by Tanis Kaige
“Call 911!” The sound rushed back at me all at once. He was talking non-stop. “It’s okay, baby. Everything’s gonna be okay, baby.” He laid her on the bed and covered her naked body with the comforter. “Annie, babe, wake up,” he muttered over and over.
I don’t know why I stood there, why I didn’t call 911 as he’d commanded me to do. But I knew a death coma when I saw one. Why it was her time, I couldn’t say. But Fate had chosen her.
“Brenna, call 911!” he shouted again.
“They can’t do anything,” I said numbly.
He looked back at me, anguished tears in his twisted expression. “She’s got a pulse. She’s still warm. Call 911.”
“Just spend this time with her.”
He shook his head, looking at me as though I’d betrayed him. And then a nightmare played out before me. Todd’s eyes went suddenly blank. They rolled back in his skull. His body went limp. He collapsed on top of Annie.
I screamed. I shook him so hard the headboard banged against the wall. This didn’t make sense. There was no reason they should both collapse. They were young and healthy. I rolled him to his back next to Annie and checked his vitals, knowing it was a fruitless thing to do. I cried, I yelled at God, and then I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Out the window.
Todd’s window was at an angle to the one in the house across the way…to Kord’s. There was a light flickering on and off in Kord’s window. On and off in random, sporadic bursts, like a light bulb slowly dying. And then it was gone.
I became aware of warmth in my hand. When I looked down, the key was there. I couldn’t remember if I’d set it down and picked it up again, or if I’d always had it. But I suddenly knew where it went.
All I knew was one foot in front of the other. The screen door of my brother’s house slammed behind me. The key warmed in my hand. That house…Kord’s house, lay empty before me, but somehow alive, though it should have long ago died. The porch steps didn’t even creak as I climbed them. My soft-soled sneakers padded across the wooden porch to the front door. The door wasn’t right. It was supposed to be white with a brass knocker and a little half-moon window at the top. Instead, it was raw boards, brown and cracking. The doorknob was a tarnished bronze, large and heavy in my hand.
I looked behind me, at the neighborhood laid out around me. Something wasn’t right. There was a reddish haze all around. It seemed far away, that neighborhood.
I turned the knob. Of course it was locked. The keyhole beneath it was not of this world. There was no reason on earth for a twenty-first century suburban farmhouse to require an unwieldy glass key, yet I tried it anyway. The key slipped in the door. A turn. A click.
I removed the key, turned the doorknob, and pushed the door open. A dank, earthy smell surrounded me. Light filtered in the door. There was a staircase to the left. Straight ahead a small foyer and a coat closet. Off to the right, the rest of the house cast in shadows.
“Hello?”
My voice didn’t echo. Nothing came back. Nothing answered. My face was still wet with the tears I’d been shedding over Annie and my brother when I stepped inside. “Hello?” I called again, softer this time, as though I didn’t really want an answer. I took another step inside. And another.
The door clicked shut behind me. I jumped and turned, fully intending to reopen the door, except that it wasn’t there any longer. I was facing what should have been the door and all I saw was a wall of dirt, seamless and rough. When I turned back, the house was gone and I was inside a tunnel. A dirt tunnel. The walls were dirt, the ceiling was dirt. It was clearly man-made, smoothed out. Light shone from ahead. I could reach my arms out and touch either wall. I could reach up and flatten my hand against the ceiling. I turned back, again, to what should have been the door and now was a dead end. I pressed against it. I threw my shoulder against it.
The sound of my breathing brought me back to myself. I kept the breaths steady and even as I turned back to face the tunnel and the warm, yellow light at the end. I wanted to stand there and wait. The door couldn’t remain a dirt wall forever, could it? It was, after all, a door by nature. It shouldn’t be pretending to be something it wasn’t. And it couldn’t keep it up much longer.
I looked down at the key in my hand. I jammed it into the dirt wall, but all it did was gouge a hole into the dirt. I waited and waited. And then I walked. First one step, and then another, toward the yellow light. It was a narrow, rectangular sliver of light. As I approached, I saw it was coming through another door, one that looked very much like the one I’d just come through. I crept up to it and peered out of the crack.
The floor was dirt. Casks and barrels lined the wall. Jars on shelves. A damp, earthen mustiness in the air. I pushed the door open a little further. A wooden staircase led up to another closed door. I found the source of the light in the form of a lantern, an old one with oil and a flame, abandoned on the floor near a barrel. “Hello?” I whispered.
The room stood vacant. My steps were tentative as I approached the lantern and lifted it by its handle. Its warmth gave me shivers. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d become. I took the creaky stairs one-at-a-time, testing my weight on each questionable board. At the top was another door. There was noise on the other side. People. Talking. Laughter.
I pushed the door open to more yellow light. I stepped into a hallway, turned towards the sound, and walked into an open room. For a moment, the noise continued. But almost at once, it silenced. I was standing in a tavern. An old tavern like the ones I’d always imagined in fantasy novels. The floors and walls were rough hewn wood. The man at the bar poured beer from a tapped barrel and served it in tankards, only just now he was frozen with a tankard extended to a man who was frozen in the middle of accepting it. Both men were staring at me, mouths agape. There were round tables surrounded by chairs, some empty, some occupied…mostly by men, all of whom were staring at me.
The table nearest me had cards laid out. My first thought was poker, but then I realized I didn’t recognize the cards or the patterns they were laid out in. I think because of the surroundings, my mind automatically painted everyone with beards and breeches and tunics. But as I focused, I saw this wasn’t the case. There were a couple of men dressed like that. But for the most part, the attire was more…diverse. Some of it modern. Most of it more modern than the medieval environment. One man in overalls with a long-sleeved cotton shirt underneath looked to be a farmer, albeit one from the Dust Bowl era. Another man wore a high-collared shirt and cravat beneath a brocade coat. A man near the bar had on black jeans, a leather jacket, and greased back hair.
They all stared in silence until someone in the back of the room stood and stepped out of the shadows. He had on a Deadhead t-shirt and ripped jeans. His brown hair was a little long, hanging over his ears and into his forehead until he pushed it aside. He was tall. Rangy. His jaw was lightly shaded with stubble. He wore sunglasses and an amused half-grin. “Well, hello,” he said. “Where’d you come from?”
I couldn’t see his eyes, but the tilt of his head, down and back up, suggested he was giving me the once over. Me, in my pajamas. Not even wearing a bra. I suddenly felt the exposure of every inch of my skin, and I blushed under the heat of embarrassment. “Um, I came from…”
He arched a brow.
I didn’t feel I had a good answer, but I spoke anyway. “I came from downstairs.”
“Really?” he laughed, incredulous. “Show me.”
The men in the room behind him began murmuring to each other. The man in front of me gestured for me to show him the way. I led him back down the stairs. “I came down this hallway through this door,” I said as I reached the bottom stairs. “That door…” I pointed at nothing but a wall. My door was gone. “Where did it go?”
The man walked past me and examined the wall. He put his hands on it, pushing and touching. “Well, you can’t expect a door to stick around all day. Apparently it felt it served its purpose.” He turned back to me, still wearing the s
unglasses in spite of the darkness. “Even so, I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.”
“I know I’m not supposed to be here. I need to be with my brother who’s just…” I found I couldn’t voice it. Something we hadn’t adjusted to was the vocabulary of it all. How do you say your loved one just died when it appeared they hadn’t really died in the traditional sense of the word. “Can you get me home?”
“Where’s home?”
“Three-oh-four West Riverside.”
“Ha!” he laughed, and his smile was beautiful. But then it vanished completely and his eyebrows went up. “Wait, what did you say?”
“My address. It’s three-oh-four—”
“What’s your name?”
“Brenna Engel.” I don’t know why I was so free with the information except that this man seemed to know what he was doing, and at the moment, I certainly didn’t know what I was doing.
“Brenna,” he repeated. Slowly he removed his sunglasses.
The sight of his eyes put me in shock. The irises were blue at first, but as I watched, they seemed to lighten. They were crystalline. Nearly glowing. They changed, morphing, darkening and lightening, swimming with expression. I got the feeling those eyes were seeing things the rest of the world couldn’t. “Who are you?” I whispered.
He put his sunglasses back on and turned away from me, pacing. He stopped, faced me, and asked, “How did you get here?”
I could barely speak. I held up the key. His brow furrowed, but I could no longer see his eyes. He took the key and turned it over in his hands. “You used this in the door that’s no longer there?”
“Well, sort of. There was a tunnel before that and another door. In fact, it was the front door to the house next door to mine.”
“Three-oh-six West Riverside,” he muttered as he studied the key.
“That’s right.”
He continued frowning at the key, his brow furrowed deeply.
“Why are you wearing sunglasses inside?” I asked. It seemed a foolish question, and yet an important one.
“I prefer not to see everything. How did you come by this key?”
The issue of the sunglasses pulled at me, and yet his more immediate question took priority. “It showed up on my windowsill last night.”
“And how did you know to use it in three-oh-six West Riverside?”
“It’s…it’s a weird story. My brother’s girlfriend collapsed into a death coma—”
“A what?”
“A death coma. Do you call it something else?”
He was staring at me. I think he was staring at me, though all I saw was my reflection in his glasses. “What the hell is a death coma?”
“You mean you don’t…you don’t have them here?”
His mouth hung partially open. He closed it and handed the key back to me. “Finish your story.”
I gave my head a shake, trying to recall where I’d left off. “My brother’s girlfriend collapsed. And then he collapsed. Then the key got warm and I just knew where it was supposed to go. All of this happened…my God, it can’t have been more than ten minutes ago. But somehow it feels farther away than that.”
The man simply stood there in front of me saying nothing for the longest time. I fidgeted with my key, not sure whether I should say something else.
At last he sighed. “We should get you some clothes. Then I’ll help you find your door. Follow me.”
He turned for the stairs and I followed. “Thank you. I’m sorry to be a bother.”
“Not at all.”
“What’s your name?”
He stopped halfway up the stairs and turned. He smiled crookedly down at me. “Kord. It’s good to see you again, Brenna.”
He turned and headed back up the stairs.
Above the tavern were rooms. Terrible, musty, cramped rooms with straw tick mattresses, wash basins, and not much else. Kord led me into a room at the back of the third floor. There was at least a window, but as soon as I saw it, I became disoriented. It was morning not a half hour ago, but out the window was only a dark, reddish glow.
“Margaret, wake up,” Kord said.
I had been distracted by the window. Now I saw there was a naked woman lying face-down atop the bed. She did not wake up. On the small table next to the bed was a pipe of some sort and a pale brown brick with a small knife laid on top.
Kord sat on the edge of the bed next to her, placed his hand on her back, and gave her a little shake. “Hey, Margaret.”
The woman moaned but otherwise remained still.
Kord stood. “Well, it doesn’t look like she’ll be using her clothes anytime soon anyway, so we may as well take them. I’ll leave her a note. You get changed.”
I looked around the floor at Margaret’s clothes scattered around my feet. I barely recognized most of the garments. They looked like costuming from one of those photo shops where you can dress like a southern belle or a good-natured saloon prostitute. Kord was bent over, scribbling something on a piece of paper next to the pipe. He stopped and stood straight. “It occurs to me I don’t actually know if Margaret can read.”
“I don’t need her clothes. Maybe I could wear something of yours?”
He ignored me and crossed the room, kneeling at my feet. He sorted through the clothes, pulling out bits and pieces he apparently found appropriate.
I ended up putting on some long stockings, a corset over my tank top—which Kord laced up for me—and Margaret’s tattered brown dress. I dropped the key inside a pocket sewn into the skirt. Kord stepped back and looked me over. “Cute,” he said.
I looked back at Margaret. “Who is she?”
“She was a dancer. She’s got better clothes somewhere, so don’t worry about her. Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”
I followed him back into the hall and down the stairs. I assumed we would eat the unattractive porridge that I saw other patrons partaking of, but Kord took my hand and led me out of the tavern.
We stepped out onto a cobblestone street. The buildings were squat, thatch-roofed things. The air smelled faintly of urine. The sky glowed that reddish color, and I found it deeply disconcerting.
I allowed Kord to lead me, my sneakers slipping and twisting on the uneven path.
“Where is it? Where is it?” Kord kept muttering. We walked past a few houses, stopped, backtracked, stopped, and backtracked again. “Ah, there’s the little bastard.”
We were facing a narrow, dead-end alley between two houses. Kord pulled on my hand, leading me toward the brick wall at the back. I had to follow behind him because of the narrow space, but he held my hand nonetheless. As we got closer to the wall, I noticed we weren’t slowing down. In fact, he was pulling me faster so that I stumbled to keep up.
“Kord…there’s a wall…” I said, just as we reached the wall. He didn’t slow. I dug in my heels and broke from his grip, falling back a few steps.
He turned, trying to retrieve my hand. “Let’s hurry before it moves again.”
“What are you…?” He grabbed me by the shoulders, turned me, and shoved my back against the wall. Only I didn’t hit a wall. I just kept moving backwards. Naturally, I squeezed my eyes shut as I prepared for impact. When impact didn’t come, I opened one eye, and then the other. I was standing in an open market square surrounded by small shops with French names on the signs hanging under their awnings. The sky was the same reddish hue, but the mustiness was faded. The air felt dead. There was no movement at all and if I thought about it, I found it difficult to breathe.
“Better breakfast here,” Kord said, once again taking my hand and leading me toward one of the shops.
It was a café. The floors inside were brick. A few ceiling fans made lazy circulations, moving the air comfortably around us. Kord led me through the shop and out the back door onto a patio that overlooked a small duck pond with a little island in the middle with a willow tree growing on it. Nothing was its proper color. The willow tree might have been green with its summe
r growth, but instead it appeared nearly black. We sat in wrought-iron chairs across from each other. A server in black slacks and a white blouse brought us menus.
Kord ordered for us in perfect French and with a charming smile that made the server blush. As she walked away, she cast a glance at him over her shoulder. I couldn’t tell because of his sunglasses, but I’m fairly certain he watched her walk away.
“Do you know her?” I asked.
“Not yet.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “There’s nothing but time, here. I get to know lots of people. I figure there are infinite experiences to be had. But lately, no one new has come over. Most people don’t notice, but I do. It’s been a long time…too long, since I’ve seen anyone new. So tell me about these death comas.”
I told him everything that had happened since he disappeared that day. I still couldn’t look at him and believe this was the little boy with the blindfold whom I’d played toy soldiers with in his windowsill. There was some resemblance in his occasional smile and in the way he shoved his hair out of his eyes. Otherwise, he looked completely different. Grown and handsome and manly.
He listened to me with a furrow in his brow and an occasional nod of understanding. Afterwards he leaned back in his chair and blew out a breath, his cheeks puffing out.
The server brought us pastries and coffee. Apparently even the strangeness of my circumstances and the shock of losing my brother and Annie didn’t affect my appetite. I ate my fill while Kord watched me.
“I always figured you for a blond,” he said.
I looked up. “I dye it black, now.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I just like it better.”
He frowned. Perhaps it wasn’t to his taste. “I used to think you were an angel.”
“Because you thought my hair was blonde?”
“Because you came to my window at night. My mother kept the world away. I never knew anyone but her and you. I thought God sent you to relieve my suffering. But he didn’t. You were just a nice girl.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
