The Portal in the Forest

by Matt Dymerski

  ***

  I looked up from the book, feeling strange. Was there no intentional threat here at all? It made so much sense… some sort of energy entity was hanging around here and trying to go home… and I'd stumbled in, brought back a multi-dimensional device, and then screwed it all up.

  Darkness had fallen completely while I'd been reading, and the kids now shone flashlights around the vast bubbling clearing.

  "What could it look like?" Danny asked. "Surely, we'd notice a strange creature hovering around?"

  The other kids nodded, suggested random ideas, and argued.

  "What if it's lying?" Thomas asked suddenly, wincing against the freezing gusts cutting through our group.

  I blinked. "The book?"

  He nodded. "What if it's lying?"

  I hadn't considered that, for some reason. "If it's lying, then it wants us to keep it here, so that it can destroy everything…"

  He held out one hand, and used the other to reach into his pocket. "I'm ready. I'll use the iWorker, and we'll get rid of it. We can't risk keeping it here."

  I thought I saw slight tears in his eyes, although whether it was from fear or from the bitter wind, I couldn't be sure. "I don't know… it doesn’t feel right…"

  "You're not doing it," Danny cut in, speaking to Thomas. "You have a death wish or something? I'll hit you again, if I have to."

  I immediately straightened with confused anger. "You hit him? When was this?"

  Thomas cowered back from my sudden rage.

  "I heard something!" someone screamed, and the group looked around. "There! It's the creature!"

  Numerous flashlights turned toward the trees. I stared, frozen with anticipation, as… a small whirling oval grew larger. Were we finally about to see the entity that had been lurking in the forest and causing all this? It wasn't my imagination… the ground had begun to shake beneath us, and I clenched my teeth as my injured foot poked fire up through my leg. A very odd ripping sound emanated through the forest, as if space itself was groaning with me.

  As the oval expanded, I began to understand what it was. It had the same curious fuzziness I'd seen before - on the other side of the portals.

  In a flash, a curving beam of darkness slid from the new portal.

  On instinct, I chopped down and practically broke the hand of the fourteen-year-old boy in front of me. He dropped his flashlight - now emanating darkness instead of light - and screamed in pain. The opening of the portal had drawn all attention and all flashlight beams, and that was the only reason any of us were still alive. How many seconds, minimum, was it, before the darkness entity could jump again? Christ… "Drop your flashlights and run! Stay out of the beams! If that darkness touches you, you're -"

  Before I could finish my sentence, the ground began shaking more violently, and that same ripping sound multiplied many times over. In the air, spread out across the clearing, I saw a string of portals opening… into our world.

  Their training forgotten, the kids stood and stared.

  "Drop your flashlights and get the hell out of here!" I screamed. My shrill, furious, and terrified tone goaded them into action. As a group, they dropped their flashlights, but they still stood in place. "We did this, we trained for this," I told them insistently. "I know it's dark, but we did the run blind, remember? The hypothetical sight-stealer? You did it once, and you're going to have to do it again, right now. I'll take care of this."

  Unable to wait any longer, I quickly kicked all the flashlights until they pointed away from us - just as the darkness entity leapt to another beam. "Go! Just go!" I screamed, and they all recoiled… and, finally, they turned and began running away together.

  On a hunch, I picked up one of the lights and used my precious seconds between darkness-leaps to shine a beam across the portals.

  Along the middle of the clearing, torsos, legs, and the occasional head appeared under my light - and only under my light. Rotted, leering faces shuffled toward me, briefly visible as I illuminated them.

  Beginning to comprehend how much trouble we were in, I began to retreat… but… no… I needed a plan… this was worse than the end of the world… these portals were opening from every world I'd brought the book through, a falling out from the damage I'd caused. The threats from those places knew about me, knew about us, and they were going to come through and… harm my kids.

  No. Not after all this. I can't let this happen.

  The darkness entity jumped to another flashlight beam.

  I looked up. Fueled by portal winds, the sky was excessively tumultuous and cloudy. Night had just fallen, and no stars were out… thus the pitch black run the children would have to make on their own… but it was only a matter of time before a star glinted through the heavens, or a plane flew overhead, or some other disastrous light source presented itself for the darkness entity.

  And invisible corpse-creatures were crossing the clearing toward me, even now…

  What else? Would the iWorker hegemony send through men carrying mind-controlling light lances? Was that cleansing wall of fire going to erupt out of a random portal at any moment?

  I grimaced. For the moment, I had two apocalypses to deal with, and I'd have to worry about those when the time came.

  What did I have? Several flashlights, one of which contained a biologic-disintegrating darkness entity, a multi-dimensional information device that spoke to souls, and… looking down at my backpack… a shoe with unknown special dirt on it.

  Quickly grabbing the shoe, I stuck it awkwardly in a jacket pocket.

  Next, I regarded the flashlights. The proper course of action would be to turn them all off and annihilate the darkness entity, unless…

  Turning them all off except the one containing it, and one other, I stuffed the flashlights in various pockets. Holding the two forward - one dark, and one light - I shined them both ahead.

  And I leapt back immediately. The invisible corpse-creatures had only been a few feet away. Under the swath of my light beam, I saw hundreds… and, under the following swath of my darkness beam, those hundreds disintegrated with odd spectral screams.

  Jump. The darkness began shining out from my other beam. I couldn't afford very many of these before it found a world-ending alternate destination to jump to. Count… one, two, three, four…

  As fast as the darkness beam could disintegrate them, more semi-visible corpses shambled out of the widening portal. How many were there?

  Billions, I imagined.

  More began shambling out of nearby entrance portals as they grew larger. I backed up, increasingly pushed back by the semi-circle flow of rotting bodies. Worse, I had to shine my light all around constantly, for fear that some of the invisible attackers were coming around from behind.

  This was a forceful but losing strategy.

  Ok, retreat to the hill, and think…

  Jump.

  Fifty-four seconds. Was that the minimum number of seconds? Could not remembering such a small detail actually get us all killed?! I hobbled up that large hill, familiar with it even in darkness. My sprained wrist ached with the weight of the flashlight, and I had to walk extra awkwardly not to spill any flashlights - or the shoe - from my pockets, so my hurt foot began going numb. My pulled spine, too, began protesting fiercely.

  I was grimly certain that, if I got rid of the darkness entity, I wouldn't be able to outrun the invisible corpses. I had to make a stand… somehow or another.

  Coming across the top of the hill, and ducking backward beneath an irregular rift across the path at head height, I was startled to hear voices right behind me.

  "What the hell is going on down there?" Danny asked, peering over the edge of the hill.

  Thomas crouched on my other side.

  All the other children had fled, as I'd ordered. "Why are you two still here?" I demanded.

  "Because I hate going home," Danny countered. "Or maybe, we couldn't let you die out here. You're kind of a mess."

  Thomas gulped and nodded.r />
  I nodded, mental gears turning furiously. They'd made their choice, and now it was up to me to protect them. I kept shining the darkness beam down along the hill, vaporizing row after row of oncoming corpses, but something in my mind was screaming a warning…

  I glanced up at the horizon.

  The Blue Ridge Mountains.

  We could see the mountain range from here. We'd always been able to.

  My eyes lit on a single orange speck high up on the horizon - a campfire? The headlights of a car?

  It didn't matter.

  Thirty-eight, thirty-nine…

  Reacting with all the adrenaline my body could spare, I thrust the darkness-bound flashlight into the irregular rift just above our heads… and let it go.

  My hand came back bruised and battered from the tidal forces within, but… that portal was outgoing, to that sunny grassy haven, and the darkness entity would not be able to return. Hopefully, it was night and cloudy there, too, and the entity would have nowhere to go at all. If not… well, now, we couldn't use the portals as an escape ourselves, either.

  One apocalypse down. How many more to go?

  "What'd you do that for?!" Danny shouted. Both he and Thomas grabbed flashlights from my pockets and shined them around.

  A crowd of half-illuminated corpses had made it most of the way up the hill.

  "What now?" Thomas asked, shaking.

  Gunfire rang out from somewhere in the forest to our left, and I saw red light sliding across the treetops. "Oh my god, they're really doing it…" I realized aloud. The iWorker hegemony had done exactly what I'd feared. I imagined that organized men with guns were approaching from the left even as we listened… and they were able to see the invisible corpses because of the programming devices they'd brought. They could never defeat the billions of rotting puppets flooding in through the portals, but they could certainly present their own threat. "Don't let that red light reach your eyes. It'll mind-control you!"

  "Seriously?" Danny asked, starkly terrified.

  Thomas held his head in his hands.

  To our right, gigantic columns of flame suddenly tore up into the sky, shooting out in random directions as the portals from the obsidian world fluctuated. "Time to go," I ordered quickly, happy that I'd gotten rid of the darkness entity at the right time. This situation was way beyond us, though, and I feared all was lost.

  And what was so special about this fucking shoe I'd been lugging around? Why had the information demon wanted its partner?

  The two boys helped me up, and we slogged away together, moving slightly faster than I could have on my own. We no longer moved in darkness, but in fluctuating firelight, as the forest acquired cleansing flames and spread them with aplomb. That shifting light illuminated numerous corpses trailing us, but I still kept my flashlight tuned around us, just in case.

  Where were we even going? The suburb was no safe haven, even though that was where I'd always told the children to run. The iWorker battalions would reach it, or the legions of the undead, or the cleansing flames would kill everyone regardless…

  As we limped away in grim panic, an unexpected sight caught my eye.

  Maybe a hundred feet away in the forest, illuminated by firelight, several humanoid figures walked at a pace I recognized. Sealed in black, they moved at just about four miles an hour. There were two tall figures, and one small one - a child.

  I couldn't help but laugh. So there had been survivors on the obsidian world, after all, despite the magnitude of evil humanity had perpetrated upon itself there. How long had they been walking? Did their entire culture, now, revolve around walking ever east, ever away from the globe-encircling cleansing flames? How many times had they walked the world 'round?

  I wondered if the people on the Moon had never been able to return because these stoic human beings had refused to fall, and kept the bacteria with them as a giant screw you to those that had consigned them to die.

  Our Armageddon had been their escape. They looked around in wonder at the forest, even as they continued walking. I was sure they could do nothing to help us, but I wished them luck all the same.

  The boys both trembled with exhaustion and fear. I had to keep their minds occupied while I tried to come up with something, anything… "Danny, why did you hit Thomas?"

  "He tried to take the book through on his own, somewhere dangerous," my second explained. "I had to do it, for his own good."

  Thomas looked up at me from under my arm as we limped forward.

  "Is that right?" I asked him. "I guess I kind of assumed one of your parents hit you, when you wanted to sleep in an abandoned house instead of at home. Danny, are Thomas' parents abusive?"

  "I dunno," he replied. "I never met 'em. He's a new kid, remember?"

  I nodded. "I remember how he was an outsider, when I first came around."

  Thomas looked strictly ahead, a worried expression on his face.

  I pulled us all to a halt, suddenly grimly certain about something. "Thomas, where do you live?"

  He gulped, and said nothing, instead watching us both with fear.

  "We'd never hurt you," I told him. "It's you, isn't it? You showed up at the same time as the portal, and you kept following me in, helping out…"

  "I just wanna go," he suddenly blurted, on the verge of tears. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I can't control it well at all. And that thing, that book, made everything go crazy."

  "Did it make the destinations worse?" I asked. "Or was that because… of how you felt when I came around?"

  His face screwed up even more, and a few tears began running down his cheeks in the half-illumination of the distant fires. "I just miss my mom," he admitted. "And to have you around, acting like her, taking care of people… of me…"

  "Of course," I replied, hugging him tight. "If you stick with me, I'll always keep you safe."

  He sniffled. "Really? Why would you do that?"

  "You lost a mother, but I lost a child. I don't think there's anybody more suited to take care of you. Our two pains can cancel each other out, if we let them. But right now, you need to protect me…" I looked over at Danny. "And your new family. All these kids. They're your new swarm."

  Thomas laughed despite himself, and wiped his eyes.

  I let the words fall slowly. "But right now, you have to turn off those portals. The gunfire's stopped, so I'm guessing the iWorker men have retreated… for the moment. They'll be back when they formulate a plan. The mind behind those corpse-things is on the other side of their portal, and the cleansing fire comes from the other side, too. If you shut down the portals right now, we might all just survive the night."

  "I don't know if I can," he said with a worried sob. "It's… an emotional thing… and I need to be calm… and feel safe…"

  I looked around, understanding how hard it would be to concentrate in a forest filled with approaching invisible corpses and belching flames. "Would it help if you understood just how far I would go to protect you? Just how much I mean it when I say I would never leave you?"

  "Those are just words… she promised, too… and then she died…"

  I handed him the book. "Souls can't lie. Take a look at my story, and you'll understand."

  He did. Danny and I watched as the light-being in the form of a boy - the light-being that had just been trying to go home all this time - read my story, the one I'd been running from for far too long. The moments spent standing in place were long, and our seconds of safety were few, but it was the only way for him to understand.

  Finally, he looked up. "Is that true? Did all that really happen to you?"

  I closed my eyes for a good three seconds, knowing what he was asking about, and then nodded.

  "And you're still here? Doing all this? For a bunch of kids you don't even know?"

  I nodded again.

  He fell forward, into me, the book pressed between us, and I hugged him instinctively. He shook, sobbed, and cried for a good minute, overwhelmed by the fact that he
might actually have found a home.

  Danny edged toward me, his flashlight circling. "We're surrounded."

  "We'll be fine," I told him. "It's time, Thomas."

  He nodded against my arm, and then closed his eyes.

  Watching the quick flashes of illuminated, leering corpses as they closed in around us, I held him tighter. If this didn't work… they'd have to tear me apart to get to him.

  Invisible hands grasped at my clothes, and - fell limp.

  The wind all around us stopped.

  The sound of hundreds of falling bodies echoed through the forest as the corpses fell in scattered unison.

  The forest still burned, but the portals had damaged so many trees, it was impossible for the leftover flames to spread now that the source was gone.

  Danny laughed first, and Thomas and I both joined him in a series of deep, freedom-charged belly laughs.

  It was over.

  I smiled. Just for once… everyone had lived. And more - dozens more black-suited refugees moved by us in the forest, overjoyed to finally escape their endless walk. The cold and calculating part of me assessed them for threat… after all, they might have had the slow-time bacteria with them… but I guessed that, without the light-hungry super-crop plants the bacteria needed, it would be no threat here. That runaway symbiotic cycle had been broken.

  Today is a good day: today, just for once, everyone lived.

  And now I sit in a corner, wondering at my own survival. I didn't really expect to live through this, and I have no plans. Thomas sleeps in one corner of the room, and I sit in the other, analyzing the events of the past few weeks. It should feel odd to become the surrogate mother of a light-being-turned-human from another reality, but… I've seen stranger.

  And now I've got a book that talks to souls, and a shoe with a maddening mystery. I wonder what next week will bring… for the first time in far too long, I'm actually looking forward to finding out.