Edward looked distraught. Apparently, Katie was familiar with the sounds coming from the portal, but to him it just sounded like noise. “The place on the other side of this portal doesn’t sound like someplace we will find anything useful.” He paused for a moment, as if unsure of what to say next. “I don’t think you should even consider going through. It sounds dangerous,” he added, trying to sound convincing.
Behind him, Amber was shaking her head. “I am afraid that both of you will need to go through the portal this time,” she told them.
Katie looked at her nervously. “Are you sure? What if something happens on this side of the portal and it closes? We’ll never be able to get back!” When Katie spoke there was a hint of genuine terror in her voice.
“She’s right,” Edward said. “I have no idea if my magic will work on the other side of the portal. It would be safer for me to stay here.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t an option this time,” Amber told him. “Without your help, Katie will not be able to convince the person you both need to enter the portal and come back here.”
“How can you be so sure?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me how I know what I do,” Amber snapped in frustration. “I just know.”
Edward and Katie looked at each other helplessly, neither of them sure that this was the right thing to do. Then, the expression on Katie’s face changed, as if some internal light bulb had just come on in her head. “I think we should both go through like Amber said. She has never steered us wrong in the past. Why would she start now?”
Edward thought about it for a moment, knowing she was right, and then hung his head. “I know what you say is true, but I can’t help being petrified by the thought of leaving this world.”
“If I can do it, so can you,” Katie said, trying not to sound condescending. She reached out and grabbed a hold of his hand, looking him in the eye. At first, when she began to pull Edward toward the portal it was like déjà vu. It was like Edward trying to pull the horse through the waterfall all over again, but after a moment he relented and allowed Katie to lead him into the portal.
Chapter 18
Mike woke up in complete darkness, surrounded by the smell of earth. He tried to pull in a breath and found he could not. When he attempted to move he met similar results. It felt like he had been chained down in some kind of dank, earthy-smelling vacuum. Summoning up every ounce of strength that he could, Mike again tried to raise his arms. Slowly at first, he felt his hands pushing upward on what seemed like something cool and gritty. Moments later the feeling slipped away and was replaced by what felt like a warm breath.
He began to bring his hands back toward him until they encountered resistance and then tried to use all his strength to pull his body upward. Moments later, after tremendous effort, his head broke the surface. He pulled in a deep breath through his nose and exhaled rapidly from his mouth, expelling the remnants of earth that were lodged there. As he boosted himself up further, Mike realized where he was.
As he considered the ground surrounding him, which looked very much like a grave, his mind began to race with a flood of thoughts. I’m not dead! Why was I buried? Where is everyone? Why is the moonlight so fucking bright? He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light of the moon, squinting his eyes almost completely closed. He could not wrap his mind around how abnormally bright the moonlight was. If he could remember that far back, he imagined that it felt similar to the startling intensity of hospital lights at the time of his birth. As if his eyes had never been exposed to light before.
Mike searched his mind, looking for a memory that would explain his current predicament. Nearby he could hear the soft babble of a stream. He began to move toward it, if for no other reason than to clean himself. The journey toward the stream should have taken him at least a couple of minutes, by his reckoning, but in actuality it seemed like a matter of seconds and he was standing at the edge of the water. It was as if the stream had picked itself up and rushed over to greet him at the same time he had been moving toward it.
Without warning, a memory suddenly surfaced in his mind, a nightmarish vision of a multitude of flying creatures attacking him. The memory reminded him of an Alfred Hitchcock movie he had seen once, many years ago, called The Birds. Except his memory was insisting that what had descended on him were not birds. What they actually were he could not figure out. It was as if the memory was so traumatic that his mind was blocking parts of it out to spare him the pain.
He knelt down beside the stream and began to clean the dirt off of himself the best he could, splashing water onto his face to knock the loose dirt free. As he did, Mike became distracted by his reflection in the water. For whatever reason, it didn’t look right to him. It was like looking at an old, faded photograph of himself. He couldn’t explain why, or how, but the way he looked in the shimmering water was kind of creepy and unsettling.
Deciding that cleaning himself in this manner was taking too long, he stood up and walked into the stream. When he reached the middle it was only chest deep, so he dropped to his knees for a moment to submerge his entire body. While beneath the surface, he quickly brushed off his clothes, turning the surrounding water murky. A few moments later, he got to his feet again, walked to the shore, and got out of the water.
Mike looked down at his wet clothes and considered building a fire. At least, until he realized that he didn’t have a way to light it. Where had the others gone? Edward would sure be handy right about now. He could have a fire roaring in no time at all. As these thoughts flitted in and out of his mind another realization hit him. He was soaking wet. There was a light breeze blowing through the trees. With these two things combined he should have developed a wicked chill by now. Instead, the breeze that tickled the hairs on his arms felt warm. That just wasn’t natural. It was as if everything he was experiencing was exactly the opposite of what it should have been. Something wasn’t right, and he couldn’t seem to place what it was.
He came to the conclusion that the only way he was going to get any answers was if he found the others, so Mike set out to find them. He knew that for the most part they had been following this stream, so he figured that was the most likely place for him to begin his search.
As he began traveling to the north, beside the water, he started to feel queasy. Everything around him seemed out of place. The breeze felt like a strong, steady gust of wind while he was walking; the trees that lined the bank of the stream seemed to rush toward him; the nocturnal animals that were hidden amongst the trees seemed to whisper to him. It was as if one thing or another was constantly assaulting every one of his senses.
Then, a strange thought popped into his head. This might all be one big hallucination. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had anything to eat or drink. At the moment, there was nothing he could do about food, but the softly moving stream beside Mike beckoned to him to quench his thirst. He stopped for a moment and knelt down next to the water. Putting his hands together, he scooped up a handful, brought it to his lips, and drank.
His stomach immediately began to churn and his throat seemed to tighten. Moments later, Mike found himself spewing the water violently back up. For a moment, he felt a bit like Linda Blair in that movie. What was it called? The Exorcist.
What just happened? Had it been so long since his last drink that his body went into shock with the first gulp? It didn’t seem possible. He hadn’t tried to drink much more than a few sips. His body shouldn’t have reacted that violently. As he thought more about it, Mike realized when the water had begun sliding down his throat, it hadn’t felt the way it should have. It kind of had an increasingly warming effect that reminded him of drinking hard liquor. He was still incredibly thirsty, but didn’t dare try the water again. Maybe he had caught some kind of strange virus unique to this world. He had to find the others. Edward would surely know what to do.
Mike started to walk again, determined to follow the stream until he found the others. Once more, the di
zzying feeling washed over him. Trees rushed toward him with blinding speed. This new distortion of reality he was experiencing was almost more than he could handle. When he looked at his feet he saw they were moving normally, even though it seemed that with each step he took he covered about fifty feet.
Perhaps fifteen minutes had passed when the stream ended in a large basin. Water rained down in torrents from someplace far above and splashed steadily into the pool. At least the noise of the waterfall was drowning out the whispers of the nocturnal animals. One less oddity for my confused mind to deal with. But there was a new sound that he was hearing now. Faint. It sounded like the nickering of a nervous horse. Was it coming from the other side of the waterfall?
Mike stepped into the rush of falling water, and moments later found himself inside a small cave that was hidden by the waterfall. A frightened white horse stood inside, looking at him and stomping one of its front legs. It looked like the horse Edward had been riding, but there was no sign of him or Katie. Mike began to look around the small cave. There was a strange glow coming from the back of it where he saw a large, swirling blue portal. Strange. If there was a portal then Edward should be here somewhere. Unless, for some reason, he had gone into it with Katie.
A strange sensation was vibrating through his body, pulling his attention away from the portal and back to the horse. He started to walk toward the animal in hopes of calming it down. As he got closer, the horse tried to shy away from him. Its eyes were like huge saucers and filled with fear. A few seconds later, he was standing next to the shaking beast. When he laid his hand upon it in an attempt to soothe it, Mike could feel its muscles trembling wildly.
Before he realized what he was doing, he had turned and sunk his teeth into the animal. The horse tossed its head wildly back and forth, trying to get Mike away from it. Not even deterred for a second, he continued to feed on the animal’s blood. A couple of minutes passed before the thirst was sated and he pulled his teeth from the horse. He staggered back a few feet, as awareness of what he had just done set in. The horse was not dead, but very weak from the loss of blood, and crumpled to the floor of the cave. A trickle of blood continued to run for a moment from the place Mike had bitten.
“What have you done?” Amber cried in a shrill voice that normally would have startled Mike. He did not answer, but instead sunk to his knees and began to weep.
Chapter 19
Jack slowed from a run to a walk as he entered the clearing where he had parted company with the others. They were no longer there, but judging from the not completely cool embers of the fire they had built, they couldn’t have left more than a few hours ago. He lifted his nose to the air, searching for their scent, hoping to find out which direction they had gone. He found it without too much trouble, but he was picking up something else as well. The faint odor of death; similar to rotting meat, but somehow different. As he tried to figure out the smell, Jack looked over the rest of the clearing and found something disturbing. The place where they had buried Mike looked as if it had been dug up.
He cautiously approached the ruptured earth and looked down ... Mike’s body was gone. The smell coming from the grave seemed the same as the one mingled with Edward and Katie’s scents. What Jack couldn’t figure out was why they would have dug Mike back up again. Something wasn’t adding up, and Jack was determined to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. He lifted his nose to the air once more, to reacquire Edward and Katie’s scents, then began to make his way to the north where the scent trail seemed to lead. Thankfully, the odor of rotting meat was more faint the further from the stream he traveled.
After about an hour of slowly tracking Edward, with his nose carefully guiding him, the scent began to gain strength, allowing him to move more rapidly. To his dismay, the scent of death was becoming stronger as well. Before long, the scents were intertwined with each other as they had been back in the clearing. Jack could once again hear the rushing water of the stream, but as he continued on his way the sound began to change. The resonance of the water was starting to sound more like splashing than mere ripples of movement. With every step Jack took the sound grew in intensity and volume.
As he got closer to the noise, the stream became visible once again; only this time there was water pouring down the side of a mountain and falling into a pool at the place where the stream seemed to end. The scent of death was overpowering those of Edward and Katie. He half expected to find a corpse on the ground before him at any moment. Just then, he heard the sound of an unfamiliar female voice that sounded mortified. It was yelling, “What have you done?” The voice seemed to be coming from the direction of the waterfall, indicating that there was likely a hollowed out area behind it. Standing next to the cascading torrent of water, Jack crouched down, tensed his muscles, and sprang into the air. The rushing water hit him in mid-air, smashing him to the floor of the cave on the other side. His head struck the cave floor with such force that he saw spots for a few seconds. Then he lost consciousness.
Chapter 20
As Edward and Katie exited the portal—for the first time it was one that Katie didn’t find herself falling out of—a gust of wind brought upon it the stench of garbage; more specifically, the smell of rotting vegetables. Both of their stomachs simultaneously lurched. As Katie looked around the dimly lit area, which boasted a single light bulb next to a door as the only source of illumination, she noticed that they seemed to be in a dead-end alley. The source of the stench appeared to be a dumpster, which was so full that one of the lids was partially open. A swarm of flies buzzed around it hungrily.
Having been his first time going through a portal, Edward bent over and threw up. “I feel like I’ve been swallowed by some enormous monster from a childhood nightmare and then spit back out,” Edward mumbled as he fought the urge to be sick again.
“Suck it up,” Katie teased with an impish grin. “You get used to that feeling after a while.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“It’s actually pretty easy for me,” she began more seriously, “because where I come from we have things like roller coasters and this thing called Tilt-A-Whirl. Most people like to refer to the latter as the Tilt-and-Hurl.”
Edward looked at her questioningly. “I’ve never heard of such things. What are they?”
“Amusement park rides,” she answered. “It’s probably a strange concept to one such as yourself, but there are people here that will pay money to feel like you do right now. And they have fun doing it.”
“People here have an odd sense of things that are fun,” Edward said. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the portal was still there, reassuring himself that he had a way out of this strange place. Sure enough, right there next to the dumpster, seemingly fused with the brick wall, was the swirling blue portal. Suddenly, a loud bang echoed out from somewhere nearby. Edward spun back toward Katie with blinding speed.
Before he could utter a single word, Katie answered the question that was forming on his lips. “That sounded like a gunshot!” She immediately grabbed his hand and dragged Edward into the main alley that ran between the brick buildings, heading in the direction the sound had come from. Ahead of them, cars slowly passed by on the street, unaware that anything had just happened.
Seeing cars for the first time was freaking Edward out. He struggled in her grasp, trying to free himself, but Katie had his hand clamped in her own so tightly that his efforts were in vain. Why did she insist on dragging him toward the quickly moving monsters that were going by? So far they hadn’t noticed them and Edward wanted to keep it that way.
Katie stopped at the edge of the street before them and turned around. “Come on! Someone could need our help!” she pleaded with Edward.
“But if we go any further the monsters will surely see us!” he exclaimed in terror.
“Monsters?” Katie asked with one eyebrow raised. Just then, another car drove by and Edward tried to shrink back into the shadows. She held on to his hand tigh
tly. “Are those the monsters you are talking about?” Katie asked as she pointed at a pair of headlights that were coming up the street.
“Y-y-yes,” he stammered, still trying to pull out of her grip.
Katie suppressed a laugh, but couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth from turning upward in a half-smile. “Those aren’t monsters,” she told him, “they are cars. They won’t hurt you unless you stand in front of one that is moving.”
“Are you sure?” He tentatively moved toward her.
“I’m positive. Now, come on!” She began to pull him across the street, through a break in the traffic. When they got to the opposite side of the street, and no ill had befallen them, Edward began to relax a little.
The muted sound of music was louder on this side of the street. It appeared to be coming from the large building to their right that had an enormous lighted sign jutting from it that read The Town Ballroom. The few people that had been milling around in front of the building moments ago were now moving quickly up the sidewalk in their direction. To their left was a smaller building with a lighted neon sign hanging in the window that simply read Liquor.
In front of them stretched another section of alley. As Katie began to pull Edward into the shadows, the others that had been in front of The Town Ballroom came around the corner and entered it as well. A couple of them were no longer walking; instead they were now jogging. The air stirred slightly as the couple, one man and one woman, passed them in the dimly lit alley.
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