by Carol Weekes
“Marty, what’s the matter with you?” the woman admonished the dog, doing her best to drag the animal forward along the sidewalk, but the dog dug in with its paws, its collar cinched into its neck, its skin bulging and its eyes bugging with terror.
“Of all the stupid things,” the woman continued. “There’s nothing there.”
She could not encourage or force the dog any further along the sidewalk. She ceased yanking on the leash and glanced around her for whatever may have set the animal off. She pulled the dog across the road to the opposite sidewalk and, although Marty the dog still balked, his hair bristling along his spine, he allowed himself to be pulled forward from that distance. Once they had moved further up the road, the dog visibly relaxed.
Gina and Cory watched them go.
Gina put her hands up. “It’s still there. Why could that woman walk through it, but not us?”
“She crossed the street.” Cory let a car drive by, noticing it passed through the veil without a problem, and ran to the other sidewalk. He tried to push through and it still resisted. He walked back slowly, running his hand along something unseen yet resilient the entire way.
“There’s a wall between us and there,” he whispered. He turned and ran in the opposite direction, back towards Gina’s house. He got to within the same distance and encountered another invisible barrier. He began to cry. “Something’s wrong. It won’t even let us go back to your place.” The wall of resistance spread across both sides of the road for as far in either direction as they’d attempted to feel it.
“Why did it let me go home?” Gina asked.
“I don’t know. We got there but your neighbor didn’t see us. That woman with the dog didn’t look at us, either.”
Gina’s fists clenched in terror. A young man wearing a set of headphones and pushing himself along on a skateboard started up the road towards them. He passed through the first barrier without a problem. Cory ran towards him.
“Hey, can you help us? Can you bring us up the road there?”
The teenager slowed a little on his skateboard, letting it roll to a stop. He pulled an earplug from one ear and seemed to listen to the day. He didn’t look at Cory.
“Hey!” Cory screamed and grabbed the boy’s right arm. The boy pulled his arm back and stared at his skin, his expression puzzled. He rubbed at his skin, shook his head, pushed his earplug back into his ear and kicked the skateboard back into motion. He passed through the second barrier.
“Nobody sees us,” Cory whispered.
Gina fought tears. “I think it has something to do with your neighbor’s house…by walking through his back door, things have changed. What kind of a secret is it? What does it do?”
Cory felt horror. “It’s magic. It can bring you anywhere you want to go. You just have to think about something and you’re there.”
“But the world isn’t the same as it usually is,” Gina wept. “Everything’s different. Nobody sees us. I want to go home. I don’t want to play anymore.” She went to run back to her house and hit the invisible wall. She tried to run across the road several times, only to be bounced back by something she couldn’t see.
“Let me go home!” she screamed, hysterical. She stamped her feet, her arms rolling, her fingers clawed and tearing at nothing. “I want to go home! I want-to-go-home!”
“Okay, okay!” Cory reached her and grabbed her. She spun and slapped him hard in the face. “Why the heck are you hitting me? It’s not letting me out either!”
“This is your fault! You wanted to show me that house. You wanted me to keep this secret. I just want to go home…”
Cory could barely breathe. “You wanted to see my house.”
“And your house is fucked,” she shrieked, frenzied. She hyperventilated.
“We’ll go back the way we came. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll just walk by Ruth and go back through the mirror.”
“I don’t want to see that woman again.”
“Just take my hand. We’ll go together. It’s the only way.”
“Who’s Jeffrey?”
“He lives in the house. He’s the one I met first.”
“How does the door work?”
“He never told me how it happens. He just showed me,” Cory said. “And he comes into my house. He walks in any time he wants.”
“That’s not right,” Gina said. “Neither is his house. Do you see their house from here? There’s your place…where’s his?”
They saw nothing beyond Cory’s house.
Chapter 21
Jeffrey’s porch door waited in its sunny garden. They approached the door and it swung open to greet them. Jeffrey stood on the other side, his face neither frowning, nor smiling. He watched them.
“You showed Gina the secret,” he said.
“I don’t care about your secret. Gina wanted to go home, but it wouldn’t let us out of the street. Nobody sees us…even when we talk to them.”
“Their world is so much slower and denser,” Jeffrey sighed.
“Whose world?” Gina asked.
“Your world.” Jeffrey’s face grew solemn. “There are some things that I’ll explain, but not yet. Here, you can stay up as late as you want, have as much candy as you want. You don’t even have to go to school anymore. It can be better. Come and have some ice cream. It is a hot day out there. We can talk a little more inside.”
“I don’t want to talk,” Gina said. “I’m leaving.”
“Well, my darling,” Jeffrey told her, “I don’t think that’s going to be possible.”
For the first time, Cory smelled something on Jeffrey, a kind of mildew. It puffed off him, from his breath, his skin, his clothing. His lips looked a little too purple in this light, his skin pale, his veins a turbulent blue beneath waxy flesh. His old man jacket and pants hung from his body like rotting curtains in an abandoned hotel Cory had once seen on a highway.
“Come on, Gina,” Cory said, pulling her by the hand and hauling her past Jeffrey, through the kitchen and up the stairwell. Their feet pounded as Jeffrey came up behind them, slowly, but with determination.
“You’ll find that she won’t be able to pass back through the glass,” Jeffrey said. “We’ve made the decision. No one will believe you if you try to tell them what happened, Cory, no matter what you say. When she disappears, you will look guilty. They will know she came here to see you…to your part of the house. You’d best keep your mouth shut.”
They ran to the spare bathroom and reached the mirror, seeing Cory’s house on the other side. They slapped their hands against the mirror, screaming.
“Mom! Chris!” Cory beat his fists alongside Gina’s, feeling the mirror remain solid. They heard Jeffrey step behind them.
“You can go. She cannot. Accept the fact, boy.”
Ruth hurried into the room, holding the baby over her shoulder. “What’s the commotion here? You woke the baby.”
Gina turned and stared at the infant in Ruth’s arms. Her face went white.
“That’s the baby that died a few months ago,” she whispered. “It’s not your baby.”
“You can see the baby is happy enough. And so will you be.” Jeffrey reached for her.
“Don’t touch me!” Gina shrieked, kicking at him.
Cory renewed his fury against the mirror. Suddenly his fists went through and he felt himself lifted and over something; his upper body protruded out into his parents’ house. He felt Gina grab his ankles, the sound of her voice piercing, begging him to wait for her. He hit his face, biting his lip and drawing blood. Dazed, he stood up and whirled to stare at the looking glass. It had solidified but he could see a remnant of Gina and the others behind the glass, wisps of pale shadow just behind the silver lame. He heard the baby cry and heard Ruth croon to her, echoing like a discordant melody in his head. He heard Gina’s nails scrape against the opposite side of the glass as she sobbed, and then all went quiet. She was alone, caught in the secret, a place of never-ending strawberry ice cream, of a y
ard and road that allowed you restricted travel, of a place that let you see people who lived in the town, but who could not see you. Cory ran, sobbing. He reached his bedroom and threw himself onto the bed, panicked, drawing the comforter up to his neck. His gaze roamed over to his beside clock. It read 10: 20. They had been gone a mere five minutes.
“Gina,” he whispered. “Gina.”
He heard footsteps coming up and saw Cole.
“What’s the matter?” Cole asked. “You sick or something?”
Cory ran to him, sobbing, and clung to him. Cole, shocked, brought a hand down to caress his younger brother’s hair. “What happened?” he asked. “Did you fall? Why are you bleeding? Where’s your friend?”
Cory couldn’t speak. He could only cry.
* * *
Cole called his parents who were just leaving a specialty grocers and about to head home.
“Cory’s hurt himself,” he said. “He hit his mouth and he’s crying, but every time I ask him to tell me what happened, he won’t. I think he tried to play in that dumb waiter again and fell, and he’s afraid he’ll get in trouble for it.”
“Oh dear,” Tanya muttered. Her voice faded a little over the cell phone. “Are his teeth okay? Are any loose?”
Cole paused. “I’ll look.” He had Cory sitting on a stool in their kitchen, a cold cloth held against his mouth. “Mom wants me to check your teeth to make sure you didn’t hit any of them.”
“I didn’t,” Cory tried to not cry, but couldn’t stop.
“Let me look anyway.” Cole checked his teeth, then picked up the phone again. “His teeth are okay, but he’s really shaken up.” He glanced at Cory. “I know you were playing in that stupid chute again and this time you fell. Why don’t you just admit it?”
“I wasn’t,” Cory said.
“Right.”
He listened to something his mother said, nodding. “Okay. I’ll tell him.”
Cole put the receiver back into its cradle. “Mom says you’re not going to be punished for being in there, but you’re not to go in there again, for any reason. Dad said he’s going to seal the thing shut because of this.” He pulled the cloth away from Cory’s mouth. “Try to stay out of trouble, okay? You want something to eat?”
Cory shook his head.
“Cat got your tongue, huh? I think your friend went home because she had more sense than you do.”
Cory cried harder.
“Maybe you should go lie down for a while. You’re acting like a big baby.” Cole rejoined Chris in the parlor. Chris had come in to see Cory, shaken his head and said ‘brat’ and had gone to sit down again, more amused by Cory’s swollen lip than anything else.
Chapter 22
Linda Dewar began to worry when the time slid past one o’clock in the afternoon and Gina hadn’t returned home. The reading group at the library began at 10 AM sharp. It ran until noon. Even if Gina had stayed an extra few minutes to peruse new books, she should have been home by now. The library was a ten minute walk away. Linda found the library’s phone number on a sheet of paper and dialed the place. A woman with a perfunctory voice picked up at the other end. She recognized it as belonging to one of the book matrons, Glenda Peterson.
“Glenda, it’s Linda Dewar. Yes, nice day. Is Gina still at the library? Has the reading group gone on longer than usual?”
Linda gripped the receiver. “What do you mean she wasn’t there? She specifically told me she was on her way to the group!” Linda listened, her stomach clenched. “Can you look around and see if she’s in the building? Maybe she didn’t attend the reading group, but she’s probably sitting at a table, reading. Sometimes she does that.”
She waited while Glenda put the phone down. Seconds dragged into minutes.
“Come on, Glenda,” she hissed. Finally, she heard the receiver scrape the desk as Glenda picked up again.
“She’s not here, Linda. I never saw her. She may have come in and left without my noticing her. I’m sure she’ll arrive home soon.”
“I hate it when she does this,” Linda said.
“Well, they all do it, especially towards the teenage years,” Glenda’s crisp voice softened a little. “Does she have a cell phone?”
“We haven’t let her get one yet,” Linda said. “Now I wish we had.”
“I’m sure everything’s fine,” Glenda assured her.
“I guess,” Linda said. She put the phone down and stood for a moment, her knuckles pressed against her mouth. A small mouse of panic ran from her gut to her throat.
“One day you’ll know what it is to be a mother, Gina,” Linda spoke aloud. “Until then, you don’t know how much a parent can worry.”
* * *
Gina dug her feet into the floor as Jeffrey and another man with odd slicked-back hair and what looked to her like gangster clothing pulled her along, out of the old lavatory and back into the upper hallway.
“You’ll enjoy being here,” Jeffrey told her. “It’ll just take some getting used to. You can go home and see your family any time you want. You just cannot live there anymore, and they may not see you. Still, it’s really the best of both worlds.”
“I want to see my mother.”
“Oh, you can,” Jeffrey crooned. “You can walk into your room, sleep in your bed…play on your swings. You can even hug your mother.”
“Then let me go.”
“Okay,” Jeffrey agreed. “You can let go of her, Leonard. She’ll be fine.”
The man named Leonard released her other wrist. “We have to finalize her being here; she’s still in limbo.”
“I know that,” Jeffrey said. “I’ll take care of it.”
He walked with Gina back to the screen door. “Go home and see your mother. Just come back later.” He opened the screen door and the yard swept out and twisted around the house towards the street.
“I won’t come back,” Gina told him, her voice shaking, but her anger determined.
“I’m afraid that isn’t a choice.” Jeffrey remained calm. “Go. You’ll feel better when you see that you can visit them any time.”
Gina ran through the yard and around the house. She felt the quality of the air change, from cool to warm again and suddenly she was out on the street where she and Cory had been caught within folds of something invisible. She held her arms in front of her, afraid of slamming into the sticky air again, but felt nothing. She reached the opposite side of the street from her house at the same moment she saw her mother step out onto the front porch, her face tight with worry.
“Gina!” her mother called. “Gina!”
Gina soared into the road and felt herself step through something sticky at the same moment a car turned a nearby corner, picking up speed. She felt the air around her ripple, a kind of elastic shiver and something silky moved over her skin, a membranous sensation of having slipped through a firm, wet hole. She stumbled out of it and into the center of the road as the car bore down on her, its brakes screaming. Yet her eyes remained caught on her mother’s, those few seconds as her mother’s mouth opened in a pre-scream, her hands flying up to her face, Then the car hit and everything went dark.
* * *
Gina woke up. She became aware that she sat in the middle of the road. She stood up and stepped back to examine the accident scene. She saw her mother huddled over her body, blood pooling everywhere, her mother wracked with sobbing. A man squatted beside her mother, his face wet with tears.
“She just appeared in the middle of the road suddenly. I don’t even know where she came from. I never saw her run into the street. I’m so, so sorry.”
He and Gina watched Linda rock Gina’s body. Gina brought a hand up to her own cheek and felt her skin. Her skin was dry, clean, unhurt.
“Mom?” Gina said. “I’m okay. I’m right here.”
Her mother didn’t look up. She kept rocking the body and weeping.
“Mom!” Gina yelled. “Look at me!” She touched her mother’s shoulder and felt the warmth of her mother’
s blouse and skin against her hand, but still her mother did not look up. A police car pulled into view.
“Mom!” Gina screamed. “I’m right here!”
She felt someone place a hand on her shoulder and spun to see the old man, Jeffrey, standing beside her.
“She’ll ache for a long time, and then she’ll come to an acceptance. You will always be able to see her any time you want, but she cannot see you. That’s part of the secret.”
“Why can’t she?” Gina wept.
“Because you’re no longer mortal. Theirs is a temporary state.”
“What does mortal mean?”
Jeffrey patted her shoulder. “It means being alive in a body.”
“But I’m right here, in my body.”
“In a different way.”
Something dawned on her then and she looked at him with horror. “Am I a ghost? Are you what’s wrong with that house? Is that your secret?”
“I don’t see there being anything wrong with it. Like I said, you can go home and live in your house there any time you please. You don’t have to live with us, but you can always visit.”
“Why did you do this to me?”
“We need your energy. Things get a little…stale…after a while.”
“I hate you,” Gina told him.
“Oh, the new ones always feel that way at first, but eventually even that wears off and becomes very old,” Jeffrey said. He started back towards his yard. “When you get bored at your house, you can come back over to visit. We even have a library, filled with books. And we’ll always see and hear you.”
She watched him walk away, whistling. She turned back to the scene in the road. She watched her mother being held by a police officer while another covered her body with a blanket from the trunk of the cruiser. More police cars arrived and officers held the gathering small crowd back. Her father arrived home, frantic, weeping. Gina sat with her parents on their front porch and watched them sob, saying her name over and over again.