“So, Ant,” Madison said from the front, speaking loud and clear now. “Liam tells me you’re rich.”
“Yeah,” Ant said with a sigh. He was right behind her. “Have you heard of Carmichael Industries?”
“No.”
“Ninth largest U.S. manufacturer of navigation instruments?”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard of the Carmichael fluxgate compass?”
“No.”
Ant paused. “Really? It’s what made him famous. What do you know about variometers and MHD sensors? My dad sells more of those than—”
“So your dad owns the company?” Madison said.
“Yeah.”
“And does he give you a huge allowance to buy whatever you like whenever you like?” Despite the decidedly pointed question, her tone gave no hint of scorn or jealousy. She sounded genuinely interested.
Ant paused again. “I have way too much money, yes.”
“And do you let that go to your head?”
“You’re very direct.”
Madison let out a laugh. “I am. I’m just a poor, penniless girl with no manners. I’m glad Liam is an equally poor, penniless neighbor. He seems very nice. I’m just worried that you, Ant, are some snobby rich kid.”
Liam couldn’t help grinning. “She’s got your number, Ant.”
“She does not,” Ant retorted. “If she knew me at all, she’d know I couldn’t care less about money. I can’t help it if my parents make me go to school in a limousine and give me loaded debit cards in case I need to buy something in an emergency. I really just want to be penniless like you guys.”
Madison laughed again. “No, you don’t. Money is good. Being rich is fine as long as you don’t think you’re a cut above everyone else. You sound like a down-to-earth guy, Ant.”
“I am,” Ant said. From the sound of his voice, Liam knew he was pouting just a little bit. But the grumpiness didn’t last long. “So what’s the deal with this sleep-writing thing you do?”
By now, they had turned left at the fork and would be approaching the cemetery soon. It was annoying having to walk single file, especially as Liam was at the rear end, but at least they had no need to keep their voices down. Whatever this forthcoming ‘event’ was, Madison seemed unafraid of announcing her presence.
She flung her hands out to her sides in an exaggerated shrug. “Didn’t Liam tell you? I write myself messages in my sleep. It started a few months ago, a message every week or so. Every time there’s a message, I follow the directions and see it.”
“See what?”
She ignored the question and went off on a tangent. “I told Jenny after the first few times, and she freaked out and wanted nothing to do with it. Jenny’s my best friend back up north. We’ll stay in touch, but honestly, she’s not much good with anything remotely weird. Terrified of ghost movies and spiders. She ran a mile when I showed her an event one sunny morning.”
The cemetery loomed into view in the clearing ahead, and Madison turned to follow the wrought-iron railings.
“She said it wasn’t natural and that we should leave it alone. She was seriously scared, and I never brought it up again. She asked me about it once or twice afterward, but I told her it had stopped happening, that I wasn’t sleep writing anymore. I kept it to myself after that.”
She stopped by the gate and peered through the darkness into the cemetery. Liam had been so focused on her words that he’d almost tuned out the creepiness of the place. Now he took it in and felt a thrill of anticipation—and anxiety.
The graveyard was absolutely silent and still.
Madison turned to face Liam and Ant and spoke quietly. “I’m hoping you guys will enjoy this. It’s different every time, sometimes scary, sometimes not. But it’s amazing and special, and I want to share it.”
Liam pulled out his mobile phone and thumbed the button on the side. The screen lit up, revealing the time as 1:49 AM. “Twenty minutes yet,” he said, surprised at how jittery he felt. He hoped his voice didn’t sound shaky.
Madison pulled out her own phone. It, too, read 1:49 AM. Liam knew that phones typically received their times from the cell towers, which in turn relied on a continental atomic clock. All three of them were likely in sync, which was useful since the time indicated in Madison’s message was so precise.
2:11 AM—exactly twenty-two minutes away.
“So how about a heads-up?” Ant demanded. “What are we expecting to happen?”
Madison grinned and climbed through the gap in the gate. It sagged even more under her weight. “If I tell you now, you’ll think I’m crazy. Just come and watch.”
Liam and Ant followed her through, then stood and watched as she picked her way between headstones to the one marked Judith E. Chambers. She stared at it a moment, then returned to where the boys stood. “We should stay back.”
“Why?” Liam said. “Is Judith Chambers going to rise from her grave and dance about?”
Madison shook her head. “No, nothing like that.”
“So what then?” Ant demanded again.
Madison turned in a circle, looking around. “We need to find somewhere to hide. Maybe we should go back out to the trees and take cover. Either that or duck down behind those tall headstones over there.”
Apparently making up her mind, she headed over to a corner of the cemetery where five tall, lopsided stones stood among clumps of bushes. The grass and weeds rose high there, and when Madison settled herself behind the center headstone, she was pretty well hidden. She waved Liam and Ant over.
Ant sighed. “Whatever happens isn’t going to live up to the expectation. It’s going to be something really lame. Probably a nest of fireflies about to hatch or something.”
However illogical Ant’s suggestion was, it rose to the top of Liam’s list as the most likely.
They stamped through the long grass and crouched near Madison, one on either side, using the three middle headstones of the five. Liam would have preferred to be near Ant so they could share whispers about how crazy this girl was, but he didn’t relish the idea of being positioned by one of the outer headstones. The fact that Madison wanted them to hide made him nervous.
They waited and waited, anxiety giving way to boredom and then slowly reverting to anxiety as the countdown reached two minutes to go. An owl hooted somewhere as Liam stared at his phone display.
“2:09,” he said.
“We know,” Madison whispered. She tucked her own phone back into her pocket. “Okay, no more phones. Put them away. No bright lights, no flashlights. No talking. Just watch and wait. And when it happens, no screaming like girls. Be quiet, okay?”
Even she sounded nervous now. Liam’s heart began to thump. He wished he were tucked up in bed. Then again, if that were the case, he’d be forever wondering what all the fuss was about. He had to be here.
Not daring to look at his phone, he was a little annoyed to see that Madison snuck a look at her own. Its screen lit up briefly, then dimmed again.
“2:11,” she whispered. “It’s time.”
Chapter 5
Nothing happened at first, and Liam finally let out a long, shuddering breath. He opened his mouth to say something, but Madison had been anticipating him. “Shh,” she said sharply. “It’ll be 2:11 for a whole minute. Be patient.”
And a second later, the ‘event’ started—with a four-foot vertical slit of light right over Judith E. Chambers’ grave as though a lightning bolt had shot down from the sky and frozen in midair.
The slit quickly expanded sideways until it formed a perfect circle of blinding light. Liam shielded his eyes, blinking rapidly as he crouched low and stared in disbelief.
The light dimmed and rippled like a pool of fiery liquid, hanging sideways in the air and defying gravity. Abruptly, the center of the pool depressed until it looked like a bowl on its side, and it kept deepening until an endless tunnel had formed—a tunnel of swirling light as though reality were being sucked into a vortex.
Liam rubbed his eyes. If he were watching a science-fiction show, he would immediately identify such an anomaly as a wormhole, a gateway to another point in space. They were commonplace on TV, a fictional representation of a hypothetical bridge across space and time where the universe folded in on itself and a shortcut formed between two planes of existence.
But all that stuff was impossible.
“No way,” he moaned, realizing he’d been saying the same thing over and over.
“Way,” Madison said, reaching for his hand. She squeezed it tight, and when he glanced at her, she put a finger to her lips. “Stay cool, okay?”
She looked to see how Ant was doing. Liam returned his attention to the wormhole, watching it rotate like a miniature tornado on its side, looking down its throat and seeing the tunnel twist away into the distance even though from another angle it was nothing more than a floating disk above the cemetery.
“No way,” he muttered again.
The wormhole dimmed a little and slowed. It seemed to be stabilizing, becoming a more permanent feature, though for what possible reason Liam had no clue.
“This beats fireflies,” he said.
Madison frowned. “Fireflies?”
“Never mind. It’s just . . . it’s . . .”
She grinned. “Amazing, right? But remember, stay quiet. You haven’t seen anything yet. This is just the gateway.”
Liam’s heart skipped a beat again. The gateway for what?
A figure shot out of the wormhole. Liam stumbled backward and nearly yelled, and he was dimly aware of Ant doing the exact same thing. Madison glared at them both in turn, her finger held to her lips. Liam curled into a ball on hands and knees, ducking down low behind the headstone.
It was a while before he braved a peek. By this time, two other figures had joined the first. They were rotund humanoids, no more than three feet tall with short, stubby legs and arms. They wore layers of animal furs and necklaces of long teeth.
But it was their faces that caught Liam’s full attention—downturned slits for mouths, pudgy noses, beady little eyes, shaggy eyebrows, huge ears, and fine, wispy hair swept back from their foreheads.
Humanoid, but entirely alien.
“What are they?” Liam croaked.
Madison leaned toward him. Head to head, they stared through the same gap between headstones. “I don’t know,” she whispered back. “They’re different every time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time a gateway opens, different creatures come through. They’re never the same. Last time they were tall and thin, about a dozen of them with two legs and four arms. Or maybe just six legs and no arms. Some stood up straight, others ran around like giant stick insects. Horrible things. All these people come from different places, and I don’t know what any of them are called.”
She fell silent. The short, fat creatures were moving about, their gazes fixed on small metallic instruments that glowed with light and emitted clicks and whirrs. They waved them from side to side as though testing for radiation with Geiger counters.
“Geologists?” Madison offered. She leaned closer again, and Liam would have been thrilled at her proximity if he weren’t so focused on the group of aliens not more than thirty paces away. “They often seem to be inspecting the place. Sometimes they take plants away, others scoop up little soil samples. They test the air, too. I think they’re checking it out, seeing if Earth is habitable, maybe?”
“Preparing for an invasion,” Liam said, filling with horror. “Shouldn’t we tell someone? Warn the Government?”
She shook her head. “It’s not always like this. I saw lots of children once. Alien children—very thin and bald with large heads. I know they were children because they had an adult with them, and the adult stood there like she was a teacher watching over her class. I think it was a school field trip.”
“A school field trip? In a graveyard at night?”
Ant squirmed closer, staying low. “I can’t hear anything you’re saying over here. Maddy, what is this?”
“Shh. Voice down.”
Two of the squat geologists—if indeed that was what they were—had wandered off to the far side of the cemetery. The third remained by the wormhole, illuminated by its faint, swirling glow. He was scanning the ground right in front of the headstone, a scowl plastered across his forehead.
Madison quietly repeated all she had told Liam, and only then did she respond to his earlier question. “The school field trip wasn’t in a graveyard. These gateways open up in different places. Don’t forget I lived hundreds of miles north of here until yesterday. The field trip was actually in a cow field.”
“Figures,” Ant muttered.
“And it was early in the morning, around seven if I remember. I noted it in my journal.”
The alien was now on his hands and knees, scooping dirt and clods of grass aside as though his hands were trowels. After a while he paused, picked up his glowing device, and studied it. It let out a high-pitched whining, oscillating sound as he moved it about.
“He’s grave digging,” Ant whispered fiercely. “What’s so interesting about Judith E. Chambers anyway?”
“Nothing,” Madison said. “She’s irrelevant. This just happens to be where the gateway is. But it’s a cemetery, and maybe they’ve figured out there are human bones buried here.”
Liam was getting a cramp. He shifted his leg and wriggled into a better position lying on his stomach. Madison and Ant did the same, and they ended up squeezed together, peering through the same gap. Liam wished he was wearing something darker than a bright white T-shirt. He felt that he probably stood out a mile in the darkness.
Madison turned her head from side to side, grinning at them both. “My little guys. Isn’t this cool? It’s nice to share the load.”
“Why haven’t you told anyone else?” Ant asked. “I mean other than us and what’s-her-name?”
“Jenny.” Madison chewed her lip for a moment. “I guess I’m not ready to share. If I show my parents, that’ll be it for me. No more sneaking around watching these events. Worse, my parents will tell the authorities, and pretty soon I’ll be whisked away and interrogated for weeks, and I’ll probably never see the light of day again.”
Liam shook his head. “Wow.”
“It’s true. If the Government got hold of information like this—accurate times and places where gateways to other worlds will open up—don’t you think they’d want to keep that absolutely secret? I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think I’m better off just keeping quiet about it. Enjoying it for myself.” She grinned again. “And now with you guys.”
“So why us?” Liam asked, remembering how guarded she’d been about this subject earlier that afternoon.
Apparently she remembered too. She winked and whispered, “Like I said, I have my reasons.”
The gravedigger alien stood abruptly and brushed off his hands. He’d dug down maybe two feet, about two-thirds his own height, and seemed to have come to a conclusion. He tapped his device and shuffled away, calling out to his companions in a surprisingly deep voice. The words were unintelligible.
The other two aliens paused in their scouting and waited for him to make his way past all the headstones. It took a full half-minute for the three to converge and start muttering to each other. Liam could almost imagine the conversation: “Hey, we’re in a graveyard. There are bones below the ground. We can study the human form right here.”
Of course, they wouldn’t necessarily know that Earthlings were ‘human,’ or even that this planet was called Earth. What did they know? Was this some random world they were exploring, or had they programmed their wormhole machine to scout out this particular place?
Wormhole machine?
Questions raced through Liam’s mind. Had these people manually opened this swirling gateway as Madison called it? Or had it opened on its own and they just happened to know about it?
The digger-alien returned, waddling on his sh
ort legs in his hurry to return to the wormhole. He seemed to have agreed on something with his companions, and when he reached Judith E. Chambers’ headstone, he stepped close to the anomaly and reached up to it.
In a flash, he was gone, sucked upward into the wormhole.
Ant let out a gasp.
Madison giggled. “It’s always like that. Gateways have a lot of suction, kind of like vacuum cleaners. Funny thing is, it seems to work both ways at the same time. I guess you get sucked in one end and spat out the other no matter what. I always wondered what would happen if two people collided halfway through . . .”
“So he’s gone?” Liam said, his heart hammering. “Back to his own planet?”
“I assume so.”
The remaining pair of visitors had made their way to the cemetery gate. They stared at it for a while as if wondering whether to attempt climbing over. Finally they did so, far less gracefully than taller, slimmer humans might. When they reached the other side, they moved off into the trees, their deep voices carrying through the night.
Abruptly, the gravedigger reappeared, shooting feet first out of the wormhole and landing with a thump on Judith E. Chambers’ overgrown grave. Now he held a large piece of equipment, a dark-colored boxlike object with handholds on the sides and a nozzle that pointed downward.
Wasting no time, he activated the machine, and a throbbing growl blasted out. The air shimmered, the ground vibrated. Dirt shot upward, scattering everywhere in a fine spray. The alien leaned over the grave and moved the machine in a circle, and endless streams of dirt flew out, plastering him and the surrounding headstones in a dry, crumbling, brown shower.
The machine fell silent. The gravedigger put it aside and jumped down into the hole, disappearing from sight. Moments later, Liam heard the sound of splintering wood.
“He really is digging up the bones,” he said, appalled.
Chapter 6
Into the Wormhole Page 3