by Blair Drake
“It’s happening,” Alex said.
“It’s too early,” Conan responded in his Irish brogue. “It’s at least a month away.”
Dylan could hear his own breathing and racing heart. He heard talk of this thing before, but he didn’t know what it was about.
They continued, but the voices were mumbling too much to hear clearly. Damn it. He pressed his ear so close to the grate he’d have an imprint. Then he closed his eyes tight, willing himself closer.
The next thing he heard was a banging at the door of his dorm room. “Dylan Streetman, open this door. If you don’t, I’ll call the headmaster. Dylan!”
Crap. Dylan scrambled to his feet. He looked at the clock. What? Had he fallen asleep? More than an hour passed. That couldn’t be.
He straightened his light blue pajamas. “Coming. Don’t get your boxers in a wad.”
Dylan was a scrawny seventeen-year-old with red hair and fair skin with lots of freckles, and looked downright brawny and tanned next to his freshman roommate. Sometimes he wondered if he looked that young and stupid when he arrived at the school. Did it matter? And those seniors he overheard now and then would soon be gone and he’d move to that wing, with no snot-nosed whiny freshman to make his life miserable.
Dylan had to wrench the chair from under the door handle. Rex must have shoved against the door for some time. He opened the door, and Rex Folkerts stood there, wearing only torn boxers. His skin was so pale it looked almost blue, and he had a cut over his eye and a fat lip.
“What the hell happened to you?” Dylan said as he pushed the chair behind him, toward his desk.
“Never mind. What were you doing in here? It smells funny.” Rex sniffed with his little pug nose as he grabbed his shower caddy from the floor.
“I think it’s you who smells funny. Were you outside?” Dylan asked as he walked back to his bed and slowly pushed it back in place, hoping Rex wouldn’t notice.
Dylan flopped on top of his bed, crossed his legs and put his hands behind his head as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Even though he was talking to Rex, his mind was racing. How had so much time passed? He was listening to the guys talk about what was to come. But he couldn’t remember anything they said.
“We aren’t allowed to go outside after dark, at least not for now. Besides, we couldn’t get out if we wanted. The doors won’t budge.” Rex rifled around in his drawers for clean clothes.
“It’s been dark nearly twenty-four-seven for weeks,” Dylan said.
“Whatever. You know what I mean,” Rex said.
“Where are your clothes?” Dylan didn’t really care, but he was trying to be a good roommate.
He’d only roomed with Rex for a couple of months. In fact, it was just after Rex moved in that he was able to hear through the grate. It started a week later. Rex was shuffled around three times before landing in Dylan’s room.
Dylan’s previous roommate left the school early. From the scuttlebutt around the dinner hall, he wouldn’t be coming back. Too bad, Dylan liked him. Maybe not him exactly, but that he was quiet and kept to himself, spending more time in the library than their room.
“I left my clothes in the bathroom. I’m going to wash them in the shower.” Rex placed his pajamas over his arm and picked up his shower caddy again.
Dylan rolled over onto his side, bent his arm up and rested his head on his hand. “Come on, tell me. I won’t snitch on you.”
Rex glanced at Dylan with a pleading look in his eyes. Dylan could tell he wanted to say something, so he waited. But Rex didn’t say a word. He opened the door and walked out of the room with his stuff in hand, slamming it behind him.
“Well, that was nice,” Dylan said to himself and rolled back over on the bed.
As soon as Rex was out of the room, Dylan’s thoughts went back to how he could have fallen asleep on the floor. How did he lose an hour? He wasn’t even tired, so how did he fall asleep? Who falls asleep when they are concentrating on a conversation?
But he felt like he remembered something. Like he was at the other end of the ductwork, looking at the guys who were talking. But he couldn’t recall the conversation. It was weird that in his mind, he could see through the grate on the other end, as if he was sitting there. But he couldn’t have been, because he’d have to be the size of a rat to fit.
Speaking of rats, he felt bad for Rex, because no one seemed to like him. He wasn’t such a bad kid. He was just a tattletale. He snitched on everyone for anything. Dylan figured he did it for the attention. And he was just the opposite, wanting to avoid any attention.
Rex was that kid with the helicopter parents, though. His mom was constantly calling the school and checking on him. She sent care packages Rex just gave away. He couldn’t do anything for himself. Heck, Dylan wondered if he even knew how to wash clothes. He probably ditched the clothes in the trash and called his mommy to get another uniform.
Deciding to call it a night, Dylan got up off the bed and pulled the covers back. He climbed back on the bed and pulled the covers over himself, lying on his side. As soon as he closed his eyes, he was again sitting at the end of a grate that looked just like the one in his room. But he was not in the room, he was above it, behind the grate. He could barely see, but it looked like a maintenance room of some kind. Where was his mind taking him?
A flash of light lit the room and he could see Alex, Conan, Dexter and Brian. Brian held the light in his hand, but it wasn’t a flashlight. The light emanated from his hand. He could see the other boys by the light of whatever was in Brian’s hand, and they looked scared. He heard Conan say, “Did you hear that?”
Before Dylan could hear the answer, he heard loud banging. He sat straight up in bed. What the hell? The banging was someone knocking on his door again.
“Jeez, Rex, didn’t you take your room key?” Dylan yelled as he dragged himself out of bed.
When he got up, he looked across the room. Rex was curled in the fetal position in his bed, his uniform hanging over the back of his desk chair. Dylan looked at his watch. Nine o’clock? How was it earlier than when he went to bed?
He opened the door, and Miss Hollerine looked him up and down. “Were you planning to attend your classes today?”
He looked down too, thinking maybe he wet himself because of the disgusted look she had on her face. “What do you mean today? I just barely fell asleep.”
Miss Hollerine was a tiny thing, standing at least a foot shorter than Dylan’s six-two, and she’d be lucky to weight ninety pounds after a gut-splitting meal. Her black hair was always pulled into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, and it reminded Dylan of the ballerinas he saw when his parents dragged him to see Swan Lake. Snoozer, just like Miss Hollerine, who taught math. Dylan thought it weird her eyes were as black as her hair, like she was on drugs, and the pupils so dilated her eyes had no color. He imagined her eyes would be gray if they had any color.
Her favorite thing to do was tap her watch, which she was doing. “You already missed first period.”
Dylan looked back into his room. “Then so did Rex, because he’s still asleep.”
“Just don’t you worry about Rex. Worry about yourself. Get showered and dressed. I want you in Headmaster Auster’s office in twenty minutes.”
With that, she pivoted and marched down the hallway.
“Wait, just for missing first period? I could teach that lame class,” he hollered down the hall, but Miss Hollerine didn’t answer, and when he blinked, she was gone.
Dylan looked over at Rex, who was still in the fetal position, with his blankets wrapped tight around him. He wondered if he was really asleep or just faking it.
Chapter 2
Dylan turned on the lights in the room, not caring if he woke up Rex. Rex finally pulled the covers over his head. He should have been in class, too. He’d probably claimed he was sick, so he wouldn’t have to go to class with a bruised face.
Rex never told him what happened. He saw Rex’s face like this before:
the day he moved into his room. Rex hadn’t said much that day, but he grew quite vocal in the proceeding weeks, and he gossiped and tattled on everyone. It was no wonder someone flipped out on him. Dylan learned early it was best to mind his own business.
There were things happening at the school that didn’t have logical answers. This made him believe there was something not right in the other wings of the building—something or someone. Maybe the bad kids, the ones who couldn’t deal with the main population of students, were there. But then, he reasoned, why wouldn’t they just be put in juvie or jail?
GCA was like a prison anyway. It’s not like the students could just up and leave. They were on an island, for goodness sake. An island that couldn’t be seen from the mainland most of the time. He’d bet the mainlanders couldn’t see the school, either. Maybe some people saw it, and others didn’t.
Parallel universe, he thought. The dang school didn’t even exist on the same plane as the rest of the world. That’s what he told himself anyway. It made it all seem less scary. And it was part of the reason for his paper on parallel universes.
Rex stirred under the covers.
“Are you going to any classes today?” Dylan asked as he opened the door to head to the shower.
“Go away,” Rex’s muffled voice came from under the covers.
“Your wish is my command,” Dylan said.
As the door closed, he thought he heard Rex say, “If only.”
It was actually the other way around. Sometimes, when Dylan was so infuriated with someone he’d say something like, “You take that back”, and the person would do it. He’d once tried to get a cute girl to sit with him at lunch once. “You want to sit and have lunch with me today?” he asked, thinking he had the power to persuade her with his words. She just looked at him like he was nuts and said, “I don’t think so.” He felt stupid, thinking he had some power. In hindsight, he’d asked her a question, not told her to sit with him.
He wished he was as handsome and self-assured as Conan. Conan was Irish, too, and had the same fair skin and red hair as Dylan, but the girls flocked to Conan. Maybe it was because he played football. Dylan only ran track. Only, he thought. He should go to the gym in the evenings and lift weights. Then he decided against it because the football players were probably in there, and they’d laugh him out of the room.
“Screw them,” he said.
Then he thought about poor Rex and decided he could have it worse. He laughed to himself as he walked down the quiet hallway. Such a change from every other morning. If he woke on time, he’d walk down a busy, loud hallway, dodging towel snapping and projectile bath products.
He knew he should hurry, but he couldn’t make himself rush. As he let the hot water run over his body, he played the scene over and over in his head. What would Headmaster Auster say to him? Would he be suspended? Was he also going to get in trouble for the comment he yelled down the hall after Miss Hollerine?
After drying off, he put on his freshly pressed school uniform. Loving the feel of the starched fabric against his skin, he was glad his family could afford the dry-cleaning service the school offered. He loved not having to clean his uniform, even if he was obligated to do his other laundry, which he only did if he was out of underwear or towels.
Back in his room, Rex turned off the lights again. There should be enough light from the window by this time of morning, but it was almost pitch-black outside still. He didn’t turn the light back on, feeling a little bit bad for Rex. He left the door open, and with the light from the hallway, he could see enough to put his shower bag away and stuff his dirty clothes into the hamper. He grabbed the lanyard with his room key then stuffed his cell phone in his pocket.
He should have grabbed his backpack because it would look like he planned to attend the rest of his classes that day, but he didn’t. Being summoned to the headmaster’s office was no small ordeal. Ugh. He looked at his watch and picked up his pace to a jog, so he wouldn’t be too late for his tongue lashing.
When he turned the corner and saw the line of students standing just outside of Headmaster Auster’s office, he wondered how many other kids cut morning classes. Was this a usual phenomenon? This was a hallway he tended to avoid.
He wasn’t the type of kid to get in trouble. And if he did, he could usually talk his way out of it...usually. The more desperate he was, the easier it seemed for him to say the right thing and just get off with a light slap on the back of his hand, if that. He even managed to get the tables turned a time or two, and the headmaster apologized for wasting his time. On those occasions, the meetings were hazy, and he couldn’t remember exactly what was said or what happened. He likened it to when he was competing in track. He could never remember his runs. It was like he blacked out. He wanted to black out at that very moment.
He stepped up to join the other students, each looking at one another, and realized something was afoot. There were a few kids who would never cut classes, much less get in enough trouble to come to Auster’s attention.
Melissa turned to him. “Did you get a message to come to Auster’s office too?”
“I was lucky enough to have my message delivered in person by Miss Hollerine,” Dylan said.
Annalise said, “Me too. She knocked on my door early this morning.”
“What’s going on?” Melissa asked.
Dylan had no idea. But these girls never talked to him, so he wanted to make up a story to give himself an excuse to continue the conversation.
Before Dylan could respond, Auster arrived and hustled them all into his office.
Within seconds of entering the office, a howling darkness engulfed the room. Everything was so loud, like he assumed a tornado or hurricane would sound if you were right in the middle of it. He couldn’t see anything, but he could vaguely hear students screaming.
Suddenly, everything became a blur, and he and his classmates were running for the roof of the school. In his head, he kept telling himself this was ridiculous. The roof was outside, which had to be more dangerous than being in the office. But the darkness came through the window and invaded the headmaster’s office. He heard Hettie’s voice, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying.
In the darkness on the rooftop, he thought he felt Hettie bump against him. He couldn’t see her, but he smelled her particular aroma that always seemed to stay in a room for a few moments after she left. He said to himself, “I’m so over this,” and tried to get back to the door he’d come through to get to the roof.
But with the noise, wind, and darkness, he was disoriented, and in the blink of an eye, it was all gone.
All gone, as in the roof, the other students, Headmaster Auster, and Hettie. There he stood, in front of the main doors to the school—the immense, heavy wooden doors that opened to the main entrance of the school. He looked behind him, and wondered what happened to the darkness. The sky was a hazy gray, not pitch black. The wind and howling ceased. In place of the black, a fog came rolling toward him.
Something about that fog scared the crap out of him, and he grabbed for the door to the school, wanting to get back inside before the mist reached him.
Chapter 3
When Dylan opened the door, he thought maybe he was dropped off the roof onto his head and suffered a concussion. Nothing else, short of a dream (which he decided it wasn’t a dream when he pinched himself and it hurt like hell), could explain what he saw.
“Quantum physics is real,” he said aloud.
He stepped through the doorway and closed the doors firmly behind him, to keep the fog at bay. Turning around to what should be the foyer of the school, he saw a city. Was it a city? Could that be possible? And it felt familiar, only he was sure he never saw anything like it before now.
“Holy…” He didn’t finish his sentence because awe overtook him. He’d seen this place before. Not the whole place necessarily, but he’d seen that house. He looked to the left...and that house.
His father was an architect, and he
had drawings and paintings of Victorian homes all around his office. But the homes were surreal, with blithely assembled gables, dormers, turrets, and finials. It was a surreal whimsy. His dad said he interpreted what he was taught about Stic, Eastlake, and Gothic Revival architecture. He always thought his dad reimagined and reinvented original architectural designs, but he drew real houses.
Dylan took a tentative step forward. What the hell happened? Where were the rest of the kids? And why wasn’t he terrified? Fog seeped through the seams of the door and clouded the vision before him. He could see this town was near the sea and thought maybe it was the other side of the island—or not.
He considered pinching himself again, because this had to be a dream. Only he looked down and saw the welt he gave himself moments ago. Not a smart idea. He’d roll with it. He stepped forward onto the sidewalk and was nearly run over by an egg-shaped man wearing what he’d call steampunk clothing: cream colored, high-waist Regency fall front trousers, a brown vest with a burgundy jacket with little round tassels hanging from the hem, a white cotton neck scarf with the same tassels, and tan and burgundy wingtip shoes.
The egg man walked on the tips of his toes while three cats, all tiger striped, walked with him. The three cats were on leashes. With his nose in the air, not paying attention, it was no wonder he nearly ran over Dylan.
Dylan started to say a sarcastic, “Excuse me,” but he was awestruck by what he saw in the street.
An elephant, wearing a hat and blanket the same colors of tan and burgundy as the round man, had a miniature version of the Taj Mahal strapped to his back. As the elephant walked past, Dylan could see two monkeys inside the Taj Mahal, playing chess.
