When my great uncle Cornelius died, our family needed someone to drive up to his house in Providence and make an inventory of his property, and I was the natural choice. After all, my recent bachelor’s degree in philosophy and East Asian studies had done nothing to secure me regular employment, and I’d had to move back in with my parents, where I’d thrown myself into an ambitious project to create the world’s longest-running manga comic about a flying mushroom who quotes Hegel. Cornelius had had some sort of falling out with the rest of the family years before I was born, over some (possibly imagined) slight. He’d lived alone, in a mansion he’d inherited from his mother.
I wasn’t crazy about being by myself in a giant old house. For years I’d suffered from an odd, disconnected feeling, as if nothing was real, including myself, and this caused me constant low-level anxiety as well as the occasional panic attack. The distress inevitably intensified the longer I spent alone. I had not mentioned this to anyone.
I told my dad, “I don’t know if I’m really the best person to be going through his things. I never even met the guy.”
“Just do your best,” Dad said. “Everyone else is busy. I’ll try to come and help out if I can.”
So, reluctantly, I agreed.
I arrived in the late afternoon. The house was gray, Victorian, sprawled across the top of a low, forested hill. The central section was three stories tall, and additional two-story wings spread out in either direction.
I drove up the gravel drive, then pulled to a stop near the front door and got out. Dark clouds filled the sky, and as I approached the house a cool breeze rose, rustling the dry leaves that littered its porch. I jogged up the front steps and let myself in with the key I’d been given.
The place was musty and dim, with papers piled everywhere. I wandered through room after room of tables and sofas and bookshelves. Pausing by a window, I looked out into the backyard, where a gazebo overgrown with weeds huddled beside a scum-covered pond. I made my way into the kitchen. The sinks and countertops were cluttered with dirty dishes, and the cupboards revealed that the owner’s diet had consisted mostly of coffee and cold cereal. So far this was about what I’d expected.
My first surprise came when I stepped into a parlor off the main corridor. There was a door there. A very strange door.
It was built into the far wall and painted bright green, a revolting neon shade that clashed with the subdued hues of the rest of the house. The door was quite small—I’d have to stoop to pass through it—and extremely crooked, though this seemed intentional. And unlike the rest of the place, this door looked new, and clean, and I suspected it was something Cornelius had added himself. Strangest of all, it was locked with no less than four heavy padlocks.
I stepped closer, studying the locks. I had only the one key, and it obviously didn’t fit any of them. I’d have to come back later and see if I could spring them with my tools. Among my many odd and useless skills was picking locks, at which I had always been uncannily talented.
I began gathering up all the loose papers and sorting them into piles on the dining room table. There were the usual bills, ads, catalogs, etc., but also strange notebooks, dozens of them, full of puzzling diagrams and near-illegible scribbling, though certain words—“portal,” “opener,” “world”—jumped out at me.
I was so absorbed in the task that I didn’t notice anyone enter the dining room, but suddenly a voice at my elbow barked, “Who are you?”
I started violently, and turned.
In the corner stood a large, burly woman who was maybe in her mid-forties. She wore a knapsack, and her outfit looked like a cross between a sweatsuit and a uniform.
“I...I’m Steven,” I said. “Cornelius...he was my great uncle.”
“Who’s Cornelius?” she said.
“He...owns this place. I mean, he did.”
When she’d first spoken, I’d thought she must be a friend of Cornelius—though by all accounts he hadn’t had any. Now I wondered if she might be a burglar—she was sort of dressed like one—but she spoke with such casual authority that I doubted this was the case. At least, I wasn’t about to ask.
She studied me, and I noticed that her irises were an odd golden color. Also, I could swear that her skin had a faint bluish tinge to it...like something not of this world. And it was as if she’d just appeared out of thin air...
“All right, Steve,” she said, “you seem harmless enough. Carry on. But stay out of the east wing, if you know what’s good for you.”
She turned, as if to depart, though she was standing in the corner.
“Wait,” I said. “Who are you?”
“Asha,” she called over her shoulder. “Nice to meet you.”
A dozen questions swirled in my mind, but I sensed that I’d only get a chance to ask one, and that one, the most important, rose to my lips. “Wait,” I called softly. “Are...are you real?”
“Ha! That’s a good one. Am I real?” she said, as she walked straight through a solid wall and disappeared.
So obviously I was freaked out, but what could I do? Run home and tell my parents that I’d been chased off by a ghost? No thanks. Instead I turned on as many lights as I could and positioned myself on a couch in the center of one of the larger rooms, where nothing could sneak up on me, and played movies on my laptop to keep the silence at bay. Finally I passed out, from sheer exhaustion.
When I woke it was morning, and everything seemed more manageable. As I wandered the empty house, I was already half convinced that my encounter with Asha had just been something I’d dreamed during the night. Still, I avoided the east wing.
What I needed right then, I decided, was some sort of challenge to occupy my mind, and the padlocks on the green door seemed just the thing. I’d become increasingly intrigued by the door, because, as near as I could tell, it couldn’t possibly lead anywhere. The layout of the surrounding rooms was like a maze, but I was pretty sure I’d seen the far side of that wall, and there was nothing there but blank plaster.
I pulled up a chair before the door and sat down, wielding my tools. The work went quickly, the locks giving way one after another. I placed each one on the floor at my feet, then reached forward and pushed at the door, which swung aside.
A rush of humid air hit me, redolent with swamp smells of marsh grass and mud. Beyond the door lay a livid green sky above rolling hills dotted with forests and ponds. In a daze I rose to my feet and strode forward, my bare feet sinking into the surprisingly spongy earth. Another world, I thought, staring in wonder. It was actually there, actually real.
I glanced back over my shoulder. From this side, the green door was built into the wall of a small tower made of rough granite bricks. Through the door I could see back into the parlor of Cornelius’s mansion.
I wandered down the hill into the field below. There was a small lake there, its waters murky and brown, and below the surface I could just make out the wavering suggestion of glimmering lights. Then a balmy breeze blew by, and I heard voices on the air. Crouching in the underbrush, I peered through a screen of trees.
A line of black-robed men were making their way up the hill. There were twenty of them, and they wore hoods, and chanted, and some bore a palanquin upon which sat an ebony idol, some sort of frog-headed deity on a gnarled throne.
It was a distinctly sinister tableau, and I was in no hurry to join the parade. Now that my initial wonder was subsiding, I had second thoughts about the wisdom of wandering barefoot and alone through an unknown world.
I turned to beat a hasty retreat, and almost ran right into a strange woman who was crawling up the beach toward me. She was thin and bony, and had come from the water, which dotted her pale flesh, and her thin green hair was plastered back across her oddly elongated scalp. When she was just a few feet away, she cocked her head at me, staring up with bulbous eyes and smiling faintly, as if she were expecting a treat.
I backed away, and suddenly she grinned, the corners of her mouth stretching three times as wide as I would�
�ve thought possible. Her teeth were like a piranha’s.
Then she screamed, a banshee wail, a piercing shriek that went on and on.
I glanced behind me, through the trees. The black-robed men were turning my way now, and throwing back their hoods. Their faces were like hers, and from beneath their robes they drew short staffs topped with tridents.
I edged around the woman—her still screaming, still eager and staring—and sprinted back toward the tower and the green door.
I was out of breath and staggering by the time I was halfway up the hill, and then I stumbled on that strangely pliant ground and fell to my hands and knees, and the creatures swarmed about me, capering and gibbering, thrusting at me with their tridents. I threw my arms over my face and curled into a ball. How could I have been so stupid? Maybe Freud had been right about the death drive, that we all subconsciously seek our own destruction.
The weapons struck my shoulders, my back, my legs. It took a moment before I realized that the pain was minimal, as if they were children poking me with sticks. I was not bleeding, not harmed.
I opened one eye, and a fish-man roared into my face with his dagger-toothed mouth. Instinctively I lashed out, and when I struck his head it burst like an overinflated balloon, splattering me with gore. I dragged myself to my feet as the rest of the fish-men fled. I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
I made it back to the tower, passed through the green door, and slammed it behind me. As I snapped the locks shut one by one, I swore that I would never, ever, ever go opening any mysterious doors ever again. Breathing a sigh of relief, I turned around.
Asha stood there, frowning.
I screamed.
She seized me by the arm and growled, “Come with me.”
“W-where are we going?” I said, as she dragged me through the halls, but she didn’t answer.
I said, “There were creatures in there! They attacked me.”
“Well, what do you expect from a bunch of twos?” she muttered.
I had no idea what to make of that.
She escorted me into the west wing of the house, into a section I hadn’t really explored yet, and marched me into a large bedroom. Built into the corner was another of those strange doors, this one bright orange rather than bright green, and tilted to the right rather than the left, but otherwise identical to the other—right down to the four heavy padlocks.
“I need you to open this,” Asha said, as we crossed the room.
I wasn’t at all sure that was a good idea. I pointed weakly at the locks. “Uh, my tools are back—”
She reached out with her bare hands and ripped apart the locks as if they were made of cotton candy.
Then she turned to face me. “Open it,” she ordered. “Now.”
So what could I do? With a trembling hand I gave the door a small push, and it swung back with a creak, revealing yet another alien world—dry, rolling scrub plains beneath a dusty orange sky.
Asha beamed. “Excellent!”
Puzzled, I said, “Why couldn’t you just open it yourself?”
“Because I’m not an opener,” she said. “You are. Hard as that is to believe.” Opener? I thought.
She added quickly, “And now, Steve my boy, there’s something else I need you to do for me. I need you to go through this door and find me a weapon. A gun would be my first choice, of course, but any sort of weapon will do—a sword, an axe, anything like that.” She reached into her knapsack and pulled out a revolver, which she handed to me. “Or even just some bullets, if they’ll work with this.”
The gun felt amazingly heavy in my hand. I said, “Why do you need a weapon?”
She scowled. “Look, there’s no time to waste, okay? Just do it. Trust me on this, it’s important.”
Somehow, maybe because I was still high on adrenaline from my encounter with the fish-men, I found the guts to say, “No.”
“Kid,” she growled, fixing me with an intense glare, “you have no idea what’s at stake here.”
“Then tell me!” I said. “Tell me what’s going on! But I’m not going to go marching off and bring back a weapon just because you say so!”
For a moment Asha looked so frustrated that I thought she might tear me apart the way she had the locks.
Finally she sighed. “All right, fine. I’ll explain.” She snatched the gun from me and tossed it in her knapsack. “Follow me.”
I tagged along behind her as she led the way back toward the other end of the house.
“Okay,” she said, as we went, “you know that there are different worlds, and that it’s possible to open portals between them. The first thing you have to understand is that not all worlds are created equal. Some are more real than others.”
I chimed in, “But who’s to say what’s real and what isn’t?”
“Oh,” she said. “We use this.” She reached into the knapsack and pulled out a device that looked like a black-and-purple-striped candy cane. “It’s called an O-meter. Each world, and everything native to it, has a specific Ontological Factor, or OF, which is what the machine measures. Here, I’ll show you.”
She pointed the device at me, and sections of it lit up in sequence until about half its length was glowing.
“See?” she said. “You’re a five.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is that good?”
“No,” she said.
“Oh.”
“But hey, it could be worse. Like those degenerates you ran into earlier. Twos. Total figments. Not real enough to do any damage even to you.”
So that’s why I’d survived the attack of the fish-men, I thought. That made sense. Sort of.
“What number are you?” I asked.
“Ten,” she said. “Obviously.”
After a moment, I added, “At first I thought you were a ghost.”
“Kid, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“But you walked right through a wall, so—”
“Yeah, but it was just a five wall.”
I frowned. We were silent for a while.
She eyed me. “What’s the matter? You seem nonplussed.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I don’t like this. Some of the greatest minds in history have grappled with the question of what’s real and what isn’t, and how do we know, and it’s something that’s bothered me for a long time too. And then to have someone come along and say it’s just a number that you can measure on a machine—”
“Is that what’s bothering you?” she said. “Kid, forget that crap. We’ve got bigger problems. Much bigger.”
“What do you mean?”
We were in the east wing of the house now. We entered a large library—hardwood floors, overstuffed chairs, a fireplace. And of course, built into the far wall was another of those small crooked doors, this one bright purple.
Asha nodded at it. “That’s the one that killed him.”
“Who?” I said.
“Your great uncle. What’s his name? Cornelius? Creating a portal is hard on anyone, let alone a five. He must’ve been pretty desperate to get out of this craphole world. Can’t say I blame him.”
I stared at the purple door. Unlike the other two, it wasn’t locked. “He did hate it here,” I said.
“Unfortunately for him,” Asha went on, “his first two attempts led to cul-de-sac worlds, and I guess that wasn’t good enough for him. This one here is different. It leads to a world that’s connected to half a dozen others. You can get anywhere from here.”
“So what’s the problem?” I said.
“The problem,” she said pointedly, “is Abraxas.”
“What’s Abraxas?”
“Not what—who. Abraxas is a type of being we call a ‘demon’—someone who can soak up the reality of other people and absorb it into himself. That’s illegal, of course, and most demons refrain from using their ability. But every once in a while you get a bad one, and Abraxas is one of the worst.”
“I see,” I said. “He’s like the embodiment
of Nietzsche’s will to power.” She stared at me levelly for a moment, then continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I caught up with him a few days ago, here, on this world. I’m a sort of...bounty hunter, you might say. Unfortunately Abraxas is one sneaky bastard. He gave me the slip, and made off with a bunch of my gear to boot, including my skeleton key. Without it, I can’t open portals. I also used up all my bullets firing at him as he fled.”
She sighed. “So here I am. These portals that your great uncle created are the only ones on this world that are traversable at the moment, and two of them, as I said, are dead ends.” She glanced over her shoulder at the purple door. “Abraxas has to get through this one, and if he does—if he gets away—then we can’t restore the stolen reality to the dozens of worlds, including yours, that he’s pillaged, which leaves all of you at greater risk of cross-world invasion.”
I stood in stunned silence.
“And,” she added grimly, “if someone doesn’t lock him up soon, one of these days he’ll have absorbed enough reality to put him beyond contention even by us tens, and then there’ll be no stopping him, ever. So that’s Abraxas. And he could be showing up here at any minute, and I’ll have to fight him. Now”—she held up her massive hands—“these hands are formidable things, but nevertheless, given the circumstances, I really wouldn’t mind having a weapon, you know what I mean? You getting the picture?”
“Yes,” I said meekly.
“This world is a five,” she said, “so nothing around here is real enough to harm him at all. But behind the orange door is a world that’s an eight. Not the best, but a weapon from there should be enough to knock him for a loop, I’d say. I can’t go myself, because I have to stay and guard this door. That’s where you come in.”
She looked me in the eye and said, “So that’s the story. Now, Steve, I’m asking you, will you help me? Please?”
My mind was made up. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“Terrific,” Asha exclaimed. “Finally. All right, let’s get you prepped for a little cross-world travel. First of all”—she reached into her knapsack, produced a bottle of pills and a canteen, and handed them to me—“take some of these. Actually, better take them all.”
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