The Fold: A Novel

by Peter Clines

  “Who did the observations?”

  “Graduate students at San Diego State. Double-blind observations. They knew nothing about the Albuquerque Door.”

  “Statistically,” said Olaf, “the Door rats had lower cancer rates than the control group.”

  “Not notably,” said Arthur. “It could’ve been a fluke. The cats went to a shelter after six months of observation.”

  “I found homes for three of them,” Bob said. “People I knew, so we could check on them, if we ever needed to.”

  “Ready in three.”

  Mike glanced up at the booth. “Is Glitch one of them?”

  “No.” Olaf, Neil, and Bob all answered, but the speakers let Jamie’s voice dominate. They glanced at one another.

  The hoses from the tanks hissed and frosted over. The temperature in the big room dropped by a few degrees. Mike wasn’t sure it was from the liquid nitrogen.

  “And the chimpanzee?” he asked.

  “Six months of observation,” said Olaf. “And then Magnus had him sent to a farm up north.”

  Mike blinked.

  “No, really,” said Neil, leaning back in his chair. “There’s a big wildlife farm for retired movie animals and some test animals up by Los Angeles. I’ve gone up to see Caesar twice.”

  “Caesar?”

  On the flatscreen, Bob smiled. “What else do you name a chimpanzee who changes the world?”

  Olaf sent a stare at Mike. The temperature went down a few more degrees. “If that’s all, we’re trying to run an experiment.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to distract you.”

  “Ready in two.”

  “No worries,” said Sasha from the screen. “Everyone gets a little nervous first time they’re near it.”

  Bob waved at Mike. “You still want to throw the baseball?”

  “Yep.”

  “They don’t talk about this part,” said Bob, “but I think there’s something very soothing about tossing a ball back and forth. I call it the Hitchcock Effect. I think it helps the brain cope with the idea of a fold in space, on a psychological level. That’s my opinion, anyway.”

  “You’re not a psychologist,” said Olaf. “Your opinion’s worthless.”

  “Olaf’s jealous because the effect won’t be named after him,” Bob said.

  “Bob,” Olaf said without looking at the flatscreen, “how long has it been since I asked you to shut up?”

  “A few hours, at least.”

  “That explains why it’s worn off.”

  Mike tossed the ball from hand to hand and took a few steps toward the mouth. The air around the rings seemed to waver and twist. Even though the room was cool, it still looked like heat haze. The rear wall blurred. It was still clear at the center of the rings, but the ripples were spreading inward.

  “We’ve got a solution,” boomed Jamie. “Ready in one.”

  “Mike,” called Neil, “watch the line.”

  He glanced down at the white lines. “Am I safe here?”

  “You can be standing up on the pathway when it opens, if you like. Just don’t cross the line.”

  The circle of still air inside the ring shrunk more and more. Mike estimated it was two feet across at the most. Then eighteen inches. Then less than a foot. The faint hiss of carbonation began to grow. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  “Power is good,” said Olaf. “Flux density is at full. Opening the Door.” He tapped three buttons and the rings sparked and shimmered.

  One moment the heat-haze view through the mouth was the back wall of the main floor, about twenty feet past the second ring. It was cinder blocks with at least two coats of white paint. He could see a few conduits running high along the wall and a fire extinguisher hanging on a square hook.

  Then, like a television switching channels, a third ring appeared and Bob stood ten feet away, grinning. The pathway stretched back beneath his feet to another ramp. The wall behind him was almost fifty feet away, and now it was sky blue. Equipment and desks filled the space between them. Sasha sat at one of them, checking her own instruments.

  “Field has cohesion,” said Jamie. “The Door is open.”

  Bob waved to them from Site B. “Hey.”

  Mike glanced down at the white lines, then leaned to the left.

  “Careful,” said Neil.

  “I see them.” Just past the rings Mike could see the rear wall of the building, right where it was supposed to be. He looked the other way, through the metal and ceramic rings, and saw the wall of Site B twice as distant. “It’s amazing.”

  “Yes it is,” said Arthur.

  “Hey, rookie,” Bob said, smiling. He held up his hands and flexed his fingers. “This is the big leagues now. Show me what you got.”

  Mike looked at the ball in his hand. “Just toss it?”

  “Yep.”

  He lobbed it through the rings. His eyes followed it through the air, watching for a waver to show him when it went through the Door. He couldn’t see anything.

  Bob caught the ball with both hands. “Not bad,” he said. “Try this one.” He lifted the baseball for an overhand throw.

  Mike studied its path through the air again. He waited for a glitch, for the arc to shift, for something to happen. Nothing did. The ball bounced off his fingertips and rolled across the floor.

  Arthur and Bob chuckled. Olaf smirked. Neil scooped up the baseball and tossed it back to Mike.

  “Don’t overthink it,” said Bob. “It’s just throwing a ball.”

  Mike sent the ball through the rings again. Bob plucked it out of the air and threw it straight back. Mike caught it. It was just like catching a ball tossed across the room. A ball tossed a dozen feet at most. He lobbed it through again, and it slapped against Bob’s palm.

  “Now you’re thinking with portals,” Bob said with a grin. “For the record, this ball’s going sixteen hundred feet every time we toss it. That’s about fifteen miles a minute, so you’re pitching a nine-hundred-mile-per-hour fastball.”

  “What’s the world record?” asked Mike. He tried an underhand pitch and watched Bob catch it. Still nothing.

  “Depends on how they measure it,” said Neil. “Nolan Ryan hit a hundred and eight back in the seventies, but most people say Chapman’s hundred and five is more accurate, so he’s got the current record.”

  “Only until we go public,” said Bob. He tossed the baseball back to Mike.

  “We have thirty-five seconds left,” Jamie said from the booth.

  “Copy that,” said Bob. He gestured to Mike and cupped his hands to catch the last throw. He raised his head as the ball smacked into his hand. “For the record, this is now my eighty-fourth time through the Door. That means half of all the crosswalks made by human beings have been made by me, if you round up. I am guaranteed a place in every history book on Earth.”

  “Are you coming through?” said Olaf. “If not, I’d like to close the Door so I don’t have to listen to you.”

  “That’s your jealousy talking again,” said Bob as Mike glanced back at Olaf. “It really—”

  Olaf’s face shifted. Neil screamed. So did Sasha. And Arthur. Mike spun back to the rings, bumped into the other man on the walkway, and stepped back in surprise. He didn’t compensate for the ramp and his foot found empty air. He fell back on his ass and slid to the floor, and the figure on the walkway stepped forward to loom over him.

  TWENTY

  Mike’s first thought was that Bob had rolled his eyes up to show the whites. Students did it in the hall or in class as a joke, sometimes with groaning voices or zombie moans. It was hard to do for more than a few seconds.

  He could see Bob’s irises because his eyes were wide open, not half-lidded. They were pale and lifeless. The pupil of the left eye was a cloudy blur. The right eye looked around the room. It stared at Mike and dilated wide open. He’d seen the same look from terrified animals.

  Bob’s skin was yellow, the color of Post-it notes or old pencils. His mou
th was a chapped, cracked gash. Half of his nose was gone, and the nostril left behind was a slit at the center of the face. A few patches of red stubble were all that remained of his hair.

  Nothing was left of his clothes but rags. His left arm had been twisted into a knot of muscle and bruised flesh. It hung from the shoulder in an odd way. The hand at the end was blurred by a collection of scars. Glistening trails led up his yellow body to open sores.

  His left side was soaked with blood. The ragged shirt and pants were almost stained black with it. The mutilated arm was pressed against his torso, covering a wound. Drops of blood splashed against the pathway or passed through the expanded steel to the concrete.

  Bob let out a low moan. It stretched out and mixed with Arthur’s scream. Sasha yelled something on the other side of the Door. The ants ran it back in Mike’s mind three times before he combined the sounds with some basic lip-reading.

  Not again!

  “Call nine-one-one,” shouted Neil. “Somebody call nine-one-one!”

  Bob wailed again. The awful sound echoed through the concrete room. He took a few strides down the ramp as he gazed around the chamber.

  Mike kicked against the floor and pushed himself away from the scarred man.

  Bob lumbered after him. Every step threw him off balance and almost toppled him. His good arm swung up as he staggered forward.

  Alarms bleated. Mike looked over and saw Olaf’s hand pressed against the panic button. There was a deep thump, a shockwave that rippled through the air as the Door slammed shut and Sasha vanished from sight.

  The thing that had been Bob turned its good eye to Mike. The bleached iris shrunk, tried to focus, and relaxed. His knees folded and the yellow man collapsed. He dropped down onto his knees, then tilted back. His skull cracked against the steel ramp. More blood poured out onto the floor.

  Arthur stopped screaming. He stood with his hands at his mouth. His eyes went from Bob to the rings and back.

  “First aid kit!” bellowed Olaf. He ran to Bob. Neil lunged for the white box mounted behind one of the workstations and ripped it from its bracket.

  Bob twitched on the floor. His limbs thrashed, went still, and thrashed again. He took a few quick, rasping breaths. Mike and Olaf tried to hold him steady.

  “Jesus, that’s a lot of blood,” Neil said.

  “It’s a head wound,” said Mike. “Head wounds bleed a lot. It’s probably not that bad.”

  Neil pulled a handful of gauze pads from the first aid kit, tore them open and shoved them at Olaf. They lifted Bob and placed the pads behind his head. They turned red. Olaf applied pressure. Bob opened his mouth wide and hissed.

  Mike counted seven sockets where teeth had been just a minute ago.

  Neil stared at Bob’s arm. “What happened to his skin?”

  “It’s just the light,” said Olaf, glancing at his own tanned fingers.

  Bob coughed and looked up at Olaf. He moaned again, and the moan became recognizable words. “No,” he said. “No, no, no.”

  “What happened to him?” Neil’s question was tinged with desperation this time.

  “It’s just the light!” snapped Olaf.

  “We need an ambulance!” boomed Jamie. “There’s been an accident. We’re in the complex on the west side of—” There was a rumble and a crash as she tossed her headset aside.

  Four different first aid classes ran through Mike’s head. He wrapped his arms around Bob’s legs and lifted them off the floor. “Cover him,” he said. “Keep him warm.”

  “Hang on,” said Olaf. “Just hang on.”

  Bob’s gaze slid off Olaf and landed on Mike. His good arm twisted up to grab the other man’s sleeve. Their eyes met.

  “He’s still bleeding,” said Neil. “He’s bleeding a lot.”

  “You have to stop them,” Bob hissed at Mike. “Don’t let them…” He coughed on the words and freckles of blood appeared on his lips and remaining teeth.

  Mike ignored the blood and leaned in. “Don’t let them what?”

  Bob kicked again. His other arm yanked away from Neil. His knee slammed up into Mike’s armpit. Then his legs tensed up and went board straight. Short breaths whistled in and out of his mouth.

  Mike looked over at Arthur. “Chair,” he yelled, jerking his chin at one of the workstations. “Get me a chair for his legs.”

  The project head kept looking from Bob to the rings and back.

  “Arthur!”

  His eyes locked onto Mike.

  “Chair. Now.”

  Arthur nodded and ran.

  The speakers boomed and rattled. “The ambulance is coming,” said Jamie.

  “We need a blanket,” yelled Mike. “Something to keep him warm.”

  Bob’s dead eye stared between Mike and Neil. The good one flitted between each of the three men. When it reached Olaf, it opened wide again. He hissed out a sound. A last word. But it was too faint, too whispery, to be heard.

  Then both his eyes rolled up and back.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “He died in the ambulance,” Mike said. “Dead on arrival at the hospital.”

  Reggie’s face frowned on the tablet. It was propped up on the counter so he could look out at most of the trailer. He didn’t look like he’d been awake for twenty-two hours. “You heard a cause of death yet?”

  Mike paced back and forth. “As of three hours ago, according to Arthur, they’re considering it an accident. Blood loss. They said he never regained consciousness, so he probably wasn’t in any pain. Any more pain, I guess.”

  “How did they…” Reggie paused. “Did they have any thoughts about his condition?”

  “I don’t think…” Mike stopped pacing, but didn’t turn to look at the tablet. “They don’t seem to understand that his condition was new. They think he always looked like this.”

  “That won’t last,” said Reggie. “As soon as someone looks at his medical records they’ll realize something’s wrong.”

  “Hell, as soon as they look at his driver’s license.”

  “Have they called anyone?”

  “Arthur said his family’s just up in Anaheim. I think the hospital’s already informed them. Or the police. Probably the police. That’s the procedure when a student gets hurt. I’m guessing they’ve got something similar.”

  “I’ll hold them off as long as I can,” said Reggie.

  Mike watched his friend think for a moment. “I guess…Should I just go book a flight or do you need to do it?”

  Reggie’s brow furrowed. “A flight?”

  “A flight home.”

  Reggie stared at him through the tablet.

  “I’m done here, right?”

  “No, of course not. I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

  “So did I. Between this and Miles, I assumed funding goes away now for sure. At the very least, everything goes on hold for a while.”

  “Well, you know what happens when you assume.”

  “Really? You’re going to keep it going after all this?”

  Reggie shook his head. “There’s too much at stake here to just shut it down. And even if they deny further funding, Arthur has enough to keep working for another few months.”

  Mike sighed. “Great.”

  “I want you to talk to the coroner. Or the medical examiner. Whoever does the autopsy.”

  “I’d really rather not watch that.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I might ask you to take a second look afterward.”

  “It’s not my field of expertise.”

  “I’m not one of the rubes. Everything’s your field of expertise.” Reggie rubbed his temples. “So what the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I looked away for one and a half seconds.” He closed his eyes and replayed what he’d seen of the crosswalk for the eighty-seventh time. The only view was his own. He hadn’t been able to see
any of the monitors from up on the pathway, playing catch with Bob. It still felt too soon to be asking the others for the video records.

  “Was it because of how often he’s done it? Crosswalked? He’s done more than all the others, right?”

  “Olaf’s next closest with thirty-one. But they’ve all been checked out. If it’s a cumulative thing, I have no idea what could be accumulating. Which would mean it’s a random thing that’s never happened before in over four hundred tests.”

  A sigh echoed up from Washington, bounced off a satellite, down to a signal tower, and out of the tablet. “So can you tell me anything?”

  Mike closed his eyes and replayed Bob’s jump again for the eighty-eighth time. “Not right now, no.”

  “Well, let me ask the ugly question, then.”

  He opened his eyes. “Was it an accident?”

  “Yes.” Reggie’s eyes flitted to another screen. “ ‘You have to stop them. Don’t let them…’ ”

  Mike paced back and forth again. “I considered it. Arthur gave Jamie some kind of changes just before they opened the Door. If it was something to kill Bob, they’re both idiots for talking about it right in front of me.” He shook his head. “I don’t think it was deliberate. As far as I know, everyone liked Bob, except Olaf, and even Olaf didn’t hate him.”

  “But Bob was going to tell you something over dinner, and Olaf shut him up.”

  “That isn’t how I’d put it, but yeah.”

  “Did he ever get back to you about it?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe someone wanted to make sure Bob didn’t talk to you. Would kind of fit with him saying, ‘You have to stop them.’ ”

  “Maybe. Olaf’s got a stick up his butt, but I don’t get the sense he’s a killer. Plus, there were three other people monitoring the experiment.”

  “Assuming they weren’t all in on it.”

  Mike replayed the scene again. He started with the last toss of the baseball. Looking away at Olaf, seeing his eyes go wide and his jaw drop. In his peripheral vision, Arthur’s eyebrows and hands going up. Hearing the reactions. Swinging his head around and seeing the pale yellow skin and the eyes. Sasha in the background leaping out of her chair.