by Brian Harmon
Eric considered all of this. What she was describing sounded a lot like the fissure he’d explored, but a fissure consisted of only three components. There was this world, there was the other world and there was that gray area that existed between the two, where he found all the weirdness. In this case, the gray area was divided into layers, separated by skins, or veils. As he passed through these layers, the weirdness increased.
If this was true, it might explain the activity he’d been experiencing. He’d probably been wandering in and out of the upper layers all afternoon.
He’d been staring down at his shoes as he tried to comprehend it. Now, he looked up at Cordelia. “That’s why those kids haven’t been able to catch anything on film, isn’t it? They’re on the ground level, all the way at the top. Nothing happens up there.”
She gave him that sweet smile again and nodded. “Only inside the anomaly do the spirits have any power over you.”
“The bloody woman,” he recalled.
“They are many,” she warned him. “Some are lost. Some are angry. Some may even be dangerous. But all of them want to be saved.”
“Can they be saved?”
“Of course they can. It’s the anomaly that holds them here.”
“The triangle.”
“They’re a part of it. Everything here is a part of it. You’ll want to remember that.”
“Of course.”
“Do you understand things better now?”
“A little…I guess… I’m supposed to go all the way to the bottom of the anomaly, to the final layer of the triangle. That’s where I’ll have to go to fix things.”
“Correct. But first, you still have business on the surface.”
“The surface?”
But Cordelia stood up, her bracelets jingling on her slender wrists. “Now it’s time for you to go.”
Eric stared up at her, concerned. “But I still don’t understand everything.”
“You can’t possibly understand everything,” she told him. “Now hurry.”
He stood up and followed her out of the room and through the little kitchen.
She opened the door by which he’d entered her curious, yellow house and then turned to face him. “Take this,” she told him, holding out a small leather pouch tied with string. He wondered where it came from. He was quite sure she hadn’t been holding it before and he didn’t see her pick it up.
“What is it?”
“It’s what you came here for,” she told him, as if he were being silly again.
“Oh,” was all he could think to say.
“Now go. If you stay any longer it’ll be too difficult for you to leave. And you’ll need all your strength for what happens next.”
Eric had been looking at the little pouch in his hand. Now he looked up at her. “What happens next?”
Cordelia managed to look apologetic. “I can’t tell you that. I can only tell you that it’ll test you like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.”
“Oh,” he said again, feeling lightheaded.
“And you won’t be able to come to me when it happens. By then, I’ll be gone again.”
“Of course you will.”
She ushered him out the door and he set out through the jungle of concrete lawn ornaments, still pondering the leather pouch. He made his way to the edge of the forest before opening it.
Inside was a small, brass object he recognized immediately as an old pocket watch. He removed it from the pouch and held it in his hand. He opened it. Someone had removed the face and tinkered with the inner workings. The time was way off, and he had no idea how he was supposed to set it, but otherwise, it seemed to be working just fine.
He had no idea what he was supposed to do with it.
He glanced behind him, certain that the little, yellow house and its concrete menagerie would be gone, but it was all right where he’d left it. The mysterious Cordelia, however, had closed the door and vanished back inside.
Chapter Nineteen
Eric had definitely met more helpful people in his life than Cordelia of the weird, yellow house. She hadn’t told him how he was supposed to fix whatever was happening here. She hadn’t even told him how he was supposed to get to the source of the anomaly, only that it was at the very bottom, behind the deepest veil. Or was it a skin? Something about a blister…?
If anything, he was more confused than ever.
He walked through the woods for a while, examining the old watch. What was the purpose of it? What was he supposed to do with it? More questions sweet Cordelia had neglected to answer for him.
But then again, he supposed it wasn’t a total waste. He knew now that the things he’d been experiencing had something to do with the anomaly’s many layers. It was more than just a triangle. It was more like a pyramid, with only a single surface showing. Its true mass lay hidden beneath and within. Specter Ten couldn’t possibly find solid evidence of the paranormal phenomenon taking place inside the triangle any more than a forensics scientist could find evidence to catch a murderer by standing outside the building in which the crime took place.
Only he seemed to be able to wander deeper into the anomaly. But why? What made him so different from them? Was it his past? His prior encounters with the weird? Or was there just something about him?
Of course, it wasn’t only him, he realized. Each and every one of the triangle’s victims had likely wandered inside the anomaly as well. That was why no trace of them had ever been found.
His cell phone chimed, alerting him to a new text message. He snatched it out of his pocket, hoping it was Isabelle again, and it began to ring before he could even glance at the screen.
“Thank God!” gasped Isabelle.
“What happened?” asked Eric. “Where were you?”
“I was right here! I haven’t moved from this spot. Where were you?”
“Where was I?”
“I lost you. One second you were talking to me and then you were just…not there anymore. I was worried sick!”
“You completely lost me?”
“A few times I caught a flicker of you, like you were hiding somewhere and I could almost see you. But I just couldn’t find you. You really scared me!”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay… I’m… Sorry, I’m kind of catching up but… Who’s Cordelia?”
Because she could read his mind, Isabelle didn’t need him to recount everything that had happened to him. On ordinary days, days when he wasn’t being ambushed by ghosts or attacked by monsters, she typically tuned him out and gave him his privacy. Because it would be creepy if she was always lurking inside his mind. As a result, she was used to skimming enough details from his thoughts to catch up on his life when she tuned him back in. However, the finer details were harder to perceive, especially when those details were particularly weird. Eric described the strange, yellow house and recounted what the mysterious Cordelia had revealed to him.
“Well, that’s interesting,” she said when he was done.
“Fascinating,” agreed Eric. “Any of it make any sense to you?”
“A little. She’s right about there being different ways to cross between worlds. I’ve learned of a few since I’ve been trapped. But I’ve never heard of forcing one. That sounds really dangerous.”
“That’s what Cordelia said. She kept saying this area was broken.”
“That’s not good. Tearing open a hole between worlds is like tearing a hole in the hull of a space shuttle. Or a submarine. It kind of depends on which world is bigger. It’s…”
“Catastrophic?”
“Very.”
“You’re just full of useful information.”
“A lot of this sort of stuff I learned from Altrusk, himself, actually.” Isaac Altrusk was the man responsible for the abomination of a mansion that first trapped Isabelle in her bizarre state between worlds and outside of time almost forty years ago. The same mansion eventually drove him mad and transformed him into a monst
er that Isabelle now merely referred to as “Altrusk.” “I don’t know where he learned it. It sounds weird, but I kind of think the house told him.”
Having actually been inside that insane nightmare of a building, Eric found that he didn’t doubt that one bit. “So then, that monster that I saw rising from the lake… That’s the thing that’s forcing its way into our world through this anomaly, isn’t it?”
“Makes sense,” agreed Isabelle.
“That’s what Holly’s spell meant by ‘hell rising from the lake.’ If this thing breaks through, it’ll rip open a hole that’s going to destroy the world.”
“Not just this world,” corrected Isabelle. “This one and whatever world that thing’s coming from.”
Eric nodded. “One’s the submarine and the other’s the space shuttle.”
“Right.”
He wondered which one he was in and whether he’d have time to know the answer before he was wiped from the face of existence. The thought made him shudder.
“Unless, by some chance, both worlds are exactly the same size. And even then, I think we’d all be obliterated by the two worlds effectively slamming into each other.”
“Sounds about right. I guess.” Not that he had any clue whatsoever. “But if that’s all true, why don’t fissures destroy the world? I mean aren’t they cracks between worlds?”
“You would think so,” she agreed, “but a fissure is a special case. They run outward from a singularity, which isn’t a hole between two worlds, but instead a point where two worlds meet. The pressure is so intense that cracks form. Fissures. The way I understand it is that the pressure surrounding the singularity prevents the cracks from tearing all the way through. That’s how you end up with that gray zone inside the fissure. It’s sort of a cushion between the two worlds that protects them both. I guess it’s kind of like laminated glass.”
Eric supposed it was a little bit comforting to know that the world had at least some built-in safety features.
“What was that she gave you?”
He looked down at the object he was still holding in his hand. “A watch. She said it was what I went there for, even though I didn’t even know I was going there. I have no idea what I’m supposed to use it for.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I usually am. So what’re you going to do now?”
Eric glanced around. He had no idea where he was. This place didn’t look familiar. The light was different here. Was he still in the anomaly? Or was it just getting late? “I really don’t know. I mean, I can figure out north, south, east and west, but how the hell do I go ‘deeper?’”
“That’s a good question,” she agreed.
“And what if I lose you again. I mean, what happened back there? The only times I’ve ever known us to lose contact was when I was inside the cathedral, back at the fissure.”
“That wasn’t the only time we lost contact.”
Eric tried to remember.
“The same thing happened the day we met, before you arrived at the cathedral.”
He frowned. “It did?”
“It happened just before you entered that gas station.”
Now he remembered. “That’s right.” He recalled perfectly his strange encounters with the gas station attendant, but he’d forgotten about losing contact with Isabelle while he was at the station. She cut out just before he entered the place. He even recalled her mentioning just before he lost her that day that the place felt odd.
And now that he was thinking about it, hadn’t she told him that something felt strange just before he lost her today, too?
He paused, considering. Then he glanced back the way he’d come. He could no longer see the yellow house. And he had a feeling that if he went back, he wouldn’t be able to find it. “Do you…” He hesitated, distracted. “Do you think there’s a relation between those two places?”
“Weirder stuff’s happened.”
That was definitely true.
Eric stared into the woods for a moment, wondering.
Chapter Twenty
Something moved in the trees to his left and Eric turned, startled. Was something there? Forests made a lot of noise. There was always a branch falling or a squirrel frolicking or a breeze stirring up a symphony of noises ranging from the fluttering of leaves to the creepy groan of an old trunk swaying back and forth. He knew well enough that most forest noises were nothing to be concerned about. And yet it was more than just nervous paranoia that made him jumpy. He’d been chased through the woods before. Not just by the hellhound and the silver spacecraft. In fact, now that he was thinking about it, he realized that he had no recent memories of a forest that didn’t involve some manner of terrifying encounter and running for his life.
One might think that he’d learn to stay out of the woods, but here he was again.
Of course, he’d had similar experiences in corn fields, cemeteries, hospitals, farmhouses, factories, motels and barns. If he simply stopped going to all the places that reminded him of bad experiences, he’d soon be reduced to a paranoid shut-in who never ventured beyond his own front door.
He could see nothing from his vantage point that warranted immediate panic, but as he scanned the trees around him, he realized that there was a faint mist hanging in the air, visible only against the most distant trees. It gave the forest an ethereal quality, adding to its already ghostly feel…as if these creepy, very haunted woods needed any help with that…
Holly had mentioned the mist twice. First she’d described the lake as being “where the people in the mist wander” and then she’d asked Karen to warn him not to get lost in the mist.
He’d thought she was speaking in some kind of metaphor. Sometimes she did that. She could be frustratingly vague, especially when it came to her spells. But it seemed she was speaking quite literally this time. There really was a mist.
But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t also a metaphor for something else. Witches and their spells were like that sometimes, it seemed.
“You okay?” asked Isabelle.
“Huh?” Eric returned his attention to the phone. He’d almost forgotten that he was still holding it to his ear. He had to force himself to relax a little. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just… A little on edge.”
“Understandable.”
“I don’t suppose you have any idea how to navigate an anomaly, do you?”
“I don’t know anything about ‘anomalies.’ It seems like kind of a broad term. Might as well call it a ‘thing.’ I don’t know what happens when something forces its way into the world.”
“Apparently,” he said, “anomalies happen. And then local nuts start calling them triangles.”
“I guess so.”
“Cordelia said there were things besides fissures. What else is out there?”
“There are portals.”
Eric considered the word. “What’s the difference between a portal and a fissure?”
“A portal is like a singularity, but without all the pressure that causes fissures. It’s not the point where two worlds meet, but rather a common crossing point.”
Eric couldn’t help scrunching his face into a baffled expression as he tried to wrap his head around this explanation.
“I know. They sound alike, but they’re different. It’s like you and Karen. You’re joined together in marriage, but you’re not physically joined together. You’re partners, not conjoined twins.”
“So…a singularity is where this world rams into another one…and a portal is where our world gets romantic with another one?”
Isabelle giggled. “Something like that.”
“Are there other things? Besides portals and singularities?”
“Just gates.”
“Gates?”
“The man-made ones Cordelia mentioned. I’ve heard of them. I don’t know how anyone could ever actually build a gate to another world, though. Doesn’t sound possible.”
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br /> “Cordelia said most were made by older, wiser beings.”
“That’s…a weird idea…”
“You’re not aware of any of these other beings?”
“Just the usual crowd you run around with.”
That was a valid point.
“I guess it’s as possible as anything else you’ve seen.”
“So we still don’t know anything about this place.”
“We know the anomaly’s made up of layers,” she reminded him. “That’s something. That tells us where we need to go. We have to find whatever’s at the bottom.”
“But how do we do that?”
“I’m…still working on it.”
“You can’t sense anything to tell us where we should go?”
“All I can sense is that stupid spiritual energy. It’s overwhelming. But I’ll keep trying.”
“Thanks.”
“In the meantime, keep your eyes open. I have a feeling things have only just started to get weird.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
Eric disconnected the call and returned the cell phone and the watch to his pocket. Almost immediately, he realized that he could hear something that definitely didn’t belong in the woods.
Someone was weeping.
He turned slowly, his head cocked to one side, struggling to pinpoint the sound. Strangely, he couldn’t seem to decide which way it was coming from. It simultaneously appeared to be originating from both sides of him, then from both in front of and behind him. Similarly, although he was sure the voice was female, it somehow sounded both like a woman and a little girl.
He’d heard this weeping before, back on the lake, shortly after his encounter with the lightning-spewing spaceship. He hadn’t been able to find the source then, either.
He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. He was confused. His conversation with Cordelia had left him distracted.
And yet when he opened his eyes, he was struck again by how strange the forest looked now. The trees here were different, he realized. They all had a reddish hue to their trunks. Before, they were mostly gray, and their branches were much fuller. There were far fewer leaves blooming, as if spring were running late in this part of the woods.