Southern House

by Mark Deloy

  “Do you feel that?” I asked Lisa. She nodded without asking me what I was talking about.

  The inside was also darker than I’d remembered. Even though it was sunny outside, it was as if the light stopped at the windows instead of shining through them. I turned on my flashlight and scanned the room. I heard Girl whimpering from outside. She hadn’t followed us in, and that was fine with me… unless the bearalopes found a way to get to the top of the cliff. I didn’t think they would, since they had seemed content to stay where they were.

  We made our way through the dining room and I pushed a hand through the invisible barrier, half- expecting a solid wall to be there. I had a slight, vertigo- type feeling, as if my eyes weren’t believing what they were seeing.

  “It’s still here,” I remarked. “Come on.”

  I originally thought the wall was a complete illusion, but as I moved through it for the third time that day, I felt the edges of it scrape against my skin. It was like walking through an upright pool of water.

  Lisa shivered as she came through, and I knew she’d had the same sensation.

  The narrow ladder was right in front of us and I could see the shimmering, colored light of the vortex above us, through the square hatch. I was glad Girl hadn’t come with us any further. She wouldn’t have been able to climb the ladder and she was much too big to carry.

  I pulled myself up through the opening and then helped Lisa up. The vortex spiraled at our feet, like a great, colored lake. I found myself getting hypnotized in the Mandelbrot design again and looked away.

  “I figured it would be locked this time,” she said. “Thought we might need this.” She pulled out the slender piece of black metal with the notches Talbot had given us. Now that I looked at it again, I could see it was definitely a key of some sort.

  “We still might need it,” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe the lock is on the other side.”

  “I thought of that, too, but Beth didn’t seem to have any trouble getting back through after she grabbed her soul.”

  “True, but maybe it wasn’t locked. Doesn’t matter, though, does it? Either way, we’ll find out.”

  She shrugged.

  “You hold onto it,” she insisted, handing it to me.

  I slid it down inside my boot.

  “You sure you want to go with me?” she asked, hopefully.

  “Absolutely. We’re going to get your boy back.”

  She smiled and kissed me. It was short, but firm and perfect.

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank me later, after we get him. Ready?”

  “Let’s go, ”she nodded in the affirmative.

  We held hands and jumped. Lisa fell straight through, but I was hanging by my H&K, which had stuck in the vortex above me. I looked down and noticed the Ruger had slid out of its holster and must be above me as well. It was as if Mr. Shift had put some sort of filter on the vortex that allowed flesh and blood to come through, but steel would not. Lisa must have lost her grip on her own weapon as she came through. There was nothing left to do but let go of the weapon and fall.

  I hit the floor and fell sideways on my hip. The holster, which had come through just fine, padded my fall a little.

  “You okay?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. I immediately noticed the air was thicker on this side, like when you get out of the shower. Also, the light had a slight blue hue to it, as if we were in a world with a permanent filter. I looked at the skin on my hand and arm and was surprised to see it was now yellow. The room we were in was identical to the room above us on the other side of the vortex, but this one was lined with soul suits. It was as if we were in an alternate version of the house my grandfather and Jim had built, but the vortex was on the ceiling instead of the floor.

  “Do you still have the key? Did it come through?”

  “Yes, it’s right here,” I said, patting my boot. “Apparently, it just feels like metal. It must be made of something else that is able to pass through.”

  “Jesus!” I exclaimed. “Look at all of that.”

  All around us were what looked like human suits hanging along long wooden rods secured to the ceiling. It was as if Shift had used some giant vacuum to suck out the insides of these people, leaving only skin and hair. The suits hung limp but were as tightly packed as an overloaded closet. There was only a one- foot- wide spot where the bodies weren’t packed as tightly as sardines. I walked over to the last one in line, hoping it was Connor’s, but it wasn’t—was too large. I didn’t want to touch any of the husks, or whatever they were, but knew we’d have to slide some of them out of the way to look.

  Sensing my hesitation, Lisa pushed past me and began sliding the human suits along the rod as if they were no more than winter coats she was searching through. They made a wet, slapping sound as they slid into one another that made me cringe. I thought about telling her to take it easy, but didn’t. The faster she found Connor’s soul suit, the sooner we could find the rest of him and get out of here. Not only was his soul in this damned place, but his body was too. He was down here with Shift and whatever he was doing to turn Connor into a monster was happening right now. I knew Lisa wouldn’t want to just take the suit, go, and wait for her son to come back as the other children had. She was going to want to go get Connor as well. Not to mention, we had no way of knowing which children Shift released back into our world, like fish that were too small to keep.

  “Found him,” she announced, beginning to cry. She pulled the suit, which was smaller than many of the others off the rack, cradled the suit and held Connor’s face to her own. I could see the hollow eye sockets and empty mouth hole ringed with teeth. There was nothing inside, but Lisa kissed his cheek and I could see the flesh cave in with no bone or muscle to support it. His body flopped over her arms like a dry cleaning bag.

  “I don’t suppose you want to go back up and wait the three days for Connor to come back, do you?”

  She just gave me a look.

  “Okay, I just thought I’d ask.”

  Lisa wasn’t listening to me. She was looking past me, then pointed. I slowly turned around.

  Above one of the racks of souls, were several rows of brass plates. Each of them had a narrow slot in them and I immediately knew what they were.

  “Keyholes,” I said. “Each one must open a door to a different area of our world.”

  “Or, each one might open a door to a different world altogether. Maybe this portal is the only one in our world. Did you see anything like those on the other side?”

  “No. Maybe they can only be locked or unlocked from this side. Look at that one.”

  About halfway up the third row was a key-slot that was turned sideways.

  “That must be ours,” Lisa said. “Looks like it’s stuck in the open position. Probably has been since Talbot found this key after those boys were taken.”

  “And maybe ours is the only place he can go right now. Wouldn’t you think one doorway has to be closed before another can be opened?”

  “Yes, that makes sense to me,” Lisa agreed.

  “So as long as Shift is missing this key, our world is the only one he can feed from. Come on. Let’s go find your boy.”

  41

  This house’s opening with the ladder was in the same place as our world’s house, and we climbed down after Lisa carefully folded Connor’s suit and placed it in her bag. This was, by far, the strangest thing I had ever seen, but Lisa went about the task as if she was folding laundry.

  I felt horrible leaving Girl behind, but going back to get her was out of the question. We needed to go get Connor and get back as soon as we could. I hoped she would wander back to the house on her own.

  We reached the dining room and opened the front door.

  “Whoa,” Lisa said, looking around.

  “‘Whoa’ is right. Where the hell are we?”

  We were in a forest, but it was like no forest I’d ever seen. The trees were recognizable as trees, but were filled with
color. Each one of them had different-colored iridescent leaves, and some had flowers of red, orange purple and yellow. The ground was covered in what, at first glance, resembled grass, but it was wavy and blue, almost like thick hair. There were more flowers all around us and their scents mingled together in a cacophony of sweet stench so thick it almost gagged me. Chattering sounds assaulted us from every direction. I assumed they were animals of some kind, although I saw no movement in the trees or on the ground. The sky looked the same, cerulean blue with large white clouds moving overhead. The air seemed okay to breathe, and I said a little prayer that we weren’t being slowly poisoned.

  There was no opening in the trees to the fields like there was back home. It was forest and flower for as far as I could see.

  “Where do we even start looking?” Lisa looked at me, perplexed.

  “There,” I said, pointing. “There’s a path. The real question is; what are we going to do when we find them? I mean, Shift killed Beth and took Jensen’s hand in a matter of seconds. We don’t even have a knife between us.”

  Lisa hung her head.

  “I have to at least try,” she said, softly. “You can go back if you want, but I have to try.”

  “I know, and I’ll help you, but we need a plan.”

  “Shhh, do you hear that?”

  I did. Something was moving through the brush to our left.

  “Come on,” I said pulling her off the path and into a thick orange bush I hoped wasn’t poisonous. “We need to hide.”

  We crouched and watched through the branches as several dozen figures topped the hillside to our left and moved past us. They were human, or once were human. Some wore rags, others were dressed in clothes that were much too small for them. They were filthy. Their hair was matted and long, and the men all had full, thick beards. Their eyes stared straight ahead, and their expressions were blank. As they moved past, I could smell their bodies... rank and putrid like raw onion gone bad. It was so strong, my stomach rolled and my eyes watered as I struggled not to vomit and give us away. I looked over at Lisa and she had pulled her shirt up over her mouth and nose. I did the same.

  As they shuffled past, I also noticed all of them were either barefoot, or had the remnants of small shoes around their ankles.

  After the last one had passed us and was a safe distance away, Lisa asked me who I thought they were.

  “I don’t know, but they’ve been here a very long time, based on their clothes and what was left of their shoes.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. But I didn’t see any kids.”

  “Me, neither. We should keep moving.”

  We hiked along the rough- cut path, keeping an eye and an ear, and of course, a nose, out for any more of the zombie-like people. I didn’t know if they’d hurt us, or even notice us, but I didn’t want to take any chances. They could be harmless, but they could also be dangerous.

  I also wondered silently if there were any creatures like the great wolves or the horned polar bears nearby—we were in their territory now. The thought of being killed and eaten by a strange creature in a strange world was not the way I wanted to go.

  We walked for another twenty minutes without seeing anything but the strange multi-colored vegetation. There were no more walkers, or any other creatures. The forest had grown eerily silent. All I could hear was our own footsteps cracking dead branches and rustling what passed for leaves in this strange place.

  The forest suddenly came alive with the sound of breaking branches and a low rumbling, as if the earth itself was shaking. I saw movement ahead... something enormous was moving through the trees. It was pink and fleshy with tuffs of what looked like hair poking out in all directions. It looked like a meat train, and it was snapping off saplings and pushing the larger trees aside as if they were toothpicks. Its body was segmented and I finally realized what I was seeing. Its sheer size, and the simple impossibility of it, had thrown me. Lisa was pawing at me, tugging on my shirt in the opposite direction, but I was frozen in awe and terror. It was like being in a dream with cement shoes on, staring at the impossible thing that would kill you before you could wake up.

  Moving through the trees was a huge, pink caterpillar the size of a school bus.

  Lisa finally got me to crouch down so maybe the great, undulating thing moving through the trees wouldn’t see us. I rubbed my eyes, thinking I was having a hallucination, but when I looked again, it was still there—its body extending and then contracting—dragging its massive bulk along at maybe five miles an hour. It left a concave trail in the earth and I tried to imagine how heavy it must be. I watched it move away from us, expecting at any second for it to catch our scent on the wind and start moving in our direction, perhaps to eat us, or maybe just to smother us under its massive bulk.

  When it had finally moved away to what I believed was a safe distance, I whispered to Lisa,.

  “What. The. Hell?”

  “Let’s go find Connor,” she whispered back, and all I could do was hang my head and follow her.

  The trail crossed the furrow the caterpillar had made and we had to jump down into the U-shaped depression and then climb back out to the other side. If we had come through here a few minutes earlier we would have been directly in its path. The ground at the bottom of the depression was completely smooth and packed down tightly, even the rocks as big as basketballs had been pushed down deeper into the ground. I marveled again at how much that thing must have weighed.

  I noticed our shadows were getting longer and the air was growing significantly cooler.

  “I think what passes for a sun here, is setting.”

  “I think you’re right,” Lisa concurred. “I hope we find a way out of this forest soon. I don’t want to be here after dark.”

  “I’d say the odds of that are pretty good. Maybe we should stop and make camp while we have the light.”

  Lisa stopped, and I thought she was going to tell me we needed to keep moving, but I could also see the bone-tired weariness in her face and her posture.

  “Alright,” she agreed, softly. “But we start looking again at first light.”

  “Deal.”

  We gathered some wood from branches that had broken off nearby trees and used one of the road flares to start the fire. I prayed they wouldn’t give off some alien toxin that would kill us while we rested. The fire burned hot and gave off no strange odors, which was good, but I remembered carbon monoxide was odorless, too.

  I wrapped one arm around Lisa as we sat next to the fire with our backs against a huge tree. She laid her head on my shoulder and started quietly crying..

  “Hey, hey. It’ll be all right,” I said. “We’re going to find him.”

  She looked up at me with tear-filled eyes

  “Are you sure? What if we never find him, or what if we do and the house moves and we can’t get back.”

  The house moving while we were here, was something that, strangely enough, I hadn’t thought of. It was too terrifying to imagine being stuck in this alien place.

  “If it does, it’ll probably move like it does back on my land, just a few hundred yards. I’ve been paying attention to landmarks. We’ll get Connor and find our way back. You’ll see.”

  “Thank you, Hick. Thank you for everything. I know you didn’t have to help me, didn’t have to come with me.”

  “Everything happens for a reason. That house is on my family’s land. It might not be my fault that all this happened, but it’s my responsibility. And besides, I care about you.”

  She smiled up at me through her tears and then kissed my neck. It sent a warm shiver through me.

  Darkness filled the empty spaces in the forest and it came quickly. If we’d waited twenty more minutes to make camp, we would have been trying to find firewood in near- total darkness. The night brought new sounds, which were much more terrifying in the dark. Strange squeals and chatters came at us from all directions. I had no idea how big, or how dangerous any of the creatures that made those sounds were, bec
ause we never saw any of them. The only sign of them were a pair of glowing red eyes peering out from the infinite darkness. Then I heard a faint shuffle of leaves from that direction, and whatever it was had fled. Apparently the creatures of this world were just as afraid of fire as our own animals back home were. I wondered if that great pink worm might come slithering out of the darkness and devour us at any moment. We would have no idea where it was coming from if it did and it moved fast enough that we probably wouldn’t have time to get out of its way. I remembered those huge rocks that had been pushed down into the soil and pictured the same thing happening to us.

  “You, okay, Hick? You shivered.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just trying to keep my happy thoughts.”

  We gathered up enough firewood to probably last the night, but I realized I had no idea how long the night was. It might be an hour, or eight... or it might last three days.

  I didn’t expect to get any sleep that night, but I felt myself drifting off just the same. The combination of the warm fire, Lisa’s head on my chest and mental and physical exhaustion hit me all at once. I was soon fast asleep.

  42

  “Hick, wake up!”

  I was dreaming about Jensen’s hand and kept picturing it inside of Mr. Shift’s stomach. It was using its fingers to swim through black muck and it kept grabbing the skeletons of children down there, like Thing, from the Addams Family.

  My eyes opened and the first thing I saw was Lisa’s worried face in the firelight. It was still dark and the fire looked like it had only burned down a little. I had probably just been asleep for an hour or so.