloody woman…spirit…whatever…giving me those visions.”
“What has she shown you?”
“She showed me the dream I’ve been having the past couple nights. The one that brought me here. And she showed me something big and scary rising from the lake.”
“Then you know about the beast.” It wasn’t a question.
Eric didn’t mention Holly or her grim prophecy about hell rising from the lake. He only nodded.
“Good,” said the woman. “How far down have you gone?”
He glanced around the room again, confused. “How far…? I don’t understand.”
“How deep into the anomaly? How many veils have you passed?”
“I…don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry.”
She leaned back, thoughtful. “Oh dear,” she sighed. “I thought you’d have understood more of it by now.”
“Really? Because nothing out there makes any kind of sense to me.”
The woman stared at him.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What’s going on around here?”
She gave him a gentle smile. “I’m a friend,” she said. “My name is Cordelia.”
Eric raised an eyebrow. “Cordelia was Lear’s good daughter.”
Cordelia’s smile widened a little. It lit up her face, making her prettier. “I know.”
He became interested in British literature in high school and developed a particular fascination for Shakespeare while in college. He taught the subject to juniors and seniors every year, including the tragedy of King Lear, in which the mad king allowed himself to be flattered by the lies of his eldest two daughters and disowned his youngest, Cordelia, who he would too late learn was the only one of the three who actually loved him. Sitting here now and looking back at this woman, he had the distinct feeling that she’d already known this about him. Strangely, he found himself suspecting that she’d chosen that name specifically for him.
“Our time is running out,” she announced, discouraging him from pressing the matter. “You’ll have to listen closely.”
Eric nodded.
“This place in our world is broken.”
“Broken?”
She waved her small hand at him, silencing him with an impatient jingle of her bracelets. “Something is forcing its way through, tearing apart the skins that separate the worlds.”
The worlds? As in alternate worlds? Alternate universes? His thoughts were drawn back to the fissure… But Isabelle said this wasn’t a fissure. She said she’d know if it was. Or she thought she would know…
As if addressing his very thoughts, Cordelia explained, “There are many ways you can bridge worlds. It’s not even a very rare thing. All over the planet, there are places where worlds meet, places where things can and do pass between them. It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon.” She didn’t bother trying to convince him that there was such a thing as other worlds in the first place, or that bridges between these worlds existed. She already knew that he’d believe her. “On very rare occasions, these places can even be…engineered.”
“Engineered?” asked Eric. “You mean like…manufactured? By people?”
“Occasionally, yes. Although most were made by races much older, wiser and greater than man.”
Eric stared at this woman. Older and greater races? He recalled the silvery spaceship and his imagination began to ooze fantastic thoughts of ancient celestial beings. He’d watched television shows about fabled space travelers some believed were the true architects of the pyramids, Stonehenge and the mysterious Easter Island heads.
“But there are also places where the worlds have been forced together,” continued Cordelia. Her voice contained a dangerous edge to it now that commanded his full attention and made him forget the aliens. There was no question that what she was telling him now was vitally important. “When it’s done by force, there’s always a danger of rupturing one or both worlds. It’s happened before. The results are always catastrophic.”
He scratched uneasily at his chin. “So…I’m guessing that’s what this place is.”
This time her smile was forced. “A very long series of events has brought this place to the brink of a devastating failure. We’re down to our last few hours.”
He licked his lips. Suddenly, he felt very thirsty. “Like…Mount St. Helens devastating?” he ventured. “Or Hurican
e Katrina devastating?”
“Let’s go with, extinction event devastating.”
Eric nodded. “Most terrifying outcome I can imagine. Got it. And just how am I supposed to stop something like that?”
She tilted her head to one side as if confused. “I don’t know. That’s your job.”
He had to let that sink in for a second. It was his job? What a frustrating answer. “Who decided it was my job?” he demanded. “Why me?”
“You were just meant to,” she told him. Her tone was calm now, as if this were a perfectly ordinary conversation they were having.
“Why?” he pressed. “What makes me so damn special?”
“I don’t know,” said Cordelia. “You just are.”
Eric closed his eyes and ran his hand through his hair. He wasn’t going to get a better answer than that. He was certain of it. And he had to make an effort to keep his cool. A part of him wanted to lose his temper. A big part of him seriously wanted to shout and kick things. It was so frustrating. He was just a high school English teacher! His life wasn’t supposed to be this complicated!
He sighed.
“This place is broken,” she said again. “The anomaly is like a wound. The world is swollen here, blistered. The skin is pulling apart, revealing gaps.”
“Gaps…” said Eric. “In the skin…” That was a disturbing description. Was he dealing with a tear in reality or an infection?
“The deeper you travel into the anomaly,” she explained, “the more veils you pass through, the more the world will change.” She paused for a moment, fixing him with her curiously intense eyes, then she added, “And the more dangerous it will become.”
“Let me guess. I’m going to have to go to the very bottom.”
“Well, that is where you’ll find the source.”
“Of course it is.”
“You’ve already descended past the third veil. That’s where we are now. Up here, the veils are fainter, easier to wander in and out of. But as you go deeper, you’ll be able to see the differences. Those deepest levels will be much harder to reach, much more dangerous, and much more likely to make you lose your way entirely. You’ll need all your wits to return.”