by Sean Platt
Clint looked around the room with new eyes. Ron spoke of the majority of The Realm as occurring “up there” as if it were a different world. As they stood in the Read Room, the group was mayhap twenty feet below the street’s surface, but what Ron said was true; it was a different place altogether.
“After your trial, they uprooted me from my cleaning job and began to shuffle me around,” Ron continued. “I think they regretted having me inside privileged space simply to add another warm body to the jury. So they moved me here, still in the Ministry’s employ. The Ministry owns all of the thin places. They’re easy to spot. Where the shine fades, that’s a thin place. Where you feel grime underfoot or touch something and your fingers come away dirty, that’s a thin place.”
“And you’re here to keep an eye on it?” said Clint.
“Yes, to keep an eye on it — and to gather what comes through. See, there’s a crystal recorder in the other room (another thing I suspect nobody understands aside from ‘Push this button and the magic does the rest’) that draws broadcasts from beneath this place and spools them for later use. But one day, as I sat up top behind what used to be a counter and a large, empty space carved in the rock, I started to notice that there was a draft coming from below. The Realm didn’t build this space, you understand. This store was here before the Otel above, before the scent store on the corner, before the fine eatery and the Thuben across from it. They had to build around it. They noticed that this spot was ripe for catching broadcasts, so they placed the recorder and an attendant —” Ron pointed at his chest. “— and then they left it at that. They didn’t explore because they’re not exploration-minded. They’re not curious. And so, they never found this.”
Ron reached to his left, gave a nudge to one of the bookcases, and stepped back. The bookcase swung away as if on a hinge, like a door. Oliver, Morph, Churchill, Boricio, Brooce, and even Z, all of whom had seemed to be merely indulging Ron up until this point, suddenly stood straight with interest. Oliver leaned forward, staring into the newly displayed space — a long, dark hallway with a single overhead spark light visible in the distance.
“I was upstairs, felt the draft, then came down here and found the door. It’s the source of the thinness, where the broadcasts come from. But unlike so many thin places, broadcasts aren’t simply wafting through. The hole here is large enough for passage. I’ve gone down there a few times, but the tunnel just goes and goes and I get scared. First time I opened it, I found a book just sitting there on the doorstep. The book was called 1984. After I read it, it felt to me as if someone had walked through this corridor from the other side, from a world very unlike this one, and left that book here for me to find. And so the next time I came down, I got curious and opened the door again, and I found more books — this time further down the passage, against the wall and open, as if they’d blown there on a breeze. I brought them in. I started my bookstore above after I had enough of those alien books, mainly just to kill the time. I wanted to read them all, but they came too fast. So when my shelves upstairs filled, I started putting the books I’d read down here, to keep track of which were which. It didn’t matter in terms of the store’s inventory. Since this place has been open as a business, I haven’t sold a single book. Not one. And like I said, I started here not long after your trial.”
“The Read Room,” said Clint, his head spinning. “And it even has a door.”
Ron shrugged. “I didn’t even think of the homonym — ‘red’ and ‘read’ — when I started this collection. But I swear, things seem to happen for a reason, as if there were a divine hand out there moving pieces on a Risk board. So this became the ‘Read Room.’ And yes, I’d say that this room will do what you need.”
“How do you know what we need?” said Oliver, suspicious.
“Oh,” said Ron, smiling broadly, “I’ve been having the same dream at night for fifty years or more, since back when I was a young man. The dream I’ve had is of a beautiful woman with long brown hair who comes into my shop and wants to buy that first book — that tattered copy of 1984 with its green cover. In the dream, I tell her it’s the kind of book that could send her to the Wheel of Fortune if anyone learns she possesses it. But she doesn’t answer. Instead she takes the book, and tells me that the book isn’t for her. It’s for you — the legendary marshal Clint Gulliver — because he needs to head down the path of AllWorlds. I tell her that she still shouldn’t have it, that I shouldn’t have it, that you, Marshal, shouldn’t have it, and that I’m frightened. But all she says before the dream ends is…”
Clint knew what was coming.
“… that it will all work out,” Ron finished.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
RAILS AND DOORWAYS
Oliver looked at Clint, silently asking the gunslinger if they could trust the old, pudgy shop owner. Clint didn’t know for sure if they could, but what he said rung true. Besides, Clint had started the day figuring on a trip to the Wheel. The worst that could happen, really, was that he’d end up there after all.
The gunslinger nodded. Oliver nodded back. It was good enough. They’d taken him to see the owls; they’d taken him to see the scholar; they’d followed him aimlessly around The Realm’s polished city, moving in circles, for over an hour. Clint was the Chosen One. Oliver and the others had grown up inside The Realm, and even though they’d taught themselves to fight the air’s pleasant magic, they were still used to following instructions. The best they could hope for would be to follow the instructions of a better leader. The worst that leader could do would be to fail them, but how was that any different from what Realm leaders had always done?
Clint turned, ready to enter the passage behind the bookcase. But before he stepped into the dark, Ron House stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. The gunslinger was so thoroughly stripped from his element that his hand didn’t so much as flinch toward where his gun normally hung. He felt like an old man in a new world — a fast draw in a province ruled by people who commanded weapons beyond his comprehension.
The shopkeeper pushed something into his hand. The gunslinger glanced down to see that it was a small book with a green cover.
“Tell that lady, if you see her, that I did my job,” he said.
Clint looked at the book. “Don’t you want to keep it?”
Ron gave a small smile. “It was on the shelf down here, so that means I’ve read it.”
“Thankoo,” said Clint.
“Go with Providence,” Ron answered.
They stepped into the corridor. It was floored in rough stone and sloped slowly downward. Once they reached the overhead spark light they’d seen from the Read Room, the passage widened and they realized they could see a second light in the distance. Clint felt a strange sense of repetition. As they walked steadily lower with their boots clacking on the stone underfoot, the sparse light flickered and bounced off of small square tiles on the walls — much like the tiles in the cathedral under the Rancho Encantato in Precipice. The approach to that cathedral had the same slow, downward slope. The air had the same slightly moist feel. The dark was the same, just like the spark lights and the footing and the tiles.
Further on, they even started to see similar signs lining the walls. One sign showed a green creature thrusting its hand from a box with the word “Gremlins” written beneath it. Another showed a drawing of a happy white dog and seemed to be about something called MetLife. Another, impossible not to like, had a woman in what looked like a hitching dress (except that the dress was white), holding a sword. The words “KILL BILL” were written in blood red across the bottom.
Just as Clint had back in the tunnels under Precipice, they found themselves passing dark side corridors that jutted off of the main path. And also as in Precipice, they could hear a whooshing noise and feel intermittent drafts being forced at them from the side chambers.
Clint stopped, coming to a realization. The others looked at him.
“I don’t know where to go,” he said.
&nb
sp; “We’re like a battalion of blind mice after a bucket of brew,” said Boricio.
“Just guess,” Oliver said, ignoring Boricio. “Or, sorry… use your soul or whatever you’ve been doing.”
But Clint had no idea. The main path seemed to be the obvious choice, but it also didn’t seem to be leading them anywhere other than down. So the gunslinger kept walking, and soon he found himself facing a wall covered in small tiles. So it wasn’t exactly like in Precipice. In Precipice, the main corridor had opened into an underground cathedral. Here, however, it just ended.
“Again, no idea,” said Clint. He turned from the wall and found himself staring into Z’s dark helmet visor. The soldier’s silent presence almost made the gunslinger jump, so he turned to Churchill.
“Do you have any… calculations… about any of this?”
Churchill looked at Clint with loathing — unmistakable even on his shiny silver features. “Oh, I see. Because I’m a machine, right? So I must have calculations. But alas, I don’t. So tell me, organic being… do you have any ‘stinking orifices’ on the matter?”
Morph stepped forward. “I might be able to help. But first, I need to know what we’re looking for.”
“A way out.”
Morph nodded, then transformed into a bat. He flew off, chirping, and returned a moment later. Clint had been spoken to in the past by horses and owls, so it wasn’t too large of a shock when the bat said, “There’s a passage this way.”
Morph, still a bat, turned. Clint and the others followed.
Once off the main path, they found themselves in utter darkness. Churchill had lights built into his eyes, so after a terse warning to Clint not to make snide remarks, he turned them on. The darkness was pierced by two cones of light, but they didn’t help much. The chamber walls were painted black, and Churchill’s lights weren’t particularly powerful. They were enough to see by, though, and so Morph led them to an edge in the rock underfoot, warning them to mind their steps. They found the ledge, then hopped down onto a sort of submerged pathway. Clint felt something underfoot and looked down to see a set of rails like those used by trains.
“We’re going to be run over,” he said.
The bat flapped near his head. “It opens up further down, and I didn’t hear a train.”
Clint didn’t hear a train either, but Morph probably meant “hear” in the sense of bat vision. So they followed.
They emerged into another chamber like the first, climbed out of the submerged pathway containing the tracks, and walked up a path that looked like the main corridor they’d descended a few minutes earlier. The path ended in front of a beaten-up wooden door made of what appeared to be pine boards. Coming through the door, Clint could feel warm air and smell something like grass.
He opened the door, and gasped.
He was looking at Edward’s stall. Edward’s stall, from Solace, from back when he’d actually lived in one. Edward had called the stall a “house” back then and he’d had the entire barn to himself, but it was, in reality, still just a stall. Clint could see the spot where he himself had carved a mocking face into the wood. A lot had changed in the intervening sixty-five years since he’d last seen this place, but it was the same place true.
Something registered in Clint’s mind, causing him to spin back the way he’d come. The group was mostly out of the passage and into the barn, emerging from a small door that Clint was positive had never been there before. The door was at the farback and should have opened to the outside, but behind it was the dark corridor — a perfect physical impossibility.
“Don’t close the door!” he yelled, holding out a hand. He was suddenly sure that if the door closed, it would vanish. The king and queen had told him that doors to The Realm could only be opened from the inside. Solace was nowhere near Meadowlands, where Kold’s army was waiting. Exiting The Realm for good this far out would be tantamount to starting Clint’s sixty-five year journey all over again.
He nudged the group back through the door and closed it, certain that the door on the other side, in Solace, had just ceased to exist.
“This must be how they travel,” said Oliver. “The Red Room — the real Red Room — must connect to this somehow.”
Clint shook his head in the near dark as they hopped back down onto the tracks and retraced their steps. “I don’t think so. I’ve been to a place like this once before. It was built by unicorns. Edward treated it like a holy temple — like a forgotten holy temple, more specifically. If we were here with Edward, that door probably would have been wider. Everything responds to us. I’ve seen Realm shimmers before too, and those look like holes in space, not doors. This feels ancient. I’ll bet the real Red Room is all buttons and chrome.”
“And that’s bad?” said Churchill, his light-cone eyes still forward.
Back inside the main corridor, Morph led them to another chamber with a set of recessed train tracks at its end, just like the first. Not all the chambers went somewhere, and Morph reported each as a dead end, so the group wouldn’t waste their time.
The next set of tracks led them to a place Clint had never seen or heard of before. Bright blue clouds puffed in a sky with twice as many suns as there should’ve been. Too late, it occurred to him that the air might not be breathable, but it was. Either the two-sunned place had air like their world, or the magic was protecting them.
They went back.
The next side corridor forked as Morph led them downward. They tried one side of the fork and found another place Clint didn’t recognize (a person’s house in the sky like a Meadowlands high-rise, one wall completely covered by books, greeted by a friendly dog wearing a tag that read “Murphy”), then tried the other side and found a second fork.
“We’re gunna gid lozt,” Dylan Brooce drawled.
At this, Churchill grudgingly admitted to being able to track their route and to keep track of which corridors they’d explored. But by this point, Clint wasn’t worried about getting lost. He was more concerned about the sheer number of available tunnels. How many exits could there be? How many worlds did this place pierce?
At the end of one tunnel, they found a bucolic scene with a red barn in the distance. The door — still meant for just one-person — had opened in the trunk a large tree.
At the end of another tunnel, they found a room stacked with strange silver boxes with protruding black handles. A massive rat watched them as they looked around. There was loud music of a type Clint had never heard blaring from above. Someone came down a set of stairs — a kid with his hair tied behind his head. Above, someone else shouted down the stairs, calling to the kid: “Tracy?”
At the end of another chamber, they found the cathedral under the Rancho Encantato where Clint and Edward had squared off against the Darkness when it had taken the form of Parson Jarmusch. He recognized the odd SPICEWORLD sign, now ripped at one corner, and could see the bullet holes in the walls and floor from when he’d fired his slugs at the rats. He had a strange desire to pick at one of the holes until he located one of his sixty-year-old bullets, buried deep inside the wall.
At the end of another chamber, they found nothing at all. The door opened into a great black void, as if the world there had been sheared away. This last chilled Clint’s soul, and he yanked the door closed as if the void might strike out at him.
As they walked, they continued to hear whooshing noises and feel the press of air from some of the passages. The gunslinger decided that the noises and air must be from trains, and that some were still running, headed Providence knew where.
Just as Clint was starting to think that the door they needed might not exist, he turned a knob and found himself staring at a great, churning, grease-clotted machine. The engine looked ancient, and was covered in cogs and chains.
“What is this thing?” said Oliver, stepping through the door and gaping up at the enormous machine.
The gunslinger smiled. “It’s the Triangulum Enchantem.”
CHAPTER NINE:
Clint, Oliver, Morph (back in human form as the square-jawed man), Brooce, Boricio, and Z exited the Triangulum chamber, leaving Churchill behind to hold the door open. They headed to the liftbox, ascended, and began walking up the tunnel that had been carved out of the mountain by giants. Finally, after a long climb, they emerged into the heart of the mountain, into Dharma Kold’s citadel.
When Clint had been in the citadel before, nobody had paid him any mind. It might have been because he’d been with Edward (who, as it turned out, had been training unicorns with Kold all along) or it might have been because the milling humans and other beings assumed that someone who’d passed the gate was supposed to be there. But this time, people stared. Clint realized it was probably because of the fussy uniforms he and Oliver were wearing. The guard uniforms worn by the others were generic enough to be overlooked, but Clint and Oliver stuck out like sore thumbs. So they removed their coats and tossed them into a corner, leaving only the stupid pants that were too wide at the bottom to identify them. Clint brushed the wrinkles out of the simple white undershirt he now wore and ripped the fake beard from his face, glad to be rid of it.
