“So, grab some goggles, Peter, because it’s even darker down this alleyway.”
It was only then that I realized Amala was offering me a pair of night vision goggles; Randy was already pulling his over his head.
I pulled mine on, and suddenly the world was made of glowing greens and blacks, but I could see everything more clearly.
“Okay, Amala, we’ll be back, probably within a couple of hours. Just doing a quick trial run tonight. Peter, do you want to leave your backpack with Amala?”
“No!” Why did I keep doing this? “I mean, no. I, uh, have water bottles in there. And I’ve heard that you have to bring your own water. In case you get thirsty. To drink.”
“A good point, Peter; the water Out There might make you sick. Okay, then. Let’s go.”
And with that, we stepped into the utter darkness of the Black Market.
Where the regular, nonfiction market had been alive with colors, laughter, haggling, and smells, the Black Market was eerily quiet. On either side of the street were the backs of buildings, side by side, shuttering it away from the rest of the bustling market. In front of them were booths after booths after booths of goods: toilet bowl plungers, acne medication, extraordinarily specific brands of window cleaner. It was all the things never mentioned in books; and I knew, just walking by them, that they were straight from the Real World. They were too real. Have you ever taken a hallucinogen or gotten really high? ME NEITHER*. But that’s what these items looked like: hyper-detailed and just seemed to be crawling with life. (So I’ve heard.)
*Do not fact check this.
Rather than calling out prices or inviting us closer as we walked by, many of the vendors stepped further back into the shadows behind their booths, or quickly removed certain items from our view. The few other patrons milling about wore scarves or masks to cover their faces, which made the whole green-light-bathed experience even creepier.
“Randy,” my whisper cut through the silence. “Are we almost there? This place is creepy.”
“We’re almost there, Peter.”
We walked on for a minute or so more—me, trying to keep my eyes straight ahead, Randy, apparently enjoying the whole thing immensely and nodding convivially to passersby, until we reached a dead end. The street ended with the back of a wide brick building, in its middle, a single black door. I only knew this because Randy had told me about it before, because at that moment, there was a giant, three-headed dog with a mane of snakes sitting on his haunches blocking the door from view.
“Cerberus!” Randy called as we approached. I hung back. “Good to see you again.”
The three rather boxy dog heads swiveled in our direction. The middle one spoke. “Hey, Rand. It’s been a minute, my man.”
“It sure has. How is the family?”
“Oh, you know, they’re keeping busy. Mom retired last month, so she’s always on Dad’s back about setting fire to the furniture on accident. Nearly bit his head off last week. And guess what? Scylla and I are expecting! Just found out last week.”
“Oh! That’s great! Do you know what it is…?”
“Well, we don’t know, really, but we’re hoping for just a regular dog. Anyway, Randy, I’m guessing you’re here on official Detective business?”
“Yes, we’re just popping over and coming right back,” Randy reached his arm out, to gesture toward me and only then realized I was a few paces behind. He gave me A Look, and immediately I walked up to join him.
“Peter, this is Cerberus. Cerberus, my roommate and dear friend, Peter.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you, my man,” Cerberus extended a massive paw as one of his other heads jerked forward to give me a good sniff. With both my arms, I took hold of his paw and shook.
“Good boy,” Randy said, smiling.
“Thanks, Rand. Did you bring the stuff?” he added, dropping his voice. All three of his heads were staring at Randy attentively, tongues lolling. Behind him, his massive, scaly tale had begun to wag.
“Of course, Cerberus.” Randy plucked from his inner jacket pocket his wand, waved it in an arc cutting through the air before him, and there appeared, a dog bone the size of our kitchen table.
All six of the dog’s eyes bulged and he looked from Randy to the bone, mouths drooling.
“Oh, right—get it!” Randy said, clapping his hands on his knees. With that, Cerberus dived for the bone, revealing the little black door behind him. As we disappeared through the door, the sounds of gnashing teeth, breaking bone, and the occasional, “Hey, watch it, man,” faded away.
The further we walked into the building, the greener and brighter everything got. I glanced over and Randy and took his lead, taking my night vision goggles off. In here, it was well-lit and utterly ordinary compared to the eerie Black Market just on the other side of the door. We were in what appeared to be a large cafeteria, hosting a book fair.
“Oh, hello, again, Detective Potts!” a squat, toad-like woman called from a nearby table covered in books. Just like the items outside, these books were hyperreal; from the looks of them, freshly out of the New World. “We haven’t seen you in months. So happy to hear everything was resolved with that ? business, and of course that everything worked out so that we could keep up our little business. Are you back for that Jane Eyre original we discussed?” She adjusted the little bow perched on top of her head with stubby fingers. There was something familiar about her…
“Not today. We’re just passing through to head straight to the bathrooms. We’ll be back after you’ve shut down. Maybe next time though!”
With that, Randy put his hand on my shoulder and guided me past the tables stacked with books and signs denoting First Editions, Straight from the Real World—Sci-Fi Books!, Dictionaries Printed in the Mysterious Land of Ohio! The shoppers milling about seemed much more normal to me than the books—unwritten and dull, most of them, but normal. There were aliens, a few centaurs, plenty of people from various eras and places, and at the back of the room, someone who looked suspiciously like my old professor, Bateman, a low budget knock-off comic of Batman. Before I could investigate further, though, Randy was ushering me into the men’s room.
Inside, I first noticed the four urinals just to our left (because I really had to pee), but then, I noticed the lion.
“Hello, Randy,” Alan said in a deep and vaguely British accent. He was sitting in front of the last and largest of seven bathroom stalls, toward the furthest wall in the hall-like room. Only after I took him in, did I realize that there were two very ugly and familiar-looking hobbits sitting to his right and left: Terrill and Ivor. Ivor, the fatter of the two and about middle-aged, grunted in greeting; Terrill, with his strawberry blond curly hair, freckles, and paradoxically bearded square jaw, said, “Oy.” They were both wearing earth-colored clothes, thick cloaks, and carrying satchels over their shoulders.
“Alan, Terrill, Ivor,” Randy said. “Good to see you.”
“Sup,” I added, and immediately wondered why.
After a few pleasantries, which I won’t bore you with here, Alan the Lion moved out of the way of the door, revealing a little symbol, not of a wheelchair, but of a wardrobe. Randy, Terrill, Ivor, and myself stepped inside, and rather than a toilet, there was the famous wardrobe to Narnia.
I know what you’re thinking: What is the wardrobe to Narnia doing in a bathroom in Nonfiction? Think of it this way: Narnia is what bridges the Real World with the land of books. It opens on our side, first, into Nonfiction, where things are a bit closer to the way they are in the Real World, and then the further away you get, the more outlandish—at least, probably according to you. That’s why it had taken us so long to get from our neighborhood in Fantasy to Nonfiction.
And yes, for the record, those stories were Nonfiction. I’ve heard that C.S. Lewis first came across the old and dusty wardrobe in his grandfather’s house, crawled in, and found the magical land. Years later, as a much older man, the author was known to take in children fleeing from German
air-raids in London. The Pevensies were some of those children, and as the story goes, they wound up finding the very same old wardrobe in Lewis’s country home, which inspired him to write his story; a story that seemed so unlikely, people just pegged it as Fiction. Now, whether or not the author realized that if you kept walking through Narnia, you’d eventually stumble across another wardrobe that would lead you straight into the land of books, no one knows. But either way, we have plenty of C.S. Lewises wondering around on our side now, anyway, what with all the biographies, fan-fiction, and you know, since I mentioned him just now.
“Oy, you goin’ fru or not, mate?” Ivor asked, shoving me at the knees, nearly causing me to buckle over. Randy caught me by the elbow.
“Hold up, guys. I just want to talk to Peter for one second. Could you…?”
“Could we wha’ then?” Terrill asked, looking bemused.
“Oh, I thought the … would suffice. Could you give us a minute?”
The two muttered something and excused themselves from the stall. A minute later I heard a couple of neighboring toilets flushing.*
*At this point, I also nipped out to go to the bathroom, but usually in Fiction, we just kind of skim over this part. But in the spirit of honesty, yes, we go to the bathroom just like you do in the Real World. We just don’t have to talk about it all the time.
“You’re going to be fine, Peter. Just remember what we talked about: This time around, you’re just to go through Narnia quickly and non-descriptively, as there are probably some legal issues there, lingering too long; and then pop out in the Real World to make sure it’s safe. You know, breathe the air, walk around a bit, make sure the other wardrobe hasn’t been moved. Then you’ll come right back and we can reevaluate. Like I’ve been saying, I know you’re impatient to see Jenny again, but we have all the time in the world to really think this thing through.”
I nodded, not meeting his eyes.
“Okay, then. Terrill and Ivor, come back in.” I heard the stall door open behind me. “Good luck, Peter. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.” With a final squeeze to my shoulder, Randy stepped backward and held open the wardrobe’s door. I stepped inside first, Terrill and Ivor close on my heels, and started the journey toward the Real World.
CHAPTER FOUR
The journey, as it turned out, didn’t take a long time—at least not anymore—because previously when the journey did take a long time, dotted with descriptions, details, and even a run-in with a certain fawn, said journey was nixed by an editor for legal reasons. So let’s just say, it was quite cold, the ground thick with snow, and the whole place seemed to be caught somewhere between my world and yours—it was alive with magic, but also something else. Reality, I supposed. At any rate, you can read all about it in those other books.
By the time Terrill, Ivor, and I found the place, deep in the forest, where they remembered the wardrobe being, my shoes were soaked from walking through the snow, and I couldn’t feel my toes, fingers, nose, jaw, ears… pretty much, if it was a part of my body, I couldn’t feel it. It reminded me a little bit of the year before when my body burned and went numb when ? touched me during our big fight scene.
“Oy!” Ivor barked from just in front of me, bringing me back to the present. “It’s ‘ere. Be’ind this clump o’ trees!”
The forest was thick where we were anyway, but there was a particularly dense clump of snow-covered pine trees, surrounded by tangled and rather spiky-looking shrubbery. Through it, I could just make out the outline of something large, box-like, and wooden. Terrill and Ivor stepped forward, their legs sinking fast into the snow, almost up to their knees, and began roughly pulling the shrubbery aside.
“Ey, what’re you juss standin’ there describin’ for, eh? Get in ‘ere and help us, you dolt!”
And so slowly, I stepped forward, my own shoes sinking into the white, snowy forest floor up above my laces. Little flecks of snow drifted down from tree branches that seemed miles above us; they towered over us meeting at the top, making it darker this far into the forest.
“Stop procrastinatin’ an’ get in ‘ere.”
Okay, okay.
A few minutes later, we were not only cold, but sweaty, and standing before a magnificent wooden wardrobe, much like the one in the bathroom in Nonfiction. It was taller than me—I’m 5’10, if you must know—and looked incredibly thick and sturdy. The wood was dark and sort of reddish, and carved along the wardrobe’s front were what looked like a tree, a sunset, a crown, and beside them, a castle, and something that may have been a king, or an oddly shaped acorn. The wood was morphed and faded with age and in places, packed heavily with snow.
Without any ceremony, Ivor shoved passed me and wrenched open the door—a narrow, panel in the center of the wardrobe’s front. He walked in and just a few seconds later, his footsteps on the wooden boards faded away. I realized then that I was shaking, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the cold.
“‘Ere we go,” Terrill said. He pushed me, almost gently, at the back of my knees into the open door. I half expected to see Ivor on the other side, waving out from a casino in Las Vegas or something (because that’s how I pictured the Real World), but I couldn’t see anything. I mean, really, there was nothing there. It wasn’t blackness, and it wasn’t emptiness, it was just… a lack of all things. It was horrifying and peaceful at the same time. I wanted to stop and run and fall into it wholly. I probably would have done the former, if it weren’t for Ivor behind me, who pushed me roughly into the void.
F F ly in g Noth ing Every thing
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I H o le L i f e death
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“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—”
“Oy, shut it!”
“—HHHHHHHHHHHH—”
A hand clapped over my mouth roughly and my H sounds were muffled. I hadn’t meant to scream; I didn’t even remember deciding to do so. All I knew was that I had walked into a wardrobe, and then for an instant that was infinite, the whole world unraveled. Now, though, I seemed to be back in my body, and I only knew this because it hurt, suddenly and fiercely. I could feel every part of my body as I’d never felt it before—the points where my knees were digging into what seemed to be hard floor; where my feet were pinned underneath me, how they tingled with the loss of blood. I could feel the waistband of my jeans and the straps of my heavy backpack digging into my skin; my arms shaking, covering my head. Eyes closed, tears streaming. Vomit rising. And—
“Get the bin,” Terrill whispered. I heard the scrape of metal on wood—felt it vibrate through the floor—and then Terrill was lifting my head by my hair and I was puking into a round metal bin, cold against my hands, even after the snow in Narnia.
Minutes later, the sensations were still intense, but not so overwhelming. I removed my backpack and gradually peeled myself off my knees and out of a fetal position, and sat back against the side of the wardrobe, panting. It was only then that I realized where we were: a rather dark and dusty, oddly shaped room. The only windows were small, high up, and mostly boarded over, letting in only slits of brilliant white light. I could see the dust motes floating where the light shone through—not little fragments of words or floating letters, like you’d see in Fiction, but just… dust. The floors were wooden and uneven; the ceilings sloped in here and there, giving the space the feeling of a very large fort.
“Where… What…” I was finding it very difficult to breathe; the air seemed thicker somehow. “What in the holy name of Aslan just happened to me?” I gasped. Ivor and Terrill were watching me carefully, Ivor standing in shadow, Terr
ill, illuminated by the light filtering through a gap in the window boards; the tips of his strawberry blonde hair looked golden. He swung the satchel from over his shoulder onto the floor and quickly bent over and pulled from it a glass, tear-dropped shaped bottle of water, and a thick bar of chocolate.
“‘Ere, eat this.” He placed it timidly in front of me like I was a rabid animal, and stepped back, watching me.
“As fer where ye are, yer in some bloke’s basement in England. More specifically, in Ashby de la Zouch.”
“Why?” I asked in between bites of chocolate, which, by the way, really does work. General rule: something feels off, eat some chocolate.
“Well, ‘cos Ashby de la Zouch han’t ne’er been mentioned in books—‘til now, anyway—so iss’ a good place to keep the wardrobe in the Real World. ‘Ye won’ just pop out in some other Ashby de la Zouch in Fiction.”
I just nodded, too exhausted and confused myself to point out that he’d just mentioned the place three times in this story, so likely, there was now a new Ashby de la Zouch in Fiction.
“‘An as fer what jus’ happened,” Terrill added gruffly, “Well, we jus’ travelled between worlds. When we wos in Narnia, we wos still sorta in between—still sorta in the land o’ books, but gettin’ closer an’ closer to this one. When ye came fru the wardrobe, all o’ that jus’ dissolved.”
“You mean like stepping into a portal in Sci Fi?” I hadn’t seen one myself, but I’d heard rumors of gateways into other worlds throughout the genre. As far as I knew, though, they only opened up into other worlds in Fiction.
“‘Don know about all that,” Terrill said. “All we know’s it makes ye feel right sick the firs’ few times ‘ye come fru. Losin’ all the written world and walkin’ straight into this one. Iss’ all just so…”
“Real,” I said looking around. The details of the cracked, wooden floor; the deep wrinkles around Terrill’s eyes; how they drooped down slightly and covered his gray irises. I raised my hand up—it looked different, a bit more detailed; but still had a sort of vaguely written quality to it. So did Terrill and Ivor. We weren’t yet so detailed as this new world around us, but I certainly felt more solid and, well, real by the second.
The Actual Account of Peter Able Page 5
