by Sean Platt
Rather than slowing him down, this sent Dad deeper into a rage. He launched himself at Hudson, fist balled and swinging.
He punched Hudson, connecting hard on the shoulder. It barely hurt. The second landed much harder on his chest.
Hudson winced, spit, and fell to the floor, bracing for further attack. Nothing came. His father was glaring at him, growling, held back by a surprisingly strong Carter.
“Mr. Dawson!” Carter shouted. “Stop! We have what we need. Your son is back home, safe.”
Hudson had never been so frightened of his father. Dad had been scary mad, plenty of times. But this was different. Worse. Uglier. Insane.
Hurting, pride shattered, Hudson wanted to retaliate — hit his father, call him a crazy bastard or something to injure him back. But Hudson only had himself to blame, and everyone knew it. Instead, it was all he could do not to cry.
Hudson looked down, avoiding eyes as he pressed past his father and Carter on his way out of the garage. He marched into the manor and up to his room, slamming the door behind him.
He dropped into his bed and screamed into the pillow.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuck!”
Everything had turned to shit. And now they would probably lose it all because of him. The house, the money, everything. His family would be on the streets.
As Hudson lay there feeling sorry for himself, he started thinking more about the stupid rule, how someone from the bloodline had to always be there.
What kind of stupid restriction is this?
What kind of crazy fucking family makes these kinds of edicts?
What the hell are they up to?
He remembered Savannah also bemoaning the Galloway’s odd rules in her diary. How unfair it seemed. How absolutely insane to be a prisoner on one’s own property, and for what?
Too many things didn’t make sense. Hudson suddenly knew (with a marrow-deep certainty), where the answers were buried.
He went to the hiding spot beneath the bottom drawer of his nightstand.
But the medallion was gone.
Hudson felt a chill, wondering if he’d been caught. Why else would the medallion be gone? Someone found him out and reclaimed it. Unless …
Hazel!
He crossed the hallway to her room, knocked once, didn’t wait, then opened the door, asking, “Have you been in my room?”
She wasn’t there.
“Hazel?”
Hudson looked around his sister’s empty room. Nerves piled on his chills. He backed out and turned toward the stairs.
A girl’s voice whispered, “She’s in the cellar.”
He jumped, looking around, but Hudson was alone.
The voice spoke again in his mind. “I need you, Hudson. Please help me.”
“Savannah?”
* * * *
HAZEL
The medallion was exactly where the voice promised it would be, hidden beneath the bottom shelf of Hudson’s nightstand.
It might have been Hazel’s imagination, but she could swear it had a pulse: warm in her hand, warmer as she stepped toward the cellar door and set it into the lock’s hollow.
Emerald green bled through the metal somehow, and the lock appeared to grant her permission as it clicked. Hazel pushed the door, and it felt almost soft to the touch as it opened.
She managed to hold her gasp as she entered the cellar, but had to swallow hard. The room was deep and narrow with stone walls and floor, all bathed in a dark-green glow coming from the farthest wall, which had some sort of rectangular — almost door-shaped — light in its center. Swirling, green and black, like water moving within the wall.
This is the room I saw through the hole. That is what was making the room green.
She stared at the light, awestruck. Even though it was just swirling lights, not unlike those that had surrounded Mom or her hands, it was maybe the most beautiful thing that Hazel had ever seen. If it was a doorway, as it appeared to be, she wondered what beauty lay on the other side.
But then she remembered the other thing she’d seen in the room, the ugly thing.
And there it was in the center the stone fountain with its giant crow spewing an endless stream of crimson.
She backed away, clutching her stomach as she retched from both the sight and the stench. She could practically taste the copper of blood in the back of her throat.
She turned back to the doorway and started to leave.
“Wait,” her mother’s voice called.
Hazel turned, looking for the source of the voice. All she saw was the fountain and the green swirling doorway. That was where her mother’s voice seemed to be coming from — the other side of the door.
A door to what, though?
“I’m scared.”
“You don’t need to be scared. I’m close, Hazel. Very close. Just follow my voice.”
She looked at the fountain again, not sure she could walk around it without vomiting.
Why would anyone have a blood fountain?
Where does the blood come from?
As curious as she was, Hazel wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answers to either.
She turned from the fountain, hypnotized by the shimmering green beauty before her, and realized that there was something within the green light, or more accurately, on the other side.
Mom?
She stepped forward and heard her mother’s voice call.
“That’s it, Hazel …”
“I’m here, Mom! What do I do? How do I get to you?”
“The hard part is over. Just step through the Threshold, through the light. It’s okay, Hazel. It’s safe over here.”
“Where’s over here?”
“Where you belong.”
Half of Hazel knew that was true, the other thought it was probably a lie. She thought of Carter’s warning about how the ghosts could trick her into doing things.
“How do I know it’s really you?” Hazel could think of no test she could give the person on the other side of the Threshold. Carter had said that ghosts could read your mind, so they knew everything you knew.
“You have to trust me, baby. Once you’re here, I can explain everything, and we can be together again — all of us. You, me, Hudson, and your father. But first I need your help.”
“I don’t know,” Hazel said, shaking her head, afraid to make the wrong choice, her eyes welling up with tears. “I should go get Dad.”
“No, Hazel! Your great-uncle has tricked you all. He trapped me here, along with Savannah. I need you to help me set things straight. But if you go to your father, or to Alastair, I might be trapped here forever. Is that what you want?”
Hazel’s heart pounded as she looked back at the cellar door, then to what her mother had called the Threshold.
Beyond the cellar door was her family, the manor, and the world she’d known all her life. But it was also a world of pain these past six months, ever since Mom had vanished.
Beyond the Threshold was the unknown, the terrifying, and possibly even lies. But it might also be a way back to their past, to reunite their family, to be happy again. The Threshold felt right with every ounce of Hazel’s heart. And if there was one thing life had taught her so far, it was that when in doubt, listen to your heart.
“I’m coming,” she said, slowly approaching.
She held her breath, moving toward the emerald light. The first three steps toward the Threshold were the hardest of Hazel’s life, but the fourth was a reward. Every cell in her body seemed to sing as she stepped into the warm glow. It was like coming home on a cold rainy day and dipping into a nice hot bath.
“That’s right, Hazel. I’m right in front of you. Keep going.”
Hazel kept walking until she was through the Threshold, and on the other side.
She was no longer in the cellar, but rather, somehow, outside, at the top of a hill looking down on a small town which reminded her of an Old West town like she’d seen on TV.
Her eyes were drawn away from the tow
n below to the sky above her.
It was purple and orange with swirls of lights in colors she’d never seen, looking like splattered melting flavors of ice cream against a canvas of eggplant and tangerine. Even more surreal than the weird-colored sky were the giant moons. One was circular like her own moon, but the other was fat and half-gone like someone had blown half of it up. Both moons cast a milky white light onto the town below.
She looked at the cobblestone street beneath her feet and followed it to the tiny town. Small wooden homes with slanted roofs and tall narrow frames lined either side of the road. Tall trees loomed beyond them on both sides. The road seemed to end where the houses did, as if someone had decided nothing else mattered and the people who lived here would never need to go anywhere else.
She looked back to see where the road went on the other side.
It ended at the Threshold.
Except the Threshold on this side wasn’t glowing green. It was a bright red, like a stop light warning the world away.
Beyond the Threshold, she saw a small hill. Atop it stood Galloway Manor, but from what she could see it wasn’t the Galloway Manor from her world, it was a shoddier looking version of the one she knew — made with wood instead of stone, vines creeping up the decayed facade, a few broken windows, and a bunch of twisted looking trees and rough looking grass rather than a beautiful garden. A thick fog hung over the entire place.
A chill ran through her as a cold wind whipped at her hair.
The feeling of her mother was gone from her side, and her heart began to race as she felt suddenly all alone.
“Mom?” Her voice echoed back in multiples, almost mocking her. “Are you here?”
She thought about running back through the Threshold, into the safety of the cellar and the familiar world with its normal skies and singular moon. But something about the red light scared her, as if it would hurt her if she even tried to go back through.
Hazel turned back to the empty road ahead, searching for any sign of her mother. The town was strangely quiet, not a single light in any of the windows.
The world was silent, absent of the sounds of bugs, birds, traffic, or any signs of life.
She began to walk toward the town, her feet clomping on the cobblestone street, echoing as she went.
Hazel made her way down the empty road, and as she reached the first few houses, she began to feel the presence of something watching — then the presence of many somethings.
“Hello?” she called out, over and over, to her mother or anyone who might listen. But no one returned Hazel’s cry, save for the mocking echoes.
Though certain she was being watched, Hazel saw no one in the windows. At the end of the street, the shack on the right parted its door, and a yellow light spilled onto the road, obscured by a shadow.
“Hazel!” she heard from the doorway as the shadow grew larger.
Her mother stepped out from the small house.
Hazel’s heart felt like it would explode from her chest. There she was, and not in some half-there ghostly or angelic form like at the gazebo. It was Mom, in flesh and blood — just like old times.
“Mommy!” Hazel cried out, running into her mother’s arms.
* * * *
HUDSON
Hudson entered the cellar just as Hazel vanished into the green light.
He gasped, staring in horror, unsure of what to do. He wanted to run back upstairs and find his father, but was scared that if he waited too long, Hazel might be gone forever.
He raced forward, but the sound of bubbling liquid stopped him cold, drawing him toward the stone fountain in the room’s center. He looked down and nearly puked as the reek of blood assaulted his nostrils.
Hudson didn’t know what was weirder: Hazel disappearing, or a fountain of blood in the cellar.
What the hell is going on here?
“Hazel!” he cried out, hoping she’d hear him and come back.
But she didn’t.
“Hudson,” Savannah’s voice spoke again in his mind, “get the knife.”
“Knife?” he asked, looking around.
“In the fountain’s base, there’s a knife. Take it and cross the Threshold.”
He looked up at the green light Hazel had stepped into. Threshold? To where?
Hudson traced his fingers over the fountain’s base, searching for any sign of a knife. As his fingers touched the cold stone, the bubbling grew faster, the acrid stench became stronger, and the fountain turned warm to the touch.
He found a faint oval outline in the stone base. He touched it and found that it clicked as he pressed. The stone then slid out and revealed a stone dagger that resembled an ancient relic. He looked it up and down in the emerald light, seeing a string of weird glyphs slithering from hilt to blade.
“Come, Hudson. Hazel needs you.”
The blade felt right in his hand, making him feel stronger, braver.
He stepped toward the Threshold. It began to hum, the air around him seemed to vibrate, creating ripples like a mirage. As Hudson stepped closer, the light brightened.
He gripped the blade tighter and stepped into the light.
Hudson passed through, and it felt like a crackling fire. His every cell felt touched.
His old reality was gone. Hudson was no longer in a cellar, or even underground. There were towering mountains in the distance, and a sprawling purple sky with two moons, one giant and broken.
But neither the sky nor landscape mattered.
He had to find Hazel.
His eyes followed the cobblestone road downhill toward two rows of small wooden houses, and there he saw the impossible.
No … it can’t be.
Mom and Hazel were standing in front of the last house on the right.
What the hell is going on?
Is that really Mom?
Is Savannah here, too?
He ran, knife in hand, trying to reach them before Hazel followed his mother into the house, but he was too late.
Hudson considered calling out to stop them, but then thought better of it. Best if they didn’t see him coming — just in case the woman wasn’t really his mother. In case she was something horrible. There had to be something horrific to explain the fountain of blood.
As he raced down the street, he felt eyes upon him, hidden behind dark windows.
He ignored their stares.
Kept running until he reached the final house.
He slipped the knife from his right hand to his left, then rapped his knuckles hard on the wooden door.
He waited through several knocks, then pounded the door with his closed fist.
He heard movement on the other side.
His heart racing, Hudson slid the dagger back into his right hand, preparing for whatever might happen next.
“Mom! Hazel! Somebody open up! It’s Hudson!”
Another half-minute, then the door creaked open.
Hudson found himself face to face with Hazel and Mom.
He felt dizzy, as if the world had pulled the carpet from beneath him, and he had to wrestle for balance. He fell three steps back, wobbling as his legs turned to jelly. He stared at Mom, then Hazel, trying to reconcile the impossible.
How can she be alive?
Where are we?
Mom smiled and gestured toward his dagger. Sweetly she said, “Do you really need something like that, in a place like this, Hudson?”
He looked down at the blade, and for the life of him couldn’t understand why he would need it. He felt foggy, confused, out of his body. Perhaps the purple sky made it hard to breathe and even harder to think straight.
“Um … no,” he said, or stammered, as he lowered the blade and relaxed his grip.
“Good. Come in. There is so much to tell you.” Mom turned to Hazel. “Would you like to tell your brother, or shall I?”
“Carter isn’t really Carter,” Hazel blurted as Hudson entered the house and Hazel closed the door behind him. “He’s Great-Uncle Alastair.�
��
“What?” Hudson asked, confused by both Hazel’s words and why he still felt so dizzy, as if he’d swallowed a bottle of cough syrup. He looked around the sparsely furnished house — a couch, chairs, table, and other basics, all antique. There were no lights or anything electric. The room was lit by candles. He wanted to ask where they were, how his mother had come here, and if Savannah had really led him to them, but Hazel kept talking.
“That’s right! And … our family is evil.”
Evil?
“That’s not what I said,” Mom corrected. It seemed odd, the warmth between them, like Mom had never gone missing. “Alastair is evil, and has been for centuries.”
“Centuries?” Hudson laughed. “The guy isn’t that old.”
He had no idea how he had managed to stay standing. Surely, he was seconds from collapse. Mom looked at him and smiled. Hudson wondered why she wasn’t noticing that he was so dizzy. Why she hadn’t asked him to sit?
“I’ll explain everything, Hudson. You deserve to know. But now isn’t the time. Alastair will be coming. You’ve breached the Threshold.” Her eyes flickered with what Hudson figured was fear. “He’s on his way.”
“Why is he on his way? Where are we?”
“Great-Uncle Alastair has been keeping them locked up here for centuries,” Hazel said. “We have to stop him!”
“Stop him from what? And kept who where for centuries?”
Before either Hazel or his mother could answer, the strange world sparked with the sound of several sharp clicks, then the harmonized tone of many turning knobs. Outside, a loud squeaking: parting doors, loud on whining hinges.
“Come,” Mom said, taking his hand and leading Hudson back outside. He stepped into the front yard and looked to see open doors along every house on the street. There was a long moment when the doors were all open, though no one had stepped outside. Then, one by one down the row, people — no, not people, creatures — stepped out beneath the purple sky.
In less than a minute, Hudson was staring at two rows of creatures, maybe two dozen in total, all staring back at him and his family.
